A big hello from the UK and a big thanks for your in-depth introduction in the Pocket 386. I’ve always been a retro gamer/computer enthusiast and have just received my pocket 386 from Ali Express. I was never really knowledgeable on the 386/DOS so your video was a HUGE help so I can’t thank you enough. I look forward to any updates 👍. Keep up the fantastic content! ❤
Unfortunately that's a step up. The 386 embedded chip they are using is all in one, with an easy to slap on isa bus (and a few free gpio ports separate from the printer). When the 486 came around you have to start using BGA chips and from the Book 8088 and what I have seen on this unit I suspect the people building them don't have that ablity. Something like the Elan SC410 is an amd 486 WITH both a isa bus AND a VL local bus. That said I don't expect much on that end. I hope this product does well enough for them to think about it.
@@warlockd I think there's an SC410 that goes all the way up to 100MHz. If they wanted to max out a hypothetical 486 like they seem to do here with the 386 all the way at 40MHz, would be one amazing machine. But also likely a lot more expensive to source those SOCs and thus a significantly more expensive product than the $200ish they're charging for the 386 variant.
been trying to tell myself I dont need this for weeks. its just so cool though. I think if he is able to make 486 or P1 versions in the future they will sell out instantly.
Tiny 486 and Pentium subnotebooks already exist (Toshiba Libretto, etc.)... This 386 makes sense because 386 laptops are uncommon, and small ones are super rare. Though I do suppose if there is a bulk supply of extra 486 chips just sitting around, something should be made with them, rather than getting scrapped.
@@KomradeMikhail yeah i have a few of them but they all have terrible screens. I think there is a market for several segements of laptops sporting older processors and compatibility woth older devices with more modern ergonomics/conveniences
I bought one of these and have been happy. I cloned the original OS image to a 4GB WD/SiliconDrive CF card and made some minor changes by adding a boot menu so I could have a pure Real Mode environment along with various driver options (i.e. USB enabled). I am experimenting with DOS 6.22 + Win95 now, on this system. I think this should enable the most flexibility for people that want to be able to run in Real Mode or V86/Protected Mode, depending on which programs they want to run. I have a couple of Book8088 systems with various ISA expansion cards, including game ports and UMB cards (i.e. monotech microram) which are working great as well. Thanks for the video!
Wow! That's a cool device and I enjoyed watching your thorough tour of it's features! Would be fun to have to play with once I'm retired and have more time. 😄 Thanks, Josh, for an awesome video!
Thanks for posting this review! I wasn't aware this was a thing before, but it's pretty cool that it is. Kinda crazy that so many of these components are still just off-the-shelf parts, especially the Yamaha OPL3 chip. And I agree, I'd love to see a 486 or even a pentium variant in the future!
I had the same thought, so when I saw this one, I was literally like, “shut up and take my money!” Of course, a 486 or Pentium would be even better, but this is pretty awesome!
Indeed, and this kind of configuration in the late 80s/early 90s was very expensive 5-6000+$ (+-12-15000 in today's money), it was a dream laptop in these days : 386-SX40, 8MB, 4GB, VGA, color monitor, sound card, 4h+ battery, ... in less than 500g. My father bought a Toshiba T3100e in 1988, 80286-12, 2MB, 40MB, CGA 640x200/400 B&W orange, 720Ko DD(upgraded to 1.44) + Internal modem (no battery, no sound card, no color display, 8Kg ...) , I still have the original invoice, it was in francs as I'm Belgian but converted it's +- 6500$ (+-15K today). Not a bad buy as I still use it today.
thank you for the in depth review...I saw some videos on the book8088 and they scared me...this has a bit more power, for me as a software developer it's where the machine got really useful but didn't jump the shark with 6 ways to do the same thing. Going to be getting one and start diving back into old tools I used to use back in the day...
The trick would be to put a raspberry pi pico on the usb as your drive and then download to that drive from a windows box on the network and then access the files from the procket 386.
@@walterpintus1734 totally, I'm running an aztech sound galaxy nx pro II 16bit card in an 8 bit slot. So 8 bit sound will work, 16 bit will stutter though unless you make the 16-bit extension slot, so just stick to 8-bit.
Thanks. I'm a big DOS fan, since the earliest versions. Have set up many DOS systems in the last 20 years for myself to fool around with. Now it's getting tough to get DOS and Windows OS to run on newer machines. So, I am contemplating getting one. I have many olf hard drives with DOS Programs, and many on USB drives as well. Thinking it would also be good for FreeDos on a stick.
A high end 486 (DX2 66 and up) would absolutely kill. An actual built-in-to-the-case serial & gameport jack would be a must however. Would make a great midi brain for some of us external module nuts. DX2 66 was the last 486 not requiring a thick heatsink/fan combo. This is the problem going forward in this form factor. But if possible, an AMD 133 would be incredible. Some linksys routers basically had an embedded 486/586 SOC in them with very little or no cooling. So there is hope yet.
WIn 95 is going to be majorly slow on a 386sx. I mean it was slow on my 386DX-40 with 8MB ram. I don't know why this didn't ship with Windows 3.1 instead, that would have been perfect.
