The weeCee: A Tiny New MS-DOS & Windows Gaming PC! 

Count me in for ~$600! :)

If people could stop those heartless scrappers out there, we could put the early CPU's to use. Maybe make a mini-itx socket 7, or the like. At that price an odroid h2+ if they are ever able to make anymore would be cheaper than $600 obviously.

Hopefully LGR pins this up top. After scrolling just a tiny bit to see several expected comments on where or how to buy one from people who probably did not watch the full video or have a look at the BOM you openly posted, I’m glad you said something. The BOM alone is ~$350. This isn’t a Raspberry Pi and absolutely isn’t in Raspberry Pi pricing territory. I hope others watch your videos on the device and appreciate the work that went into it and especially appreciate that you released the BOM and gerbers publicly. To those asking to buy one assembled as the design currently stands; Would you happily part ways with $650 for it?

Excellent work. Is any way of doing one with CF cards? For dos are more reliable than SD.

Hey, great work! Projects like these are really inspiring.

Noticed that, too. It's a (late) prototype, though. If production units are still hand-soldered, it's definitely both. Edit: Oh poo, these aren't gonna be produced! Just a project for people who are comfortable with doing SMC soldering, I guess.

@@pseudotasuki you can have the board house do assembly...

So, Ben Heck?

I fully get your feelings on the subject - I tend to design with through-hole components because nobody would make my stuff if I used SMT... and it's not very 'retro'. But FWLIW SMT soldering isn't difficult at all; it just requires a different 'philosophy'. ie: Use loads of flux, splash the solder all over, and clean the bridges after. Once you get the hang of using surface tension to your advantage you'll be good.

Having watched a metric ton of Louis Rossmann over the years, I strangely had an easier time learning SMT soldering than Through-Hole for my J-STD.

I'm curious now if you or any other industrial SOM manufacturer have ever considered selling these units for consumer use. I assume the market would be a bit niche but there are quite a few people who are interested in keeping legacy hardware/software running.

Would a portable version be doable, like a sort of retro focused Steam Deck type of thing?

Should have made it so people could buy them, I'd buy 10 today, I know plenty of people who would love this system

@@asteroidrules In my case the interest is to make a cheap computer for emergencies (low power, small, fast boot, modular). I use today the LilyGo TTGO VGA32 with PC/XT emulator (PCEmulator Plus).

as well, only us people who use subtitles shall ever know

If you're in, I'm in.

*Reads comment, and then sees username and icon.

I've still got my FL Studio 3.0 installer lying around somewhere. :D

@@scruffythejanitor1969 If Scruffy's in, I'm in too.

ok

Ikr

My RU-vid bubble surprises me every day. Had no idea that Dan is watching LGR 😀

@@hauslerful I just assume everyone watches LGR! Haha who wouldn't be subscribed to LGR.

🤘🏻

Haha Dan Vasc is a LGR fan, that's awesome!

Could shove it into a case wit ha Genesis and SNES and 2600 combo.

I would love to build a mini PC using one of those little CF slot hard drives (microdrives, or whatever the real name is). I have a few of them awaiting such a project some day. For me, a true retro PC has to have spinning disk main storage! Flash is very convenient, but lacks the authenticity of mechanical disks.

1. search and buy a used PC104 or Picmg STPC SBC (i think ST still produce this 100% compatible 486DX SoC) 2. use a old ISA risercard as poormans backplane and put MFM and SouNdBLASTER) 3. ???? 4. game like 1994 wiithout this LPC rubbiish

It’s my life goal to build a to-scale PC mini tower with an FPGA motherboard, and an honest to gosh mini ISA bus for repro add-in cards.

MFM and MFM/RLL were 90s technology, you young whippersnapper!

Sure, something like this would probably be perfect for doing that kinda stuff

look for MiSTer fpga project

So, this is actually an interesting idea! The weeCee actually has a bunch of GPIO ports that can talk across SPI/I2C to various devices. If you had a device that could do the text to speech that talked across such lines, you could probably do this.

Hmm, I wonder if RC Systems still make any of the DoubleTalk chips that were used in a lot of products, I know they were still making them in the mid 200s because the BookPort used a DoubleTalk chip.

you need to start a "best ever" series rerez

@@frostech3149 they literally have learn to read

@Rerez You should review this product.

@@mischiefthedegenerateratto7464 I think he means “just good systems”

like the $180 for one SOM304RD-IV type of cool? idk

Is there a processor so powerful in a small form factor? How does a raspberry pi compare to a classic pentium?

Look for some late 2000s thin clients. Many of them can run XP and have a few expansion slots.

