Christoffer
Experienced Member
As far as keyboard controllers, the VIA VT82C42 is a dedicated replacement for the 8042-based controllers. I found a whole tube of 10 on eBay, VT82C42N.
Some more resources on 8088 homebrew:
John Monahan has designs on his website (http://www.s100computers.com/) for 8088/8086/80286/80386 CPU boards and an S-100 "MS-DOS Support board" that provides the required support chips to boot MS-DOS up to 4.xx without modification.
John Coffman designed an 80C188 SBC called the SBC-188, which can boot MS-DOS from a floppy can also interface with other homebrew cards on the ECB bus (also not 100% PC compatible though). This was formerly part of the "N8VEM" project, which is in the process of migrating to a new website at http://www.retrobrewcomputers.org/doku.php (I will try to port over the SBC-188 pages sometime in the next few days and report back to this thread with a direct link). I know John mentioned a possible new revision of that board to V3 in the near future (http://www.retrobrewcomputers.org/n8vem-gg-archive/html-2015/Oct/msg00087.html)
In July/August, James Crass had a thread going on the old N8VEM boards about an 8088 breadboard build - see http://www.retrobrewcomputers.org/n8vem-gg-archive/html-2015/Jul/threads.html#00063 and http://www.retrobrewcomputers.org/n8vem-gg-archive/html-2015/Aug/threads.html#00044
Hope this is useful.
Andrew B.
Wow, that's a lot of info! Thanks! I'll have to read through that! The DOS support s100 especially sounds groovy.
-And you're right, there's plenty of VT82C42N's available. Even one on Amazon.co.uk! http://www.amazon.co.uk/VT82C42N-82...=UTF8&qid=1448972660&sr=8-1&keywords=VT82C42N
I've actually found that a lot of IC's can be found on amazon, at very reasonable prices- Also found some huge SRAM, the AS6C4008 512 kbyte ones.
Still have problems finding the 8288 bus controller, though.. Could you use the 82188?
Spidersweb: Sounds like an interesting project with a lot of possibilities, though personally, I really loose interest when things are condensed down to FPGA's, I must admit.
Tipc: You're absolutely right, and the 80186 is a more interesting (and powerful) part, along with it being a bit poorer documented (atleast in hobbyist projects), but I'm not completely certain I'm at a point where I could do anything usable with it. Again, with these larger projects, I usually base them in existing projects and work from there -giving rise to some trouble with the 80186..
Also: I have a 1981 vintage ceramic i8088 that I'm dying to use!
--Christoffer