I HAVE to get me one of these! Had a desktop with extremely simular specs back in the mid/late 90s, ran Windows 95 quite well (AMD 386-40), The first machine I built entirely myself. Alot of nostalgia, having essentially the same machine in Laptop form in the modern day is just amazing to me, would have been my 'Dream machine" back then. And actually Windows 95 was optimised for 486s, (though Pentiums were essentially just two "486-class pipelines" and a much improved and more advanced FPU, granted you could say "optimised for Pentum") the 486-40s from Simens and AMD were roughly the same performance as a 25MHz 486SX. I guess you could say ive been an AMD "Fanboy" ever since. Fast 486s, 66MHz or higher were still the most common PCs in use at the time of Windows 95s release and especially during its development, as the Pentium was still quite expensive being relatively recently introduced in late 1993.
I bought a GPD Win Mini recently and I thought to myself, man, wouldn't it be cool if I had something in this form factor for DOS/9x. I remembered about the Japanese PC110 that came close, and could even be used as a phone, and lamented the fact that it didn't come to the west, or saw any successors. Hopefully someone ends up making a Pentium MMX version (or K6-2+/3+) that can be slowed down to 486/386 speeds. Even better, if they somehow manage to recreate a docking interface a la IBM Selectadock for added expansion cards, now THAT I'd buy in a heartbeat.
This is the machine I wish I could have had in college with which to play Doom. I remember playing the Shareware version on someone's monochrome 386 laptop running Win3.1 & DOS.
This was so awesome! So much fun to watch! I love that people are making modern tech made to play old games. I still have all my windows 98 timeframe games and I like to play them (some I’m saving for the kids to play when they get older) and this makes me really happy! Haha. Also love how you describe what you’re doing as you’re doing it! I need step by steps! Hehe.
A pentium-1 version of this, with a sound card that can play sound samples, would be awesome. Graphics … 3DFX would be amazing, but any graphics chip with decently fast framebuffer access would also be very good. Will keep an eye out!
I also still have my first proper hardcore gaming rig which was a Pentium 3 I think that had both a 16 MB Riva TNT 2 as well as a 12 MB voodoo 2 3D accelerator. Still think it's crazy how far we've come in PC gaming parts.
Love it... I had a bla k sharp slc 50 mhz system with all of 256kb memory and 20mb of hard disk space with win 3.1 which booted Dos. Damn I miss it. Used to run meade starfinder on display with a control port for my 3 meter dish.. never failed and ran for over 20 years
I've got a very old Dell Latitude LS400 from around the Millennium..works fine..cost me some 25 British Pounds (around 35 dollars ) in spare non working LS to replace broken parts..installing Windows 98se was a bit of a struggle..aren't all retro devices if you don't have driver disks and accessories..got the touchpad to work fine and external PS/2 mouse..i prefer the mouse control..no annoying missing .dll or missing entry points etc notifications finally..that Laptop on the video..limit for games is about Prince of Persia..even pinball might be a push for it
Probably a basic question but can you tell me how you set up the flash drive with games so the directory would come up with them? I'm not doing it right.
Digital audio can be played through the OPL chip. See thread "Digital Audio from a Yamaha OPL2/3 chip". At least for games which can run in virtual 8086 mode, one could create a TSR that traps SB DSP port traffic and streams the samples to the OPL chip via this technique.
I've been trying to talk myself out of buying one of these. I think I might wait around to see if they come out with a 486 or Pentium version in the next couple years. If they do, I'll definitely pick one of those up. 386 might just be a little too slow. I mean, I still might get one of these. It looks perfect for older dos games.
Hi. Nice video. What size is your USB drive ? I've tried with one 2GB USB drive formatted as FAT16 but my Pocket386 does not seem to be able to mount it. With what utility have you formatted yours ? Does it matter if the partition type is guided or it has MBR ?
Mike is just an 8GB old geek squad drive from Best Buy. I didn’t specially format it at all. I think mine is FAT32. I’ve heard some usb drives just don’t work with it for some reason. Of course, you do have to reboot the machine every time you plug in another usb. But you probably already just knew that.
@@retrotv1tech Thanks. I managed to make mine to work by disabling the floppy from BIOS that enabled for some reason. Another question, can you xcopy files from the CF drive to the usb stick ? I can do it the other way around, but if I try to write anything on the USB drive I get a write error.
Hi Josh...Do you know what would be needed (or even it is possible) to connect the VGA output of the expansion card to a modern monitor with HDMI? I see simple cables and then I see more complicated converter units. Not sure if you have tried this already.
You probably won’t see this, but if you do… how would I go about connecting a floppy drive to this? Did they make parallel or serial port floppy drives? This is just outside my memory range.
So, the only way to connect a floppy drive at this point would be to get the ISA expansion connector that I showed and get a floppy controller card and hook it up that way, although you’d have to provide power to the floppy drive somehow. I’m not sure if they make any parallel port floppy drives. But really, with the ease of using a USB thumb drive, you wouldn’t technically need a floppy drive unless you just wanted to use one for nostalgic purposes.
Your video influenced me into buying one of these Pocket 386 PCs. Having fun playing around with it so far, but I'm not having any luck getting the built-in mouse to work. I tried enabling/disabling PS2 mouse in BIOS, toggled internal mouse on/off with FN+5, and checked it with Fn+F5. Nothing I do seems to get the mouse to move using the arrow keys... Do you have any suggestions???
