It's neat, but $500 is very tough sell, especially without any 3D acceleration. At that point you're better off with an old thin client, with some even having PCI sound cards and 3D graphics (not very good 3D, but better than nothing). Phil's Computer Lab has good videos on turning old thin clients into Windows 98 machines.
DOS sound compatibility with PCI sound cards though... I dread it. Phil makes it seem like sunshine and rainbows, and let me tell you it aint. Got a bunch of old PCs with non-ISA chipsets (curse you Intel for dropping ISA support with the 8xx-series chipsets) and compatibility is an absolute nightmare. I love Dune 2, but that's a nightmare. Duke 3D can be a pain too. Got ES1938s, ALS4000s, Vortex 2s, CMI8738s, a bunch of different Sound Blaster PCI cards that all tout Sound Blaster Pro compatibility and yeeeah... in Real DOS that's really stretching the truth. The Vortex 2's built-in FM Synth is absolutely awful if nothing else... The ISA support and sound in this is a huge selling point for me (even if the Crystal chipset isn't exactly on my top 3 ISA list), but yeah, there are a few too many drawbacks for that price. The I/O issues and lack of 3D acceleration, and the weird issues the architecture and feature set can cause (like in POD), is definitely real bad. Should be possible to sort something out if there's a PCI and/or PCIe bus available - there are mobility chipsets that would probably work well. Worst case scenario with a PCIe to PCI bridge chip if there's no PCI bus available. But then you'd on the other hand add additional cost and complexity. :/
I have a 2018 model Dell Wyse Zx0Q Thin Client with 2 x 9 pin com ports and a parallel port because it was used in some fast food chains that still use legacy connectors for their receipt printers and bump buttons. It also has a built in Radeon GPU which I have discovered is even quite capable of running the Dolphin emulator. I think this may be a specialised model as some of the ones I've seen on eBay and elsewhere don't have these ports. I was allowed to take this one home for free after the restaurant upgrade!
The Vortex x86DX procesor is a pentium 1 based processor. Our company also use this processor in our traffic light controller as a application processor.
@@Amber57499 From what little I understand, many machines in industry use standards and software that are quite archaic. For instance, there are plenty of milling machines that are controlled by software that only works properly under win9x, so having a new computer based on old p5 or 486 based chips would be advantageous.
Thanks for the upload! I hope that everything keeps going smoothly for you Clint. You're a great person and it's always nice to see your calm and cozy uploads. * Edited to fix the word keep. Was half asleep.
@@fnjesusfreak Overpricing and greed at its best like situation with Factorio with its no discounts and high price all time. As for games I will buy another HDD/SSD than today AAA games.
For me, it majorly depends on how "engineered" something is and what the alternatives look like. For example: I was happy to pay $250 for my Model F77 keyboard since much of its makeup was a meticulous bespoke recreation process to revive a long-defunct physical keyboard mechanism, _and_ to do so with modern layouts and connectivity. Plus I got an earlier zinc-alloy case, so mine weighs as much as a collapsing star and thus is completely indestructible. Best quarter of a grand I've ever spent (though from what I've seen from others' accounts, quality and shipping control leave something to be desired). _This,_ however? From what I can see, it's much less bespoke, and there are much cheaper alternatives to achieve much the same end results in a fashion many would consider acceptably comparable, unless you're _extremely_ pressed for space in your setup and/or are relentlessly anal about the most minute inaccuracies.
I'd be more into a version of this with a Pentium III and a 3D accelerator around the original GeForce's level. That was more my childhood. A lot of games from the XP days struggle on modern hardware almost as much as the DOS stuff.
Honestly, same. I'd even take Pentium II with 3D acceleration of some sort, but Pentium III would be a sweet spot before games got modern enough that newer, still easily found, computers can run the software easily enough.
@@SqueakyBlum Same for a lot of xp and 95 era games. 3.1 though you can get a filterable 100gb+ package online that you can set up and run through launchbox which works perfect. Name eludes me unfortunately.
It's very nice that LGR is very transparent about partnerships, sendovers, and affiliates. It's nice to hear a RUclipsr say that their words are fresh without company influence (not that it wasn't obvious with the good constructive criticism but still). I feel like this should be more of a standard in both Social Media but also in other media like TV.
This is more or less standard with channels of any repute and / or size, and if something looks funny there are hundreds / thousands of "commentary" channels ready to "call out" "bad actors." I wouldn't get too excited 👌
Would be cool to see one additional upgraded model with some 3D acceleration chip on the custom PCB, just like how they did for the sound card. Having OpenGL support would make more games run more gooder.
From such a new retro PC I would expect Glide compatibility, which would require a Voodoo chipset. Most 3D accelerated games of that time ran best with Glide on a Voodoo card. I wouldn't settle for anything less.
@@Eyepatchfilms dgvoodoo1 will probably not work with DOS games that access directly a voodoo chipset. Therefore i would prefer voodoo or better VSA-100 compatibility on hardware level.
Looks very nice... but the price! My worthless $2 is: if you want to play old games, you can get an old laptop for $50-$100. Throw in an SD card adapter and a VGA-to-HDMI adapter, and you're good to go for most DOS games, and a lot of later Windows games (3D notwithstanding, mileage may vary). Many manufacturers still have all the drivers on their websites, which makes life a lot easier.
I play a lot of old games and with a little Googling you can usually find forums or wiki pages that have complete tutorials for getting a game running on a modern system. Usually it’s messing with some game files or sometimes there’s even open source launchers to streamline the whole process (like with Rollercoaster Tycoon 2)!
One of these things in a full laptop 3d-printed chassis (screen, keyboard, trackpad) would likely be a far easier sell. Use a common external Thinkpad battery pack and it'd be a pretty effective retro build. $500 for a limited retro mini PC is a hard product to market. $800 for a retro laptop may do better. Old used laptops with good DOS compatibility aren't holding up too well.
@Ichbaar I never had a computer that would skip the energy stay logo, it was just part of the bios telling anyone who knew that the motherboard was capable of soft power on and off, and could "sleep" instead of fully turning the computer off with a physical switch.
I imagine Clint asking Pixel about the fact that they sell Windows 98 SE with their machines, saying "That seems a little _unusual_ ..." and like in the movie Contact, the Pixel representative just says "It _is_ unusual, isn't it?" and just hangs up.
@@mattg7485 I want to believe they just found a thousand or so dusty OEM copies in a container somewhere around a company long since bankrupt, lost and forgotten. And bought at scrap weight price. 😅
It is a 2mm most likely, seeing how the thing it is used in comes from Europe, which is also another good reason to call it such. Sorry, I can't help myself..
I don't think I'd go for it at that price point. It looks nice, but I can think of a number of other things that I can do to get my nostalgic gaming fix.