I don't think the problem would be finding a CPU so much as dealing with the 3D accelerator (GPU) issue. weeCee tackles games from before and slightly after 3D accelerators came up, so software rendering was still a pretty commonplace option in games. When you get to the late 98SE to the WinXP era and beyond, GPU's became mandatory and software rendering wasn't much an option if it was there at all. Much like sound cards. After, say, 2006, sound cards all but disappeared except for the hobby market. The industry decided to include audio on-board, for better or worse. At first, it was horrible with quirks and bugs and sometimes horrible output but as time went on, it came into it's own and dedicated sound cards became a niche market like they are now. To build something that would play games from the late 90's to mid 2000's, say the time frame from the first Half-life to the second Half-Life, you'd need a CPU that had 3D on-board. Now way back, there was a short period of time that nVidia put out it's own boards with an nVidia GPU already on it. Sure, you're getting a GPU for the cost of the board but then you were stuck with that GPU forever, you couldn't upgrade it to my knowledge. Something like >that< would be ideal for a project like this. It would take a lot of work and tracking down useable and freely available parts to get something like that off the ground but it could be possible.

@@MaraIndigoJade There are some thin clients with a single AGP or PCI slot.

Steam deck?

Why? I'd rather support an independent maker with a small company. Srsly, why do you think this isn't out already on the market? It's because it's not profitable enough, and requires someone with love of games to make from scratch. What you said is like sampling cookies from someone's grandma and saying "Oh, I'd LOVE a commercial version of these cookies!"

@@squirlmy commercial as in being sold... chill bud.

@@squirlmy "independent maker with a small company" IS a commercial version. Hence "company". Company...commerce...commercial. I think you may have an incorrect definition for what "commercial" means

If it were comercial it would certainly have it

Yea big one top of it

The hilarious thing is that tiny pc beeper would account for a third of the overall footprint. XD

@@xiaochicash :D OR you just put the beeper connector to motherboard and plug the cable to soundcards input. Problem solved :) I remember doing this back in the 486 days.

Funny enough the PC speaker output is directly wired into the audio chip on its Mono input channel. I think LGR may of just simply had inadvertently muted that channel. Easy to do. Adding a PC beeper wouldn’t be hard though, there are pins on the side along with the RTC CMOS battery that are specifically for this.

A couple extra inches would make the device more enjoyable to use.

A couple extra inches of floppy

That's literally what she said.

@@benbrist Hard disk, my friend, hard disk. Floppy only looks good in the shower.

I sure his partner wouldn't mind either

Nyah! Just like a woman.

He’s very aware and plays it up for the audience amazingly

His voice + jazz music = eargasm

indeed...In my mind about 90% of the world runs on 98

Buy a Pentium 2, 450 used

@ carrying around a Pentium2 to friends' houses, around a university campus, on the bus, etc., gets awfully tiring! Although I'd actually prefer an FPGA solution, Maybe get that 3D acceleration working.

@ 450? In my country you can get them for $45 if you don't try to haggle the price down.

Where could one be purchased by those less skilled gl assemble their own?

Just a POST beep would be fine with me. : P

Pin 60 is marked SPEAKER in the SOM304 system development user manual and on the dev board. It would be odd if it was not included since the PC speaker is sometimes needed in industrial applications.

Could your hardware issues be due to improper cooling? Apart from the CPU, other components may benefit from cross ventilation that was being provided by the enclosure's case fans.

@@burtpanzer Yeah, I guess that could be the issue. I never thought about that, but the CPU cooler is a tower and the GPU doesn't provide airflow to any components either. Thanks for the tip! The main issue is the GPU though. I had a GTX 285 which was overheating and shutting down within a few minutes of gaming when I got it. Cleaned it and replaced the thermal paste and got it back running, but unfortunately I didn't swap the themal pads, so after a year or two it burned out its memory and VRM modules. Since I built the wall mount around the hardware I had lying around, I needed to replace it with the same model GPU, but I bought two and both had the same problem, despite being sold as working and replacing thermal pads didn't save em. Tried treating one with heat, and did get an output, but the fan stopped running. But the Mainboard could have problems due to no airflow. Though I'm not entirely sure, if it's broken or not. One of the boards I have likes to have glitches and freeze in BIOS when using the on board graphics, the other one might be fine tho. In any case I'm done with the GTX 285, that card has a fatal flaw. So I'll need a different solution for a case (don't want to towers under my desk though) and need to get a guaranteed good GPU from somewhere. Not gonna buy on off eBay anymore. It's gonna be a project for my next time off ^^

@@burtpanzer my retro pc doesnt even have a heatsync on the cpu! and no fan either. No heat issues.

Yeah, and add an option for the 15kHz sound the CRT is making all the time while you're at it.

I completely forgot about the degaussing sound!