> 9:00 "windows key probably doesn't do anything" The windows key basically just sends a different scan code from the keyboard to the computer just like any other key, it's not handled differently (unlike the "Fn" key). So it's up to the software whether it does something or not. I am sure some DOS game could allow the user to bind the key to actions.
Totally makes sense! And then I found out later it actually did work as intended in Win95. That is interesting that it could be mapped to other actions. I thought it was more like the fn key, but that’s cool that it’s not.
I was about to order one of these when I found this video. The one I'm getting has a clear case instead of the transparent black. I still have most of the DOS games and applications that I ran back in the day so this will be fun. I have Windows 3.11 in case this thing is too slow for 95. I think I still have an AOL install disk somewhere too, not that it will do anything since AOL is gone, Lol. I'll have to come up with an adapter to accept an external floppy disk drive just for fun. BTW, the parallel port is useful for plugging in an old school dot matrix printer, in case one has one laying around. Not sure why I'm buying one of these because I still have my 386 powered laptop, along with a 286 and 486 laptop.
I just got mine today. It's only been a few hours and I've already screwed up my autoexec and config.sys files. Where can I find the image file mentioned in the manual?
It is not a 386 CPU. It is an embedded System , almost like a Raspberry - all in one. The CPU is an ALI M6117 that can emulate a low voltage 386 running from 25 - 40 Mhz. That's why you can run Windows 95 on it with no issues.
Have you gotten any nano usb drive to run? Given the form factor, I'd like a store-n-go drive (Cruzer, Verbatim) to physically stay out of the way, but none will get past boot.
Can it run a Covox Speech thing in place of an Adlib OPL3 externally? I don't see why not, but it would be good to test it out. I'm thinking that either an ISA card would suffice for a classic Sound Blaster 8 bit card, or you could really go all-out and put a riser card atop the system to extend the bus to a full system literally. The question is whether it will support that or not, and whether it is able to properly handle DMA requests, or if it is hard-coded to only just use one slot and a pre-configured. Also, does DPMI access all 8mb in protected mode for any program? Or do you have to have other DOS extenders that are proprietary in nature and might/might not work based upon it? Dos32 should be the the usual, but I'm wondering if programming in Turbo Pascal, Assembly Language, or C has any hangups or gotchas that I have to worry about beyond just using Dos games? It should be fine with general Dos games and maybe Nesticle as far as emulators, but I am concerned about whether or not I will have full control as a programmer. Can I use existing programs that I have written and expect them to run like before, or will I have to rewrite it and change it accordingly?
Is it bad that I still have a fully working 486 system in my back room? I wanted to keep it around if I had room just in case my kids were ever curious about early PC gaming back in the dos days
Hi Josh...Mine is shutting down after a few minutes when it is in Windows 95. When I leave it in DOS it does not do this. Any ideas what may be going on?
Looks like he’s using a much better screen than the garbage one that came in the Book8088. Wish I’d never bought that one, but this looks a lot more interesting
Since this has the 16-bit ISA in the back, I wonder how well you could make an adapter for one of those SBC ISA Backplanes and then just start sticking in ISA cards? ISA is a shared bus, so it should in theory just work. And, that could give you access to some PCI devices if Windows 95 can handles them. PCI is backwards compatible with ISA with the right chips, and I think the right ISA/PCI SBC Backplane will have that built in.
I do not see why an external ISA backplane wouldn't work. Emulating PCI over ISA is more troublesome, for example PCI DMA is fundamentally different from ISA DMA. This could only work for a few select examples and I do not know if there exist any chips for this.. PCI-to-ISA-bridges exist, but they need extra signals from the chipset that are not available in a normal PCI slot.
I actually want one just to relive my childhood. Windows 95 is actually older then me but i had a windows 95 computer handed down to me from a family member. My parents unfortunately threw it out once they got a windows xp computer. I should have told my parents to save it but i was just a child back then i miss it alot know.
Unfortunately, the creator of this laptop said that it would not work, because the interface is actually programmed to only be USB mass storage, which only works with USB sticks or hard drives, and I think in this case it just works with USB sticks. Also, I have a USB floppy and tried it, and it definitely didn’t work.
There's certainly some potential for more reliability since at least some of the parts are new but these probably do use chips harvested from old hardware just like the Book 8088 so I would not oversell it on that point. It also seems like more of a passion project than a thing that got created because it makes business sense but I guess we will see. That also factors into the reliability a bit since it may not be as professionally engineered as the vintage systems. I think it is cool these exist and hope to see more of this kind of thing in the future but keeping vintage hardware going is certainly still awesome and serves to both preserve history and the environment.
@@retrotv1techI wonder if they made a similar promise with the 8088 or if this is new with the 386 because there were some pretty sketch ones in the Book 8088 that Adrian fixed on his channel, he suspected at least one of being relabeled. Could be down to how reliable the vendors they source the chips from are too. Things like the OPL chip may be pretty hard to source as genuine new old stock as well.
You just need to get a compact flash to usb adapter on Amazon. Then, plug it into any modern computer, download the file, and transfer it to the compact flash card through the usb adapter. The usb compact flash adapter makes the compact flash card act like a normal drive on the modern computer.
i have some question, sir. it has different versions. which one is the latest version? who is the manufacturer? official website? it is possible to connect floppy drives and zip drives?