@bobweiram6321 Right!? Dig it out of that sinkhole that was once grandpa's garage! Haha. Of course, I built a cheaper K6-2 system from old parts I found on ebay and elsewhere. Even found a new old-stock mobo. But, it was also PC Chips. So, there's some down sides. Lol.
@@bobweiram6321Are you sure that "free" computer would be of this size and with modern ports (especially SD reader)? Yeah, old one would probably have a floppy drive as a bonus, but tomatoes are still not really comparable to oranges.
@@watcherit1311 If size matters, run an emulator, Proxmox, or Rasberry Pi. Even old 8-bit machines work fine with SD readers. You can walk into any decent thrift store and walk out with free PCs because they usually pay to have them disposed of.
Eivind and the Rasteri deserve quite a bit of credit for inspiring these designs. Eivind's designs are probably some of the coolest I've ever seen for these. people should real check them out!
Very nostalgic episode. I'm not sure if it was that exact monitor I had but I vividly remember my first PC monitor coming with a big rectangular power button like that. Good times.
Very nice. I recently got a MiSTer FPGA to run a 486 machine. It does other consoles and computers, but for me having what essentially a period correct PC for me, it's perfect. Even supports loading disk images via NFC. It was that or repurposing a thin client. Loads of options now for retro gaming on 'non-original' equipment.
Explains why they’re still in stock, indie projects like this are always out of stock by the time I see reviews. It doesn’t have OpenGL or 3DFx too. Not sure what this offers over virtualization, tbh.
You pay for the convenience and simplicity. It is niche yes, but you could say the same for many things that cost a lot of money. Most normal people aren't paying multiple-thousands for proper camera hardware for example.
These projects always waste time on unnecessary features and thus price themselves way out of the market they supposedly compete in. Original, (reliable even) hardware is still not so expensive as to warrant a 450 EUR replacement. Well known hardware combinations are plug and play. If you want original hardware, just build a Socket 775 or AM2 rig. With current prices, you can build a full system for like $40. C-media PCI sound card, next to nothing on eBay. Very low end ATI PCI graphics card (very high end indeed for 90s games), next to nothing. It will also give you great 3D and 2D acceleration. Core 2 Duo is the best choice for Intel because of the power efficiency and the ability to lower power consumption (so that you can have a silent PC and use little power). For AM2, use whatever you can get your hands on for around $0. Sometimes the BIOS lets you disable the L1 and L2 cache, which will at most give you i586 performance. With some tweaking you can get Wing Commander to run at an appropriate speed. For Intel, check out Phil's Computer Lab, he's got detailed guides for achieving this.
@@Photo0021300+ for wireless microphones for content creation. Nice audio is good😅 .And small numbers. Recently i was thinking of what it would cost if I made an RC car shell myself and price it realistically. A workhour would be about 150€ and if I say 10...... 😂 Make it yourself.
Yeah, this is just paying for continence. However you may just end up inconveniencing yourself in the end. Between the price and the lack of upgradability it's a dull product. This also would take out all the fun of building a retro pc in the first place.
If they could get that down to a more realistic price of like $150, it would be worth it for some people. But its current price is way too much for what it is.
Absolutely. I'm drowning in motherboards that need recapped and a couple of 3dfx cards i don't have anything to attach to rigt now. SOmething, anything, at about the £150 would be life changing
Happy New Year! It's nice that new products are coming up for the retro enthusiasts, but I agree with your criticism of this one. The price point is hefty too, considering you still need additional hardware on top of all that...
I love the idea, but I just can't get over the price. I can pickup a Shuttle XPC with a low end AGP 3d card for under $100 with SATA / FDD support for native hardware / peripherals... Yes, I may have to replace a capacitor or battery, and yes- they are giant compared to this solution, but again, 4-5x cheaper and still widely available (no, you don't need a huge ATX box for native retro computing). In any case, I wish them best of luck and I look forward to seeing the ITX revision. The audience who want an all in one solution for this type of computing are almost certainly going to be able to tinker themselves or already run emulation, so it's neat, but I don't see the market being there to support it long term (which is probably why they are cross-linked to the warez sites).
Agreed. And the website is misleading. Priced from 80 euros, I thought, "hey that's affordable." But that's without the SOC. And with a 3d-printed case. No MIDI interface. You want it as displayed here, it's between 350-450. I'll stick to collecting retro hardware. It's cheaper overall, and a lot more fun.
@@stanguay169 MiSTer is hard to beat in general for all kinds of things, what a wonder of a device! I love that it's only gotten substantially better in the time since I covered it, too.
@@LGR And FPGAs keep evolving too, leading (ideally) to price reductions and performance increases, i.e. more capability. Imagine being able to run a real Pentium 3 core with a Voodoo 3 core on an FPGA - I'm kinda salivating at the thought. ^^
You are paying for the small size... Frankly I'd rather just put a post on Facebook or something asking if anyone has an old computer stashed away in their basement collecting dust and get that going... It is quite expensive for what it really is, you can get old Pentium 2 computers for free or near free since people consider them junk.
“The gaming power of a 30 year old machine” is the entire point. This is providing modern interfaces for obsolete CPU and I/O processors to support compatibilty for old software, and it doesn’t have anywhere near the economy of scale you would get with contemporary hardware systems.
They make more Series X consoles in 5 minutes than will ever be produced of these little boxes. There is no economy of scale and miniature electronics always cost more.
...around $500 is kind of a hard pill to swallow for this, I mean, it's pretty awesome, if I had that kind of money to throw around I'd probably grab it.
it's good to see something like the WeeCee coming into production and on sale. looking to get myself one of these, just need to find my PS/2 Keyboard and mouse, get a USB floppy and CD drive, and i'll be playing old school windows and DOS like no tomorrow
Odd, their website says starting at 89£, but theres no way to configure such a low price on any of their systems. Just no ability. Not even buying just the items that would make that price. You have to bundle parts. Seems shifty.
Among these improvements, why not make it in a few classic PC case look? Just in mini size? Like the C64 mini. Would look awesome, with working LED-s as stuff :)
I wish retro projects like this didn't cost anywhere near this much, they'd be significantly more accessible for most people if they were. I'm sure a lot of the cost goes into making the chips that they run on, but in my personal experience something labeled "untested" on eBay has been cheaper in the long run. 86box is amazing for this reason because it's a free emulator that lets you customize a virtual system to what you need and have very little conflict despite it being emulation.
An obligatory "Terminal Velocity, Fuck yeah!" Regarding the Pixel, even at the high price point, this would be an easy purchase for me personally, except...the classic 3D accelerator trap. I'd love to use one as a MechWarrior 2 Titanium Trilogy box (running the 3D accelerated versions), but as you outlined that sounds unfeasible. Maybe the larger model (the tiny size is cute, but not really that much of a benefit) would eventually be able to serve in said role. Thanks for the review and Happy New Year, Clint!