WinUAE emulates floppy drive sounds exactly for this reason. A lot of those subtle sounds aren't just for the sake of nostalgia -- in many cases they were the only feedback you got that the system was actually doing anything.

Complete the package with dial-up tones and g2g!

Pretty sure Daggerfall nowadays relies on mods and such to get it up to more modern standards with things like freelook, but you're right; it's good to have the original experience preserved and made available.

Well I'd buy one or five... if they're ever mass produced.

Pretty much. Though much lower performance, obviously.

@@pseudotasuki it's much quicker than a pi cause no emulation for dos games

@@jondonnelly4831 Sure, but a Pi is much quicker in general.

The only thing needed is some way to use glide or something

i came looking for this comment

Unintentional pun imo

@@lopwidth7343 Unintentional "That's what she said"bait, puns are different.

Well you can still buy CompactFlash so I don't see the problem. CF is 100% compatible with IDE so you can run any OS you want, and far more robust (equivalent to an SSD), not to mention faster with DMA.

What if we get rid of the graphics core, put everything else on a large PCB, have the AGP interface built so you would have a real Voodo on the one side, and all the other stuff on the other?

@@danieldorn2927 It unfortunately doesn’t have AGP lines but it does have PCI lines that could probably support a VLA-100. Andy has mentioned that that would be a lot more involved though, and I happen to agree. That being said, never say never! There was another guy who reversed engineered the Voodoo5 6000 and made his own, and you can still buy VLA-100 chips to this day.

14:00

Like the video said: no. But the schematics are available for those with the skills to build one themselves.

At the end of the video he mentions there aren't. But that the parts and schematics are available to build one yourself, so maybe someone will do that and maybe resell those. I am playing with the thought of doing that myself but my soldering skills are nowhere near what I would need to solder the smaller (smd) components and connectors. So I am thinking about solutions for that, like having the pcb company solder on the components or something like that. But I really have to research that first to see what it costs and if that's even an option for me.

you should watch the video to find out! he answers this question directly

The BOM is around $350. Assembling them and making them available for people to buy as a turnkey item would result in a price tag of over $600.

I dont think prebuild like in soldering term will work becouse many of the componen in smd or ball packet And Yeah he should put like usb hub ic but hey this is beta product

Why do u want a 90s computer? I had fun with black n white game and sims but otherwise it sucked

​@@breakingames7772 Because I had an entirely different experience, mainly. Like, yeah, if I only enjoyed two games that decade, I wouldn't want to preserve the era either, but I enjoyed hundreds of them, many of which are compromised in some way on modern hardware.

We hobbyists still generally avoid them. The pitch is so utterly tiny they can be a colossal pain to solder by hand. Assuming you can source a Pin through hole model. The Surface mounted ones i wouldn't even bother without reflow soldering. So we mostly still stick to Micro. The more skittish ones potentially opting for mini.

@@chielvoswijk9482 Us shaky handed hobbyists stick to regular B because its easier to solder

@@kirinokosaka9641 I don't like pth that much. Costs space which costs money if you have your boards fabbed. I do employ custom footprints with the pads elongated. Easier to hit with the iron despite not having the most stable hands with the solder flowing to the pin doing most of the work. If only for power I would only modify the vbus+GND pad to make it as easy as possible.

I would instabuy that I always have a few times I just wanna get back into the nostalgia that is retro But I dont have a retro pc, and the options that i could get are expensive, even more than the 500 bucks that this would cost.

@Jason Fitch Yes. But those came out later. There was a time when 3dfx was king, and Glide was the only protocol that actually worked well. Of course Geforce cards are better...they drove 3dfx out of business, and Nvidia owns almost all their tech today.

@Jason Fitch Depends on what you're doing with it. Some people are looking to run specific software that only runs properly on the Voodoo.

I would like it to have voodoo 5 3Dfx acceleration….

HDMI lol

That would be cool but he would need permission from Nvidia they bought out voodoo.

@@timmyburden5701 Yeah we should get the word out to Nvidia about this. I think we or the creator of Weecee should go to one of Nvidia panels at a tech convention and ask them if they can help in these projects…

I'm holding onto an old Compaq Pentium 3 tower I saved from the recyclers for the chance that it will someday be of use to someone for retro gaming. I don't have the time or interest to do anything with it, but I have a soft spot for old computers and the prices are starting to rebound.

I agree. USB-C is simply more efficient for charging when compared to alternative methods. Up to around 24% in controlled lab tests. And there’s just the convenience of having many spare USB-C chargers so having something use it as power is just nice. Most nights around midnight I feel a dark presence near me. Upon feeling this I begin to feel warm breath going down my neck but when I turn around I find no one behind me.

😒my life

couple OF extra inches... OF!