RetroTV1 Tech: I have some Windows 95 games here. They are on discs the size of your normal average music CD. If I purchased that computer would I be able to play them on it?
You’d have to rip the CD’s to an ISO image file and transfer them to the computer using USB or the compact flash card. Since it’s just a 386, it might not play Windows 95 games too well.
Would it be possible to see what model the keyboard is. I've been wanting one of these but need to find a scandinavian keyboard layout and replace it :D
Windows System Sounds can be fixed by installing an OPL3 Windows 3.1 wav driver. I found one readily available on the web. My main squipe is the time and date are so screwey, like there's a disconnection with the bios, Windows, and DOS clocks. Y2K bug for real!
A version with a decent big screen and keyboard would be good. I'd like to power up wordperfect 5.1 and go to town. Pointless to to do that on a small keyboard version.
I'd love to know how to connect a floppy drive to this, I tried via USB (both FDD and CD-ROM), but that didn't work. The BIOS says that Floppy Disk is Enabled. Any ideas, besides adding another ISA card and connecting the drives that way? Thanks for these videos, they are excellent
What is the video chip? Do it have the drivers installed for Win95? It seems to me that there is 640x480 16 colors, so it could be the standard VGA driver from Win95. Maybe it can do 800x480 desktop on Win95? Also, the USB chip have any drivers for Win95? If I remember, Win95 OSR2.5 had USB support, maybe that chip may alow yoy to connect some other stuff there, like a regular USB port. Altough I do not feel that Win95 is suitable for a 386 computer it seems that the OS alone works well; have you tested it with some early windows games/software? You may install and use Win3.11 that will work better with 386 processing power. Also, where one can find those ghost files to recover the CF card image?
I’m not sure what drivers are being used. The manual states the USB controller being used will only work with storage devices, so I’m not sure if it will do anything else in windows, even with another device. I don’t know what the video chip is either, but it would be nice to find a better driver that would allow full 800x480 on the desktop with no stretching. I’ll play around with it and post an update if I find anything. I definitely need to find the ghost files as well, and you’re right about Win 3.1.
A big hello from the UK and a big thanks for your in-depth introduction in the Pocket 386. I’ve always been a retro gamer/computer enthusiast and have just received my pocket 386 from Ali Express. I was never really knowledgeable on the 386/DOS so your video was a HUGE help so I can’t thank you enough. I look forward to any updates 👍. Keep up the fantastic content! ❤
With WirdPerfect or Word for DOS, this might be an excellent distraction free writing device.
I was thinking the exact same thing!
definitely not distraction free with the amount of games you can play on these lol
My thoughts exactly! I'd love to write stories and whatnot on there, and it can be anytime and anywhere!
This keyboard is really tiny, and typing mistakes would be common.
Imagine a version with a 486 DX2-66, 16-32MB RAM, and a PicoGUS built-in!! THAT I'd drop the money for!
That would be epic!
Unfortunately that's a step up. The 386 embedded chip they are using is all in one, with an easy to slap on isa bus (and a few free gpio ports separate from the printer). When the 486 came around you have to start using BGA chips and from the Book 8088 and what I have seen on this unit I suspect the people building them don't have that ablity.
Something like the Elan SC410 is an amd 486 WITH both a isa bus AND a VL local bus. That said I don't expect much on that end. I hope this product does well enough for them to think about it.
@@warlockd And 486DX/DX2 usually needs active cooling.
@@warlockd I think there's an SC410 that goes all the way up to 100MHz. If they wanted to max out a hypothetical 486 like they seem to do here with the 386 all the way at 40MHz, would be one amazing machine. But also likely a lot more expensive to source those SOCs and thus a significantly more expensive product than the $200ish they're charging for the 386 variant.
@@mmadmic It did back then. There exists embedded 486s today, manufactured on more modern nodes that don't need any cooling.
Truly a great review of the Pocket 386! Thank you for the effort you put into this video! The best review of the Pocket 386 that I've seen.
someone pretty much said this already, but if there's a 486 version of this they'll have to shut up and take my money.
Very true. Maybe someday!
Same. I don't have any nostalgia for the 386, but the 486 was my first PC. Either that or a Pentium 1 is a definite buy for me.
I emailed the seller directly a few months ago and they plan to make a 486.
@@Atomhaz not surprised! I'm totally interested
has to run on AA batteries though
I don’t understand a whole lot but I certainly enjoyed watching and learning! I’m going to watch more! Thank you!
been trying to tell myself I dont need this for weeks. its just so cool though. I think if he is able to make 486 or P1 versions in the future they will sell out instantly.
This is so true! I suspect that 486 and P1 chips are much harder to source, but if he pulls it off, they will definitely sell out quickly!
Tiny 486 and Pentium subnotebooks already exist (Toshiba Libretto, etc.)... This 386 makes sense because 386 laptops are uncommon, and small ones are super rare.
Though I do suppose if there is a bulk supply of extra 486 chips just sitting around, something should be made with them, rather than getting scrapped.
that the era I suspect more ppl are interested in ie era where wolf,doom,quake,wins 98 etc@@retrotv1tech
Absolutely, I am hoping for a 486 version.
@@KomradeMikhail yeah i have a few of them but they all have terrible screens. I think there is a market for several segements of laptops sporting older processors and compatibility woth older devices with more modern ergonomics/conveniences
I bought one of these and have been happy. I cloned the original OS image to a 4GB WD/SiliconDrive CF card and made some minor changes by adding a boot menu so I could have a pure Real Mode environment along with various driver options (i.e. USB enabled).