Cool idea, it's nice to see something like this show up for today's gamers to be able to almost painlessly sample yesteryear's PC space. I also find it kinda ... sus ... with MS products and warez so prominently featured. I hope that doesn't come back to bite them later. Another concern is connecting a Win98 machine to the modern internet ... probably not a wise idea. I agree that a device specifically marketed to retro enthusiasts needs to have a full compliment of retro connectivity - even if they just use one proprietary port with a splitter dongle having all the old ports (less desirable), but the best solution would be to include 1 9-pin serial, 1 parallel, 1 MIDI/Gameport, 2 PS/2, 1 Ethernet, 1 USB 2.0, 1 3.5mm rear speaker jack, 1 3.5mm front headphone jack, and 1 power connection. A dedicated power switch is highly desired, as well as a HDD LED to show storage access activity. Also on the front should be the power and reset buttons, and the storage media slot. I would also like to see some minimalist version of GNU+Linux available to order pre-installed - but that's just me being wishful ;) Overall I like the thing. I hope they do well enough to be able to afford dropping the price later which would perhaps attract more casual users who can't justify the current high cost of entry.
Unless one were to browse old cached web pages it's pretty pointless to connect win98 to the Internet since you can't really do anything with it as all browsers are decades out of date... Nothing will work. And I agree, a HDD access led would be a good addition. Even cooler would be an appropriately sized CF card slot so you can use an IBM Microdrive and have a real mini hard disk in your mini PC :)
Really nice products but unfortunately for $400 and $500 each they are too expensive for me. I've built real oldschool Pentuim2 300MHz ($35 with memory + 440BX motherboard) with Voodoo3 2000 ($71), SB AWE64 ($32) system with SSD much much cheaper.
A large share of that price is the CPU. The most minimal version - the board and the 3d-printed case, is 108 euros. Considering the likely small production runs, support, development costs etc, this seems reasonable. But yeah, a custom PC built from old used parts is always going to be cheaper - but also more prone to breaking down. If you want the reliability and space savings that modern technology brings, the Pixel x86 makes sense. If care more about spending money or having the actual hardware from back in the day, then it obviously doesn't. I'd say it's good that both options exist, especially looking towards the future, where the supply of used components from that time period will inevitably dwindle.
If this had a 3D accelerator and a HDMI port I would buy this in a heartbeat. Unfortunately $500 for what is basically a 90’s work station with no real GPU capabilities is a big no for me. It would be cool if they built these in mini cases and had the ability to hook up an old Voodoo 3 card or similar.
Depedns what you want to do with it. If you want to play game from 1981 to 1995 you have no use for a 3d accelerator, and the drawback is reduced compability. If you on thr other hand want to play games from about 2000 forward, thdn you can just play it on a modern pc or a stream deck. That leaves a very narrow period of time for a retro PC with a 3d accelerator.
There is a project on vogons called ITX-Llama that uses the Vortex86 and has AGP slot for a voodoo. The Pixel86 seems to be a copy of the earlier WeeCee and TinyLlama projects on vogons forums.
@ Which would be perfect because most pre-Windows 95 games run well on DosBox while most game’s 95-98 refuse to run at all on modern setups even with virtual machines. Something that could run NFS 1 (Windows version) all the way to Porsche Unleashed would be a good benchmark, imo.
Great video... I have been waiting for someone to review these tiny PCs. They sound intriguing but I think I'm still going to wait just a bit for them to mature and maybe get a bit cheaper as well. ^^
It would be cool if the board had a CF card interface so you could throw an IBM microdrive in it and have a miniature hard drive in your miniature pc 😊
Expensive but very intriguing bit of kit. There is no doubt a market for it. Curious after the creators and the availability in my neck of the woods - prices in euros would indicate they may be local (in Europe) to me which does make this mighty interesting. Thanks for bringing this to my / the viewers attention. 😎👍 sadly both models seem to be out of stock. German based it seems GmBH company code indicates that as well as the price in Euros.
The DX is the same hardware :) Unfortunately the WeeCee is not something you can buy, but if you have the skills and resources you could build one for perhaps a bit less!
I kind of want one. That era of gaming was my introduction to pc gaming. Diablo was my first western rpg lol my dad had a friend who had a bunch of old computers, then I was in scouts with a computer guy. Changed my life for the better.
I like the idea. Would be a nice option, if the prices wasn't so extreme. Just checked: a PII-computer can be bought second hand for 50-100 euro. These computers probably use way less electricity, but before I save 300 euro on that...
It'd be amazing to see a flavor of this idea as a brand new ATX or micro ATX motherboard with a few PCI, ISA and AGP if possible - maybe with the biggest compromise being soldered RAM only. Could add a 12VDC to -5VDC supply onto the board for ISA, and use the 24 pin ATX power connector. I hope the Mini ITX boards evolve into this someday!
For all those critical of its pricing, I would point out that this is new hardware so you cannot compare it to 2nd hand stuff from the era. But first and foremost, this is not intended for consumers. This thing is made to upgrade/replace all sorts of embedded systems from the 90's that exist in industrial roles where replacing them for something else is not an option, for whatever reason. There are control systems for huge industrial machines that run on old 486 class hardware that cannot be ported to newer hardware for myriad reasons. So, those kinds of customers are not sensitive to a price of a couple of hundred for an SoC module, which just for clarity is likely why this thing exists - if there were no customers to whom a relatively high price was zero issue, the whole thing would never have been made. So while I am not going to run out and buy one of these things, I do appreciate that there are those who make these sorts of things that make it possible to obtain relatively new hardware capable of running old applications. Retro gamers are not the market for these chips and never will be, because as a market it's nowhere remotely big enough for companies to invest the millions required to have this sort of chips fabricated. Us having access to these things is just a side effect of the need of big industrial players who would probably buy the things even if they cost $1000 a piece, since that is a very small price to pay to keep tens of millions worth of machinery running without the downtime and tens of thousands required to upgrade the whole system both hardware and software.
@@TheStevenWhitingI think he’s talking about the Vortex86, not the final product. Those alone being a couple hundred dollars apiece is what drives up the price of the finished product.
As Clint showed, the Vortex86DX struggles with 3D games like UT (released in 1999) but I wonder if the Vortex86DX3 would fare better? (even if it still has to run games in software mode)?
What I'd like to see is a handheld version of this. Like, an "MSDOS GameBoy" sort of concept, with an autoexec game launcher list program. Although control setup might be tricky, with different games using different keyboard input. The buttons would have to be remappable to keys on a per-game basis somehow.
Probably, the most user-friendliest option would be running Retroarch + Dosbox Pure in a modern PC-Handheld (ideally with touchpad and touchscreen like Steam Deck).
Not styling it after an old PC was something of a missed opportunity. Sure, there are thousands of different case designs to choose from, but they were mostly pretty similar and they could pick and choose elements from a few different ones to give us something that was unmistakably ‘80s/‘90s.
