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X86 single board computers or thin clients?

hunterjwizzard

hunterjwizzard

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Mar 20, 2020
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Mostly just curious and looking to start a conversation. I was reading about the WeeCee, someone's project from a while back. Other people were saying comparable products can be found off the shelf(minus sound at least).

I don't "need" one of these per season. But someone looking to retro game on metal might do well with something similar. You can get good sound off of USB easy. And even if the video is crap it'll run a lot of classic games easy.

Just curious if anyone's got any thoughts on things like this.
 
There were tons of thin clients in the early 2000s that used mid to late 90s hardware, usually based around the AMD Geode (which is basically a Cyrix MediaGX, itself based on the Cx5x86) or the VIA C3 (itself based on the IDT Winchip C6 made by Centaur Technology.) AMD also had their 50x15 "Personal Internet Computer" bricks, which had Geode GX CPUs at 366 MHz.

They do generally have good DOS compatibility, some even have sound. The problem with many of them though is they have locked down BIOSes with embedded operating systems like Windows CE. Some of them can be cracked and opened up, but it's a headache to do. I picked up one of the 50x15 PICs 10+ years ago for $20 and cracked it. With the unlocked BIOS, you could overclock the unit to about 450 MHz and it ran mid 90s games well under Windows XP. You could install an older version of Linux as well, but you definitely wanted to upgrade the RAM to 512M.

I remember when those AMD 50x15 bricks were being dumped on the used market by the thousand for cheap because the project was a failure. The people that ran the project were too caught up in how to make a cheap computer and forgot that many of the places where said computer was supposed to go don't have any electricity to run them, or have unreliable electricity. Similar issues plagued the OLPC project too, and they came up with hilariously misguided ways to get around it. Like they had a hand crank charger and expected the student to crank that thing for like an hour or more to get enough juice to keep the laptop running. Instead of something sensible like a solar panel...
 
The hand crank charger was a pretty good idea, honestly. I really wish someone sold one for regular laptops.

Having some fun hunting ebay found this thing:

www.ebay.com

Advantech MIO5270 Industrial Single Board Computer AMD 1GHZ Dual Core | eBay

ProcessorAMD G-Series Dual Core 1G Dual Core. TypeSingle Board Industrial Computer. RAM2GB 1333MHZ DDR3 Industrial Grade SQRAM (Max Capacity 4GB). What's Included USB4 USB 2.0.
www.ebay.com

Its an SBC based on a dual-core 1ghz AMD. Buuuut... it appears to have an AMD 6150 graphics chip. And sound. For $18 USD, slap XP on there, it should run late 90s games like a dream. Less than twenty bucks shipped to play games on metal is a nice intro to the hobby.

Having to resist the urge to buy one :P
 
Those Bobcat APUs are really weak, like on the level of the Intel Atom weak. While the graphics part does have Windows XP drivers, the chipset doesn't really have working drivers. You'll likely need to change the SATA controller to operate in IDE compatibility mode, which will really slow it down.
 
Glad I didnt impulse buy one.

I don't personally need one. I'm just on a thought train of "hey, how can people get into retro PC gaming in metal for cheap?"
 
I'd just recommend Dosbox-X. It's free and can emulate old PCs well. One further would be PCEM, but it's a lot more difficult to setup.
 
I see we are unfamiliar with the term "on metal". It means "not using emulation". EG "a machine that natively boots to and operating that the game runs directly on".

Hopefully we are more familiar with sarcasm.
 
In the late 90's I snagged a Planar 486 system that was used for medical applications, and it was a whole 486 system including sound and built in TFT VGA LCD. You basically had to mount it like a TV.

I also have a Pen Key 6622 5x86 VGA 32K color touchscreen tablet and stylus with sound and PCMCIA that ran off of dual batteries that was fun to use.

https://cybarcode.com/sites/cy/files/specsheets/intermec/6622_specsheet.pdf

I liked them because of the VGA native screen, and they had sound. I think both used laptop IDE drives so at least upgrades were standard.
 
Last I checked yes. The batteries for the Pen Key were not lasting that long and I have not found any replacements.

Should probably sell them off.
 
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