I am experimenting with DOS 6.22 + Win95 now, on this system. I think this should enable the most flexibility for people that want to be able to run in Real Mode or V86/Protected Mode, depending on which programs they want to run.
I have a couple of Book8088 systems with various ISA expansion cards, including game ports and UMB cards (i.e. monotech microram) which are working great as well. Thanks for the video!
Nice! Keep me posted on anything else you discover about this system!
When I bought the Hand386, the seller provided me a package that included a GHOST image of what’d be flashed to the CF card
@damian9303 The seller has been great, and did provide a .gho image for the system. I'll post it and link it on vcf.
@vardekpetrovic9716 People have successfully installed OS/2 Warp on the Hand386 but I'm not sure about driver support.
Can you upload an image of the card? It would be useful to have a boot menu
Wow! That's a cool device and I enjoyed watching your thorough tour of it's features! Would be fun to have to play with once I'm retired and have more time. 😄 Thanks, Josh, for an awesome video!
Thanks for watching!
Thanks for posting this review! I wasn't aware this was a thing before, but it's pretty cool that it is. Kinda crazy that so many of these components are still just off-the-shelf parts, especially the Yamaha OPL3 chip. And I agree, I'd love to see a 486 or even a pentium variant in the future!
I’m waiting for the pocket 486! ;)
My first thought after seeing the Book 8088 and Hand 386 was "What if they made a Book 386 instead"? And now they did. Wonderful
I had the same thought, so when I saw this one, I was literally like, “shut up and take my money!” Of course, a 486 or Pentium would be even better, but this is pretty awesome!
@@retrotv1tech486 or 586 has the heat dissipation issues already. Will require more complicated casing
Very good video Josh! Great review, I really enjoyed watching this, waiting for more!
Awesome video as always Josh! Cant wait for the next one!
Such a cool laptop! It was neat to see the set up process for it too! 😊 The mousepad looked like it was bigger than the whole computer lol
Yes it was! And thanks!
Looking forward to seeing this 👏👏
26:00 On a 386 you have to use the hotkeys to reduce the screen viewport for smooth DooM performance.
I like how you're showing things that don't work out of the box and how to actually make them work
Thanks! I hope it helps someone!
Oh man. This was like a Time Machine.
Indeed, and this kind of configuration in the late 80s/early 90s was very expensive 5-6000+$ (+-12-15000 in today's money), it was a dream laptop in these days : 386-SX40, 8MB, 4GB, VGA, color monitor, sound card, 4h+ battery, ... in less than 500g.
My father bought a Toshiba T3100e in 1988, 80286-12, 2MB, 40MB, CGA 640x200/400 B&W orange, 720Ko DD(upgraded to 1.44) + Internal modem (no battery, no sound card, no color display, 8Kg ...) , I still have the original invoice, it was in francs as I'm Belgian but converted it's +- 6500$ (+-15K today). Not a bad buy as I still use it today.
Tremenda y completa review!!
thank you for the in depth review...I saw some videos on the book8088 and they scared me...this has a bit more power, for me as a software developer it's where the machine got really useful but didn't jump the shark with 6 ways to do the same thing. Going to be getting one and start diving back into old tools I used to use back in the day...
The trick would be to put a raspberry pi pico on the usb as your drive and then download to that drive from a windows box on the network and then access the files from the procket 386.
I just got the isa expander. Works awesome. Hope they develop cpu upgrades since it's modular. Also really needs an RTC.
Hi! Can I ask you if it's possible to connect a Sound Blaster 16? I would like to know if Fastracker can run on this machine!
@@walterpintus1734 totally, I'm running an aztech sound galaxy nx pro II 16bit card in an 8 bit slot. So 8 bit sound will work, 16 bit will stutter though unless you make the 16-bit extension slot, so just stick to 8-bit.
You can always hook up an ISA memory card to it to get more memory, but would make it slower.
Great video! Awesome seeing all your different retro stuff. Especially love seeing all the gaming
Thanks. I'm a big DOS fan, since the earliest versions. Have set up many DOS systems in the last 20 years for myself to fool around with. Now it's getting tough to get DOS and Windows OS to run on newer machines. So, I am contemplating getting one. I have many olf hard drives with DOS Programs, and many on USB drives as well. Thinking it would also be good for FreeDos on a stick.
A high end 486 (DX2 66 and up) would absolutely kill. An actual built-in-to-the-case serial & gameport jack would be a must however. Would make a great midi brain for some of us external module nuts.
DX2 66 was the last 486 not requiring a thick heatsink/fan combo. This is the problem going forward in this form factor. But if possible, an AMD 133 would be incredible. Some linksys routers basically had an embedded 486/586 SOC in them with very little or no cooling. So there is hope yet.
Nice review!
I’m considering to buy one of these and play with old minix
Please let me us know if you get minix to work and which version (and book) you get working. Thanks.
I’m excited for this
WIn 95 is going to be majorly slow on a 386sx. I mean it was slow on my 386DX-40 with 8MB ram. I don't know why this didn't ship with Windows 3.1 instead, that would have been perfect.
I HAVE to get me one of these!