While i was watching the video, i decided to take a glance at their website. At first I thought oh wow $89? Then I clicked on configuration, oh my word, that final price made my eye's water! $500! Yikes! I guess this sort of product is aimed at people who really want to run things on a x86 cpu, not DosBox. As for me? I picked up a think client new in box for $10 just before christmas, it's tiny and can easily run DOS box or a virtual machine. At that price point, it's hard to justify the $500 for a trip down nostalgia avenue. Great video Clint, hope you are well, lovely to see you still making content.
Every time I see those Roland speakers on your desk I get twinge of regret in my heart as I took a similar set when I was in the military on training and some dumbass ran over some of our bags with a humvee. My speakers ended up victims of friendly fire.
Great stuff...i was drooling for one until I heard the price....well my Pentium 2 300Mhz will still be used for a lot longer than i thought i would. Thanks for the detailed review LGR !
As soon as you started discussing the internals of the DX model alarm bells starting ringing in my head "that sounds EXACTLY like the mini DOS computers TheRasteri has been making variants of for the past few years!" And sure enough, you mentioned the similarities moments later. It's a neat iteration, but considering the price they're charging it certainly seems like they could've taken some time to polish the I/O connections and layout
Love the concept, but I think I could get a couple of equivalent retro PCs on ebay for the same price if I was patient. Still I support anything that keeps old hardware and software alive.
I would say simply given them a bit more time, and there should be something in like 2 to 3 years , if this able to get close to 800 mhz feel, then it should be able to run stuff like starcraft with easy , maybe age of empires, what sounds like it needs to be a able run voodoo or geforce clone set up
You could buy Socket 462 motherboard for cheap with some Athlon XP and Radeon 9550/9600 for not so much to play all of them without problem or GeForce 4 MX440 or FX5200.
I was interested for about 5 seconds until I heard the price. Then I heard the lack of IO and no 3D accelerator and no way to add one. Please. Somebody just give us a modern ATX form factor board with slots for ISA, PCI, AGP, and PCIE so no matter the exact retro era you can use the right cards to have hardware that works with compatible drivers. Major bonus points if you give us an option to adjust the clock speed while the machine is up and running
Not just the lack of IO, but the severe lack of ISA slots. Maybe some of us want to actually plug in a GUS, or a Dialogic card if one is really that crazy.
Interesting timing I must say! I've been thinking recently as to whether to start getting parts to build a 486 PC, or to look into a smaller, more compact alternative and just get a CRT monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers to go along with it. Thanks for the video, great stuff as always!
Very glad to see you getting back in the swing of things.
Slowly but surely!
@@LGR Were you able to salvage much of your collection?
@@pleasebepatientihaveuwutis7179 Watch the videos dude. He goes into great detail on what he was able to salvage and what he wasn't...
@@pleasebepatientihaveuwutis7179 look at some videos from late last year about salvaging the collection. Should give you an idea.
@@LGR Don't call me Shirley.
"Things that should work just don't for some reason" sounds like a realistic recreation of old school computing.
That's my experience of computing before XP came out.
Check the dip switches.
Hahaha
it's a realistic recreation of computing, it didn't change
I'm crying laughing. Too true
It's neat, but $500 is very tough sell, especially without any 3D acceleration. At that point you're better off with an old thin client, with some even having PCI sound cards and 3D graphics (not very good 3D, but better than nothing). Phil's Computer Lab has good videos on turning old thin clients into Windows 98 machines.
DOS sound compatibility with PCI sound cards though... I dread it. Phil makes it seem like sunshine and rainbows, and let me tell you it aint. Got a bunch of old PCs with non-ISA chipsets (curse you Intel for dropping ISA support with the 8xx-series chipsets) and compatibility is an absolute nightmare. I love Dune 2, but that's a nightmare. Duke 3D can be a pain too.
Got ES1938s, ALS4000s, Vortex 2s, CMI8738s, a bunch of different Sound Blaster PCI cards that all tout Sound Blaster Pro compatibility and yeeeah... in Real DOS that's really stretching the truth. The Vortex 2's built-in FM Synth is absolutely awful if nothing else...
The ISA support and sound in this is a huge selling point for me (even if the Crystal chipset isn't exactly on my top 3 ISA list), but yeah, there are a few too many drawbacks for that price. The I/O issues and lack of 3D acceleration, and the weird issues the architecture and feature set can cause (like in POD), is definitely real bad. Should be possible to sort something out if there's a PCI and/or PCIe bus available - there are mobility chipsets that would probably work well. Worst case scenario with a PCIe to PCI bridge chip if there's no PCI bus available. But then you'd on the other hand add additional cost and complexity. :/
For 500 bucks i can get some second hand i7 with 3060 pc and emulate Anything 😂 not seeing Why would anyone buy those ...
hp 5720 and hp t5710 are out of stock for a few years now, they were the best.
I have a 2018 model Dell Wyse Zx0Q Thin Client with 2 x 9 pin com ports and a parallel port because it was used in some fast food chains that still use legacy connectors for their receipt printers and bump buttons. It also has a built in Radeon GPU which I have discovered is even quite capable of running the Dolphin emulator. I think this may be a specialised model as some of the ones I've seen on eBay and elsewhere don't have these ports. I was allowed to take this one home for free after the restaurant upgrade!
Agreed, at that price point but without 3dfx or OpenGL - ridiculous.
The Vortex x86DX procesor is a pentium 1 based processor.
Our company also use this processor in our traffic light controller as a application processor.
Fascinating, I love hearing how those are used in the real world!
interesante ...
Is it because they're more reliable? I feel like way cheaper ARM SoCs could handle it as well, but I know nothing about this!
So can your company's traffic light controllers run Doom? Don't tell me you haven't tried! 😂
@@Amber57499 From what little I understand, many machines in industry use standards and software that are quite archaic. For instance, there are plenty of milling machines that are controlled by software that only works properly under win9x, so having a new computer based on old p5 or 486 based chips would be advantageous.
I'm very happy to see you're still going strong after the tragic loss of stuff after the storm
Thank you, I'm doing my best under the circumstances!
Thanks for the upload! I hope that everything keeps going smoothly for you Clint. You're a great person and it's always nice to see your calm and cozy uploads.
* Edited to fix the word keep. Was half asleep.
every "retro" product nowadays is 3x what i would even consider paying
Entire PC's sometimes can be bought even for 100$ or less. That price is way too much, about 100$ or 80$ could be much better.
@@modernandretrogaming Yeah, I remember when $50 was a big ask for a 486DX2/50 lol
At that price ill consider buying a mac mini and running it all in emulation
@@fnjesusfreak Overpricing and greed at its best like situation with Factorio with its no discounts and high price all time. As for games I will buy another HDD/SSD than today AAA games.