Had a desktop with extremely simular specs back in the mid/late 90s, ran Windows 95 quite well (AMD 386-40), The first machine I built entirely myself.
Alot of nostalgia, having essentially the same machine in Laptop form in the modern day is just amazing to me, would have been my 'Dream machine" back then.
And actually Windows 95 was optimised for 486s, (though Pentiums were essentially just two "486-class pipelines" and a much improved and more advanced FPU, granted you could say "optimised for Pentum") the 486-40s from Simens and AMD were roughly the same performance as a 25MHz 486SX. I guess you could say ive been an AMD "Fanboy" ever since.
Fast 486s, 66MHz or higher were still the most common PCs in use at the time of Windows 95s release and especially during its development, as the Pentium was still quite expensive being relatively recently introduced in late 1993.
Nice!!
I bought a GPD Win Mini recently and I thought to myself, man, wouldn't it be cool if I had something in this form factor for DOS/9x.
I remembered about the Japanese PC110 that came close, and could even be used as a phone, and lamented the fact that it didn't come to the west, or saw any successors.
Hopefully someone ends up making a Pentium MMX version (or K6-2+/3+) that can be slowed down to 486/386 speeds. Even better, if they somehow manage to recreate a docking interface a la IBM Selectadock for added expansion cards, now THAT I'd buy in a heartbeat.
This is the machine I wish I could have had in college with which to play Doom. I remember playing the Shareware version on someone's monochrome 386 laptop running Win3.1 & DOS.
is there a way to connect floppy drive to it ?
I built a 486SX/25 in order to play Doom. It was still kind of slow, but it was playable.
Nice!
Can't you just minimize the size of the playing window in game to increase speed?
This was so awesome! So much fun to watch! I love that people are making modern tech made to play old games. I still have all my windows 98 timeframe games and I like to play them (some I’m saving for the kids to play when they get older) and this makes me really happy! Haha. Also love how you describe what you’re doing as you’re doing it! I need step by steps! Hehe.
Thanks! So glad you enjoyed!
@@retrotv1tech anytime! I always enjoy retro tech! Even if I don’t always understand it 🤣
A pentium-1 version of this, with a sound card that can play sound samples, would be awesome. Graphics … 3DFX would be amazing, but any graphics chip with decently fast framebuffer access would also be very good. Will keep an eye out!
Really great small laptop Josh
I also still have my first proper hardcore gaming rig which was a Pentium 3 I think that had both a 16 MB Riva TNT 2 as well as a 12 MB voodoo 2 3D accelerator. Still think it's crazy how far we've come in PC gaming parts.
I'm excited 🎉❤
Love it... I had a bla k sharp slc 50 mhz system with all of 256kb memory and 20mb of hard disk space with win 3.1 which booted Dos. Damn I miss it. Used to run meade starfinder on display with a control port for my 3 meter dish.. never failed and ran for over 20 years
If they really wanted to be retro they would have stuck with Green/Amber/Red LEDs (NO BLUE) Green was power, Amber was turbo and Red was HDD
I've got a very old Dell Latitude LS400 from around the Millennium..works fine..cost me some 25 British Pounds (around 35 dollars ) in spare non working LS to replace broken parts..installing Windows 98se was a bit of a struggle..aren't all retro devices if you don't have driver disks and accessories..got the touchpad to work fine and external PS/2 mouse..i prefer the mouse control..no annoying missing .dll or missing entry points etc notifications finally..that Laptop on the video..limit for games is about Prince of Persia..even pinball might be a push for it
Probably a basic question but can you tell me how you set up the flash drive with games so the directory would come up with them? I'm not doing it right.
Digital audio can be played through the OPL chip. See thread "Digital Audio from a Yamaha OPL2/3 chip". At least for games which can run in virtual 8086 mode, one could create a TSR that traps SB DSP port traffic and streams the samples to the OPL chip via this technique.
Whoa! That’s super cool! Thanks for the tip!
I've been trying to talk myself out of buying one of these. I think I might wait around to see if they come out with a 486 or Pentium version in the next couple years. If they do, I'll definitely pick one of those up. 386 might just be a little too slow.
I mean, I still might get one of these. It looks perfect for older dos games.
Hi. Nice video. What size is your USB drive ? I've tried with one 2GB USB drive formatted as FAT16 but my Pocket386 does not seem to be able to mount it. With what utility have you formatted yours ? Does it matter if the partition type is guided or it has MBR ?
Mike is just an 8GB old geek squad drive from Best Buy. I didn’t specially format it at all. I think mine is FAT32. I’ve heard some usb drives just don’t work with it for some reason. Of course, you do have to reboot the machine every time you plug in another usb. But you probably already just knew that.
@@retrotv1tech Thanks.
I managed to make mine to work by disabling the floppy from BIOS that enabled for some reason.
Another question, can you xcopy files from the CF drive to the usb stick ? I can do it the other way around, but if I try to write anything on the USB drive I get a write error.
That I’m not sure about. I haven’t tried that. Sorry!
53:00 A PS/2 mouse could never be hotplugged. The original hardware wasn't designed for it and you could even blow the keyboard fuse by doing so.
It’s been so long since I’ve used PS!2, and I think I’m just used to USB hot swapping. Lol. Thanks!
I already have the book 8088 and ordered this one. I have a real 80386 at home but as it olds, I prefer to play with this one.
That’s awesome!
Great video
Thanks!
Hi Josh...Do you know what would be needed (or even it is possible) to connect the VGA output of the expansion card to a modern monitor with HDMI? I see simple cables and then I see more complicated converter units. Not sure if you have tried this already.
What does the keyboard feel like?
Parallel port use:
• Snappy
• Commodore 1541/1571 Interface
• Zip Drive
• Networking
• EEPROM burning
You probably won’t see this, but if you do… how would I go about connecting a floppy drive to this? Did they make parallel or serial port floppy drives? This is just outside my memory range.
So, the only way to connect a floppy drive at this point would be to get the ISA expansion connector that I showed and get a floppy controller card and hook it up that way, although you’d have to provide power to the floppy drive somehow. I’m not sure if they make any parallel port floppy drives. But really, with the ease of using a USB thumb drive, you wouldn’t technically need a floppy drive unless you just wanted to use one for nostalgic purposes.
Your video influenced me into buying one of these Pocket 386 PCs. Having fun playing around with it so far, but I'm not having any luck getting the built-in mouse to work. I tried enabling/disabling PS2 mouse in BIOS, toggled internal mouse on/off with FN+5, and checked it with Fn+F5. Nothing I do seems to get the mouse to move using the arrow keys... Do you have any suggestions???
> 9:00 "windows key probably doesn't do anything"
The windows key basically just sends a different scan code from the keyboard to the computer just like any other key, it's not handled differently (unlike the "Fn" key). So it's up to the software whether it does something or not.
I am sure some DOS game could allow the user to bind the key to actions.
Totally makes sense! And then I found out later it actually did work as intended in Win95. That is interesting that it could be mapped to other actions. I thought it was more like the fn key, but that’s cool that it’s not.
I was about to order one of these when I found this video. The one I'm getting has a clear case instead of the transparent black. I still have most of the DOS games and applications that I ran back in the day so this will be fun. I have Windows 3.11 in case this thing is too slow for 95. I think I still have an AOL install disk somewhere too, not that it will do anything since AOL is gone, Lol. I'll have to come up with an adapter to accept an external floppy disk drive just for fun. BTW, the parallel port is useful for plugging in an old school dot matrix printer, in case one has one laying around. Not sure why I'm buying one of these because I still have my 386 powered laptop, along with a 286 and 486 laptop.
AOL isn't gone, just forgotten.
It would be fun to try some of my old favorite Sierra games! Let's hook up an external disk drive!
I need to try that! But I can also put Sierra games on the USB as well. :-)
Hi! Did you try to connect an Isa Sound Blaster card? I'm curious if it would work!
Thanks for your share! This pocket386 also sales in Amazon now, also have pocket8086, are you interested in?
How was the USB drive formated because I got one of these but mine won't read my USB drive anymore.
I need to go Josh. Need to get things done before it gets too late. Have a great night. Goodnight all.
Good night!
reminds me of the Toshiba Libretto
I just got mine today. It's only been a few hours and I've already screwed up my autoexec and config.sys files. Where can I find the image file mentioned in the manual?
Great review. Does it work with usb keyboard and mouse?
I think the USB is only for storage devices according to the manual, but you can use PS/2 keyboard and mouse.
Fun to see this
What USB size did you use in the video? Is it regular USB 1.0?
OK I figured it out 😂 nevermind
It is not a 386 CPU. It is an embedded System , almost like a Raspberry - all in one. The CPU is an ALI M6117 that can emulate a low voltage 386 running from 25 - 40 Mhz. That's why you can run Windows 95 on it with no issues.
Have you gotten any nano usb drive to run? Given the form factor, I'd like a store-n-go drive (Cruzer, Verbatim) to physically stay out of the way, but none will get past boot.
Can it run a Covox Speech thing in place of an Adlib OPL3 externally? I don't see why not, but it would be good to test it out.
I'm thinking that either an ISA card would suffice for a classic Sound Blaster 8 bit card, or you could really go all-out and put a riser card atop the system to extend the bus to a full system literally.
The question is whether it will support that or not, and whether it is able to properly handle DMA requests, or if it is hard-coded to only just use one slot and a pre-configured.
Also, does DPMI access all 8mb in protected mode for any program? Or do you have to have other DOS extenders that are proprietary in nature and might/might not work based upon it?
Dos32 should be the the usual, but I'm wondering if programming in Turbo Pascal, Assembly Language, or C has any hangups or gotchas that I have to worry about beyond just using Dos games?
It should be fine with general Dos games and maybe Nesticle as far as emulators, but I am concerned about whether or not I will have full control as a programmer.
Can I use existing programs that I have written and expect them to run like before, or will I have to rewrite it and change it accordingly?
Gonna save my money for this lol its worth it
Is it bad that I still have a fully working 486 system in my back room? I wanted to keep it around if I had room just in case my kids were ever curious about early PC gaming back in the dos days
Hi Josh...Mine is shutting down after a few minutes when it is in Windows 95. When I leave it in DOS it does not do this. Any ideas what may be going on?
Is there anything close to this but with more Ram ? I'm looking to run some old Nikon Software via serial port and required ram is 16MB or more :(
Looks like he’s using a much better screen than the garbage one that came in the Book8088.