For me, it majorly depends on how "engineered" something is and what the alternatives look like. For example: I was happy to pay $250 for my Model F77 keyboard since much of its makeup was a meticulous bespoke recreation process to revive a long-defunct physical keyboard mechanism, _and_ to do so with modern layouts and connectivity. Plus I got an earlier zinc-alloy case, so mine weighs as much as a collapsing star and thus is completely indestructible. Best quarter of a grand I've ever spent (though from what I've seen from others' accounts, quality and shipping control leave something to be desired).
_This,_ however? From what I can see, it's much less bespoke, and there are much cheaper alternatives to achieve much the same end results in a fashion many would consider acceptably comparable, unless you're _extremely_ pressed for space in your setup and/or are relentlessly anal about the most minute inaccuracies.
I appreciate that the power LED is green instead of blue. A pox on blue LEDs I say!
Technology Connections would agree on that.
A pox indeed hoo raa
Gotta say, the retro PC crowd make some of the coolest stuff.
Nerds at work.
Those new 3DFX Voodoo reproduction cards make me drool.
I'd be more into a version of this with a Pentium III and a 3D accelerator around the original GeForce's level. That was more my childhood. A lot of games from the XP days struggle on modern hardware almost as much as the DOS stuff.
I barely have any issues running games through DOSbox. Curious as to where this myth of difficult dos game emulation comes from.
Honestly, same. I'd even take Pentium II with 3D acceleration of some sort, but Pentium III would be a sweet spot before games got modern enough that newer, still easily found, computers can run the software easily enough.
@@drunkndisorderly83 Moreso old Windows games. A lot of my favorites from back then are a pain to get working right on my modern Ryzen box.
@@SqueakyBlum Same for a lot of xp and 95 era games. 3.1 though you can get a filterable 100gb+ package online that you can set up and run through launchbox which works perfect. Name eludes me unfortunately.
Wyse VX0 thin client, from 2007ish, it has full driver support for win98 and XP, and 3d acceleration(about circa 2000 Geforce 256 speeds)
It's very nice that LGR is very transparent about partnerships, sendovers, and affiliates. It's nice to hear a RUclipsr say that their words are fresh without company influence (not that it wasn't obvious with the good constructive criticism but still). I feel like this should be more of a standard in both Social Media but also in other media like TV.
Not without regulation it won't be
@@Lu-db1uf There's a whole Tom Scott video on that, ik.
This is more or less standard with channels of any repute and / or size, and if something looks funny there are hundreds / thousands of "commentary" channels ready to "call out" "bad actors."
I wouldn't get too excited 👌
Wish he added paid promotion in it so I would have not even clicked the video.
@@charliemartin-k7m what do you mean? Specifically?
Would be cool to see one additional upgraded model with some 3D acceleration chip on the custom PCB, just like how they did for the sound card. Having OpenGL support would make more games run more gooder.
From such a new retro PC I would expect Glide compatibility, which would require a Voodoo chipset. Most 3D accelerated games of that time ran best with Glide on a Voodoo card. I wouldn't settle for anything less.
@@OpenGL4ever It could be anything with dgvoodoo1 compatibility honestly. I'd want at least 16mb of vram though, preferably 32
@@Eyepatchfilms dgvoodoo1 will probably not work with DOS games that access directly a voodoo chipset. Therefore i would prefer voodoo or better VSA-100 compatibility on hardware level.
Looks very nice... but the price! My worthless $2 is: if you want to play old games, you can get an old laptop for $50-$100. Throw in an SD card adapter and a VGA-to-HDMI adapter, and you're good to go for most DOS games, and a lot of later Windows games (3D notwithstanding, mileage may vary). Many manufacturers still have all the drivers on their websites, which makes life a lot easier.
I play a lot of old games and with a little Googling you can usually find forums or wiki pages that have complete tutorials for getting a game running on a modern system. Usually it’s messing with some game files or sometimes there’s even open source launchers to streamline the whole process (like with Rollercoaster Tycoon 2)!
Been a very long time since I've seen an old laptop going for under $150
Just bought a windows Xp laptop the other day for around 30 dollars on eBay just needed a charger which was an easy find on Amazon.
@@Wastelandman7000 There are countless old laptops on eBay for under $150.
One of these things in a full laptop 3d-printed chassis (screen, keyboard, trackpad) would likely be a far easier sell. Use a common external Thinkpad battery pack and it'd be a pretty effective retro build.
$500 for a limited retro mini PC is a hard product to market. $800 for a retro laptop may do better. Old used laptops with good DOS compatibility aren't holding up too well.
I wish there was that big ol' ENERGY STAR logo on boot up.
That was EVERYWHERE! True win98 era nostalgia
I'm just glad to still see the American Megatrends logo on the POST screen of my new computer, though their new logo just doesn't give the same vibe.
Holy shit. And it had a prompt that said "skip forever", well, it didn't skip forever. It was there forever. Never buying anything energy star.
@Ichbaar I never had a computer that would skip the energy stay logo, it was just part of the bios telling anyone who knew that the motherboard was capable of soft power on and off, and could "sleep" instead of fully turning the computer off with a physical switch.
Always nice to grab some breakfast and have a brand new LGR to watch while I eat.
This is really cool, been waiting for something like this, Thanks!
I imagine Clint asking Pixel about the fact that they sell Windows 98 SE with their machines, saying "That seems a little _unusual_ ..." and like in the movie Contact, the Pixel representative just says "It _is_ unusual, isn't it?" and just hangs up.
Where are they finding legit Windows 98 COEs at this late hour? I hope they're genuine or this little pointless add-in will cost them the farm.
@@mattg7485 I want to believe they just found a thousand or so dusty OEM copies in a container somewhere around a company long since bankrupt, lost and forgotten. And bought at scrap weight price. 😅
It's good to have you back lgr, hope you are doing well and staying safe, keep up the amazing technology and lovely work
Oh man. I still have my original SimCity 2000, SimTower, and POD disks. I really should build a retro PC to play them.
You can get simcity 2000 from gog with whatever support they offer for a lot cheaper
5/64th = 1.98mm so let's just call it 2mm 🙂
'Murica!!! Even the screws have to be a completely obscure standard to most other parts of the world.
It is a 2mm most likely, seeing how the thing it is used in comes from Europe, which is also another good reason to call it such. Sorry, I can't help myself..
A good rule of thumb is, if it's a really weird size in inches, then it's probably a standard size in mm.
Everyone in the US is a musician, with their fractions. 7/8ths.
@masterkamen371 It was made in the EU. But go off. Living in your head rent free.
I don't think I'd go for it at that price point. It looks nice, but I can think of a number of other things that I can do to get my nostalgic gaming fix.
For one thing, you can get an equivalent PC for free. Plus, you save it from becoming toxic ewaste.
@bobweiram6321 Right!? Dig it out of that sinkhole that was once grandpa's garage! Haha. Of course, I built a cheaper K6-2 system from old parts I found on ebay and elsewhere. Even found a new old-stock mobo. But, it was also PC Chips. So, there's some down sides. Lol.
@@bobweiram6321Are you sure that "free" computer would be of this size and with modern ports (especially SD reader)? Yeah, old one would probably have a floppy drive as a bonus, but tomatoes are still not really comparable to oranges.
@@watcherit1311 If size matters, run an emulator, Proxmox, or Rasberry Pi. Even old 8-bit machines work fine with SD readers. You can walk into any decent thrift store and walk out with free PCs because they usually pay to have them disposed of.
@@BendingInTheWind 😂 I might have sold it to you on eBay for $25 bucks a few years ago. It was a PC chips mobo with an Athlon processor.
Eivind and the Rasteri deserve quite a bit of credit for inspiring these designs. Eivind's designs are probably some of the coolest I've ever seen for these. people should real check them out!
Happy New Year, Clint! :)
Very nostalgic episode. I'm not sure if it was that exact monitor I had but I vividly remember my first PC monitor coming with a big rectangular power button like that. Good times.
That's an amazing lockscreen image on your phone 😅 gave me a good chuckle
Very nice. I recently got a MiSTer FPGA to run a 486 machine. It does other consoles and computers, but for me having what essentially a period correct PC for me, it's perfect. Even supports loading disk images via NFC. It was that or repurposing a thin client. Loads of options now for retro gaming on 'non-original' equipment.
Recently got a MiSTer too and it's fantastic for anything up to N64. AmigaVision provides an easily accessible way to play Amiga games too!
Perfect box for Temple OS.
500 bucks for that?
Explains why they’re still in stock, indie projects like this are always out of stock by the time I see reviews. It doesn’t have OpenGL or 3DFx too. Not sure what this offers over virtualization, tbh.
You pay for the convenience and simplicity. It is niche yes, but you could say the same for many things that cost a lot of money. Most normal people aren't paying multiple-thousands for proper camera hardware for example.
These projects always waste time on unnecessary features and thus price themselves way out of the market they supposedly compete in. Original, (reliable even) hardware is still not so expensive as to warrant a 450 EUR replacement. Well known hardware combinations are plug and play.
If you want original hardware, just build a Socket 775 or AM2 rig. With current prices, you can build a full system for like $40.
C-media PCI sound card, next to nothing on eBay. Very low end ATI PCI graphics card (very high end indeed for 90s games), next to nothing. It will also give you great 3D and 2D acceleration.
Core 2 Duo is the best choice for Intel because of the power efficiency and the ability to lower power consumption (so that you can have a silent PC and use little power). For AM2, use whatever you can get your hands on for around $0.
Sometimes the BIOS lets you disable the L1 and L2 cache, which will at most give you i586 performance. With some tweaking you can get Wing Commander to run at an appropriate speed.
For Intel, check out Phil's Computer Lab, he's got detailed guides for achieving this.
@@Photo0021300+ for wireless microphones for content creation. Nice audio is good😅 .And small numbers. Recently i was thinking of what it would cost if I made an RC car shell myself and price it realistically. A workhour would be about 150€ and if I say 10...... 😂 Make it yourself.
@@Photo0021But this isn’t speciality equipment, it’s still a consumer product.
The price is outrageous though....
Yeah, this is just paying for continence. However you may just end up inconveniencing yourself in the end. Between the price and the lack of upgradability it's a dull product. This also would take out all the fun of building a retro pc in the first place.
look at the price of a modern mini PC vs full size. This is a pretty standard SFF/Mini Tax
The cpu module is over $200 if I recall, so it's like 1/2 of the cost.
It's certainly a niche product.
In Euro.... I'll stay with my MiSTer and the oa486 core...
€485... If you're gonna charge that price, at least make it €486 and pass it of as a joke.
Missed opportunity.
Would have been interesting if it had a Glide-compatibile graphics card included.
If they could get that down to a more realistic price of like $150, it would be worth it for some people. But its current price is way too much for what it is.
i saw 89 euro on the site and was like "ya im buying this" then realized thats not everything you need and its more like $400-500 lol
I think the Vortex86 module is about 1/2 the price of the machine if I recall.
Absolutely. I'm drowning in motherboards that need recapped and a couple of 3dfx cards i don't have anything to attach to rigt now. SOmething, anything, at about the £150 would be life changing
Happy New Year! It's nice that new products are coming up for the retro enthusiasts, but I agree with your criticism of this one. The price point is hefty too, considering you still need additional hardware on top of all that...
I love the idea, but I just can't get over the price. I can pickup a Shuttle XPC with a low end AGP 3d card for under $100 with SATA / FDD support for native hardware / peripherals... Yes, I may have to replace a capacitor or battery, and yes- they are giant compared to this solution, but again, 4-5x cheaper and still widely available (no, you don't need a huge ATX box for native retro computing). In any case, I wish them best of luck and I look forward to seeing the ITX revision. The audience who want an all in one solution for this type of computing are almost certainly going to be able to tinker themselves or already run emulation, so it's neat, but I don't see the market being there to support it long term (which is probably why they are cross-linked to the warez sites).
The price is just insane....
Agreed. And the website is misleading. Priced from 80 euros, I thought, "hey that's affordable." But that's without the SOC. And with a 3d-printed case. No MIDI interface. You want it as displayed here, it's between 350-450. I'll stick to collecting retro hardware. It's cheaper overall, and a lot more fun.
@@garret_thorne I think even the MiSTer is a better option with the oa486 core!
@@stanguay169 MiSTer is hard to beat in general for all kinds of things, what a wonder of a device! I love that it's only gotten substantially better in the time since I covered it, too.
@@LGR And FPGAs keep evolving too, leading (ideally) to price reductions and performance increases, i.e. more capability.
Imagine being able to run a real Pentium 3 core with a Voodoo 3 core on an FPGA - I'm kinda salivating at the thought. ^^
Man I would LOVE this thing, but the price is a bit much for me atm. Fantastic video!
My dream item of this kind would be a 266 MMX with a pair of 12mb Voodoo 2s. Time to brainstorm.
CLINT! Hope you are well Friend! Glad you are able to get back in the saddle again.
Sending all the love to Clint. Hope he is managing well after what happened. Thank you for finding the motivation to continue making awesome videos ❤️
New LGR video! joy!
Happy new year Clint and hope you get to move back into your home this year.
Those prices are insane, costs as much as a series x, gives you the gaming power of a 30 year old machine.
You are paying for the small size...
Frankly I'd rather just put a post on Facebook or something asking if anyone has an old computer stashed away in their basement collecting dust and get that going...
It is quite expensive for what it really is, you can get old Pentium 2 computers for free or near free since people consider them junk.
Insane is the correct word
“The gaming power of a 30 year old machine” is the entire point. This is providing modern interfaces for obsolete CPU and I/O processors to support compatibilty for old software, and it doesn’t have anywhere near the economy of scale you would get with contemporary hardware systems.
They make more Series X consoles in 5 minutes than will ever be produced of these little boxes. There is no economy of scale and miniature electronics always cost more.
I'm gonna go ahead an assume youve never had to try and make anything outside of china. you should be grateful the damn thing even is here.
looks like a fun little setup. GL in the New Year
...around $500 is kind of a hard pill to swallow for this, I mean, it's pretty awesome, if I had that kind of money to throw around I'd probably grab it.
Love seeing a good upload from you after all that happened last year. Hope all is well. Love your content
it's good to see something like the WeeCee coming into production and on sale. looking to get myself one of these, just need to find my PS/2 Keyboard and mouse, get a USB floppy and CD drive, and i'll be playing old school windows and DOS like no tomorrow
I hope things get better for you this year, keep up the cool tech videos if you can
LGR: "I'm back!"
Peasants: "Rejoice!"
Glad that you're hanging in there!!!
Happy new year Clint! Thanks for another awesome tech video!
Odd, their website says starting at 89£, but theres no way to configure such a low price on any of their systems. Just no ability. Not even buying just the items that would make that price. You have to bundle parts. Seems shifty.
Love the aluminum shell 😊
Among these improvements, why not make it in a few classic PC case look? Just in mini size? Like the C64 mini.
Would look awesome, with working LED-s as stuff :)
Always great to see new LGR
I wish retro projects like this didn't cost anywhere near this much, they'd be significantly more accessible for most people if they were. I'm sure a lot of the cost goes into making the chips that they run on, but in my personal experience something labeled "untested" on eBay has been cheaper in the long run. 86box is amazing for this reason because it's a free emulator that lets you customize a virtual system to what you need and have very little conflict despite it being emulation.
Emulation can cause problems with legacy peripherals and input latency. A virtual machine is better
An obligatory "Terminal Velocity, Fuck yeah!" Regarding the Pixel, even at the high price point, this would be an easy purchase for me personally, except...the classic 3D accelerator trap. I'd love to use one as a MechWarrior 2 Titanium Trilogy box (running the 3D accelerated versions), but as you outlined that sounds unfeasible. Maybe the larger model (the tiny size is cute, but not really that much of a benefit) would eventually be able to serve in said role. Thanks for the review and Happy New Year, Clint!
Cool idea, it's nice to see something like this show up for today's gamers to be able to almost painlessly sample yesteryear's PC space.
I also find it kinda ... sus ... with MS products and warez so prominently featured. I hope that doesn't come back to bite them later.
Another concern is connecting a Win98 machine to the modern internet ... probably not a wise idea.
I agree that a device specifically marketed to retro enthusiasts needs to have a full compliment of retro connectivity - even if they just use one proprietary port with a splitter dongle having all the old ports (less desirable), but the best solution would be to include 1 9-pin serial, 1 parallel, 1 MIDI/Gameport, 2 PS/2, 1 Ethernet, 1 USB 2.0, 1 3.5mm rear speaker jack, 1 3.5mm front headphone jack, and 1 power connection.
A dedicated power switch is highly desired, as well as a HDD LED to show storage access activity.
Also on the front should be the power and reset buttons, and the storage media slot.
I would also like to see some minimalist version of GNU+Linux available to order pre-installed - but that's just me being wishful ;)
Overall I like the thing. I hope they do well enough to be able to afford dropping the price later which would perhaps attract more casual users who can't justify the current high cost of entry.
Unless one were to browse old cached web pages it's pretty pointless to connect win98 to the Internet since you can't really do anything with it as all browsers are decades out of date... Nothing will work.
And I agree, a HDD access led would be a good addition. Even cooler would be an appropriately sized CF card slot so you can use an IBM Microdrive and have a real mini hard disk in your mini PC :)
Good to see we're back to our regularly scheduled programming. Great vid, Clint!
Really nice products but unfortunately for $400 and $500 each they are too expensive for me. I've built real oldschool Pentuim2 300MHz ($35 with memory + 440BX motherboard) with Voodoo3 2000 ($71), SB AWE64 ($32) system with SSD much much cheaper.
A large share of that price is the CPU. The most minimal version - the board and the 3d-printed case, is 108 euros. Considering the likely small production runs, support, development costs etc, this seems reasonable. But yeah, a custom PC built from old used parts is always going to be cheaper - but also more prone to breaking down. If you want the reliability and space savings that modern technology brings, the Pixel x86 makes sense. If care more about spending money or having the actual hardware from back in the day, then it obviously doesn't. I'd say it's good that both options exist, especially looking towards the future, where the supply of used components from that time period will inevitably dwindle.
Glad to see that you're posting again 🙌🙌🙌
If this had a 3D accelerator and a HDMI port I would buy this in a heartbeat.
Unfortunately $500 for what is basically a 90’s work station with no real GPU capabilities is a big no for me. It would be cool if they built these in mini cases and had the ability to hook up an old Voodoo 3 card or similar.
Depedns what you want to do with it.
If you want to play game from 1981 to 1995 you have no use for a 3d accelerator, and the drawback is reduced compability.
If you on thr other hand want to play games from about 2000 forward, thdn you can just play it on a modern pc or a stream deck.
That leaves a very narrow period of time for a retro PC with a 3d accelerator.
There is a project on vogons called ITX-Llama that uses the Vortex86 and has AGP slot for a voodoo. The Pixel86 seems to be a copy of the earlier WeeCee and TinyLlama projects on vogons forums.
@ Which would be perfect because most pre-Windows 95 games run well on DosBox while most game’s 95-98 refuse to run at all on modern setups even with virtual machines. Something that could run NFS 1 (Windows version) all the way to Porsche Unleashed would be a good benchmark, imo.
Loved it!👍👍😁❤️
Best wishes for this new year.🎉
Greetings from
The Netherlands❤
Great video... I have been waiting for someone to review these tiny PCs. They sound intriguing but I think I'm still going to wait just a bit for them to mature and maybe get a bit cheaper as well. ^^
It would be cool if the board had a CF card interface so you could throw an IBM microdrive in it and have a miniature hard drive in your miniature pc 😊
Expensive but very intriguing bit of kit. There is no doubt a market for it. Curious after the creators and the availability in my neck of the woods - prices in euros would indicate they may be local (in Europe) to me which does make this mighty interesting. Thanks for bringing this to my / the viewers attention. 😎👍 sadly both models seem to be out of stock.
German based it seems GmBH company code indicates that as well as the price in Euros.
The WeeCee seems more of a fit for me. Thanks for throwing that in there!
The DX is the same hardware :)
Unfortunately the WeeCee is not something you can buy, but if you have the skills and resources you could build one for perhaps a bit less!
Hehehehehe
Getting closer and closer to one of these projects recreating the Windows 95/DOS PC that I grew up with.
Welcome back Mr. LGR.
Love these retro rebuild type things.
Welcome back!
Nice to see you back!
I kind of want one. That era of gaming was my introduction to pc gaming. Diablo was my first western rpg lol my dad had a friend who had a bunch of old computers, then I was in scouts with a computer guy. Changed my life for the better.
Good to have you back Clint!
I would get one if it had the option to have a 3DFX graphics accelerator
Love the video Clint. Hope all is well!
Now we just need a fpga of a voodoo card.
I like the idea. Would be a nice option, if the prices wasn't so extreme. Just checked: a PII-computer can be bought second hand for 50-100 euro. These computers probably use way less electricity, but before I save 300 euro on that...
I think it is necessary to make pcie 3dfx modules for such devices. 8 Mb Vram with wifi and 3dfx together would be great.
It'd be amazing to see a flavor of this idea as a brand new ATX or micro ATX motherboard with a few PCI, ISA and AGP if possible - maybe with the biggest compromise being soldered RAM only. Could add a 12VDC to -5VDC supply onto the board for ISA, and use the 24 pin ATX power connector. I hope the Mini ITX boards evolve into this someday!
For all those critical of its pricing, I would point out that this is new hardware so you cannot compare it to 2nd hand stuff from the era. But first and foremost, this is not intended for consumers. This thing is made to upgrade/replace all sorts of embedded systems from the 90's that exist in industrial roles where replacing them for something else is not an option, for whatever reason. There are control systems for huge industrial machines that run on old 486 class hardware that cannot be ported to newer hardware for myriad reasons. So, those kinds of customers are not sensitive to a price of a couple of hundred for an SoC module, which just for clarity is likely why this thing exists - if there were no customers to whom a relatively high price was zero issue, the whole thing would never have been made.
So while I am not going to run out and buy one of these things, I do appreciate that there are those who make these sorts of things that make it possible to obtain relatively new hardware capable of running old applications.
Retro gamers are not the market for these chips and never will be, because as a market it's nowhere remotely big enough for companies to invest the millions required to have this sort of chips fabricated. Us having access to these things is just a side effect of the need of big industrial players who would probably buy the things even if they cost $1000 a piece, since that is a very small price to pay to keep tens of millions worth of machinery running without the downtime and tens of thousands required to upgrade the whole system both hardware and software.
"New" hardware, apart from the soc that drives the whole thing. 😂
You'd have a point if they weren't marketed on their website as PCs for retro gaming.
@@TheStevenWhitingI think he’s talking about the Vortex86, not the final product. Those alone being a couple hundred dollars apiece is what drives up the price of the finished product.
Cool to see 3D Ultra Minigolf on screen there briefly. I would love to see some more coverage of that gem.
As Clint showed, the Vortex86DX struggles with 3D games like UT (released in 1999) but I wonder if the Vortex86DX3 would fare better? (even if it still has to run games in software mode)?
Based on my experience from the Rise mp6 this is based on the Cyrix cpus of the era were fast compared to the rise.
What I'd like to see is a handheld version of this. Like, an "MSDOS GameBoy" sort of concept, with an autoexec game launcher list program. Although control setup might be tricky, with different games using different keyboard input. The buttons would have to be remappable to keys on a per-game basis somehow.
Ms-dos deck ftw :D
Probably, the most user-friendliest option would be running Retroarch + Dosbox Pure in a modern PC-Handheld (ideally with touchpad and touchscreen like Steam Deck).
I love your vintage PC in that Lian-li aluminum case. I love your dives into old vintage hardware.
I want old catalogue videos ! We're almost the same age and these videos make me feel nostalgic in a good way!
Not styling it after an old PC was something of a missed opportunity. Sure, there are thousands of different case designs to choose from, but they were mostly pretty similar and they could pick and choose elements from a few different ones to give us something that was unmistakably ‘80s/‘90s.
thanks Clint, those are cool :)
For the price seems like a MiSTer Pi would be a better choice.
While i was watching the video, i decided to take a glance at their website. At first I thought oh wow $89? Then I clicked on configuration, oh my word, that final price made my eye's water! $500! Yikes! I guess this sort of product is aimed at people who really want to run things on a x86 cpu, not DosBox. As for me? I picked up a think client new in box for $10 just before christmas, it's tiny and can easily run DOS box or a virtual machine. At that price point, it's hard to justify the $500 for a trip down nostalgia avenue. Great video Clint, hope you are well, lovely to see you still making content.
Every time I see those Roland speakers on your desk I get twinge of regret in my heart as I took a similar set when I was in the military on training and some dumbass ran over some of our bags with a humvee. My speakers ended up victims of friendly fire.
Its just too expensive. I can build a sick beige box for that price.
Great stuff...i was drooling for one until I heard the price....well my Pentium 2 300Mhz will still be used for a lot longer than i thought i would. Thanks for the detailed review LGR !
I'm just not die hard enough for that price.
10:07 you (and they) could pop a hole on the bottom of the case, and mount the PC beeper on the bottom of the mobo.
The Mini looks incredible. Very nice design and love the modular nature.
As soon as you started discussing the internals of the DX model alarm bells starting ringing in my head "that sounds EXACTLY like the mini DOS computers TheRasteri has been making variants of for the past few years!" And sure enough, you mentioned the similarities moments later. It's a neat iteration, but considering the price they're charging it certainly seems like they could've taken some time to polish the I/O connections and layout
Welcome back Mr.LGR!!
Love the concept, but I think I could get a couple of equivalent retro PCs on ebay for the same price if I was patient. Still I support anything that keeps old hardware and software alive.
I wish there will be a device like this that could play even 2000-2002 games like NFSPU, Max payne, RTCW on win 98
I would say simply given them a bit more time, and there should be something in like 2 to 3 years , if this able to get close to 800 mhz feel, then it should be able to run stuff like starcraft with easy , maybe age of empires, what sounds like it needs to be a able run voodoo or geforce clone set up
You could buy Socket 462 motherboard for cheap with some Athlon XP and Radeon 9550/9600 for not so much to play all of them without problem or GeForce 4 MX440 or FX5200.
WOOHOO NEW VID!
I was interested for about 5 seconds until I heard the price. Then I heard the lack of IO and no 3D accelerator and no way to add one.
Please. Somebody just give us a modern ATX form factor board with slots for ISA, PCI, AGP, and PCIE so no matter the exact retro era you can use the right cards to have hardware that works with compatible drivers. Major bonus points if you give us an option to adjust the clock speed while the machine is up and running
Not just the lack of IO, but the severe lack of ISA slots.
Maybe some of us want to actually plug in a GUS, or a Dialogic card if one is really that crazy.
I hope his channel is not going to turn into a review channel with over priced free products he gets.
@@charliemartin-k7m kinda doesn't have much choice due to that hurricane stuff.
Interesting timing I must say! I've been thinking recently as to whether to start getting parts to build a 486 PC, or to look into a smaller, more compact alternative and just get a CRT monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers to go along with it. Thanks for the video, great stuff as always!
this is so cool
Edit: not worth it for 300-400 Euro.