Wish I’d never bought that one, but this looks a lot more interesting
Since this has the 16-bit ISA in the back, I wonder how well you could make an adapter for one of those SBC ISA Backplanes and then just start sticking in ISA cards?
ISA is a shared bus, so it should in theory just work. And, that could give you access to some PCI devices if Windows 95 can handles them.
PCI is backwards compatible with ISA with the right chips, and I think the right ISA/PCI SBC Backplane will have that built in.
I do not see why an external ISA backplane wouldn't work. Emulating PCI over ISA is more troublesome, for example PCI DMA is fundamentally different from ISA DMA. This could only work for a few select examples and I do not know if there exist any chips for this.. PCI-to-ISA-bridges exist, but they need extra signals from the chipset that are not available in a normal PCI slot.
Why the hell is this 386 plus windows 95 instead of 486 plus 3.1
Mine did not come with Windows 95. Where can I get the disk image of it?
I actually want one just to relive my childhood. Windows 95 is actually older then me but i had a windows 95 computer handed down to me from a family member. My parents unfortunately threw it out once they got a windows xp computer. I should have told my parents to save it but i was just a child back then i miss it alot know.
Still trying to figure out why mine is shutting down when it is in Windows. It stays up fine while in DOS.
Would love to have an enclosure like that
How are you able to get your usb drive to work? I've tried 3 and none are loading - system just hangs at boot.
I noticed it’s super picky. Just try some older ones or buy some older ones on eBay and try them. Smaller capacity.
Optical mouses can be a little tricky, older Logitech models work like a charm, Fastdoom should run at 15-20 FPS.
Do you think a USB floppy drive would work for software installation? I got one and some floppies and this seems interesting to me.
Unfortunately, the creator of this laptop said that it would not work, because the interface is actually programmed to only be USB mass storage, which only works with USB sticks or hard drives, and I think in this case it just works with USB sticks. Also, I have a USB floppy and tried it, and it definitely didn’t work.
@@retrotv1tech that sucks.
There's certainly some potential for more reliability since at least some of the parts are new but these probably do use chips harvested from old hardware just like the Book 8088 so I would not oversell it on that point. It also seems like more of a passion project than a thing that got created because it makes business sense but I guess we will see. That also factors into the reliability a bit since it may not be as professionally engineered as the vintage systems.
I think it is cool these exist and hope to see more of this kind of thing in the future but keeping vintage hardware going is certainly still awesome and serves to both preserve history and the environment.
Only chip harvested according to the website is the 386, and it’s a 386 SOC that’s newer than an original 386. Apparently everything else is new.
@@retrotv1techI wonder if they made a similar promise with the 8088 or if this is new with the 386 because there were some pretty sketch ones in the Book 8088 that Adrian fixed on his channel, he suspected at least one of being relabeled. Could be down to how reliable the vendors they source the chips from are too. Things like the OPL chip may be pretty hard to source as genuine new old stock as well.
Very true! I saw that video on Adrian’s channel as well. It’s hard to tell how honest that claim is.
Hi Josh...Could you do a video of how to get new programs on the compact flash? I would like to get an old copy of Matlab on mine.
You just need to get a compact flash to usb adapter on Amazon. Then, plug it into any modern computer, download the file, and transfer it to the compact flash card through the usb adapter. The usb compact flash adapter makes the compact flash card act like a normal drive on the modern computer.
that's pretty cool
i have some question, sir. it has different versions. which one is the latest version? who is the manufacturer? official website? it is possible to connect floppy drives and zip drives?
RetroTV1 Tech: I have some Windows 95 games here. They are on discs the size of your normal average music CD. If I purchased that computer would I be able to play them on it?
You’d have to rip the CD’s to an ISO image file and transfer them to the computer using USB or the compact flash card. Since it’s just a 386, it might not play Windows 95 games too well.
@@retrotv1tech That's strange! Especially when the games read Windows 95 on the box.
Would it be possible to see what model the keyboard is. I've been wanting one of these but need to find a scandinavian keyboard layout and replace it :D
Windows System Sounds can be fixed by installing an OPL3 Windows 3.1 wav driver. I found one readily available on the web. My main squipe is the time and date are so screwey, like there's a disconnection with the bios, Windows, and DOS clocks. Y2K bug for real!
It was a cool video!!
Parallel port for older vintage printer port . So if you had an old okidata decal printer.
Interesting. One thing, I think DOS 7.10 is the Chinese DOS. I've never tried it, but it looks good.
I tried it, but of course, everything was in Chinese, so I couldn’t use it.
A version with a decent big screen and keyboard would be good. I'd like to power up wordperfect 5.1 and go to town. Pointless to to do that on a small keyboard version.
I'd love to know how to connect a floppy drive to this, I tried via USB (both FDD and CD-ROM), but that didn't work. The BIOS says that Floppy Disk is Enabled. Any ideas, besides adding another ISA card and connecting the drives that way? Thanks for these videos, they are excellent
Chuckled a bit at the Faded with Alan Walker midi somebody placed on this machine. That one is so out of place, yet not at all out of place😅
what windows 95 compatible disk drive would you suggest for this?
Why does the 8-bit ISA have so many more pins than the 16-bit?
What is the video chip? Do it have the drivers installed for Win95? It seems to me that there is 640x480 16 colors, so it could be the standard VGA driver from Win95. Maybe it can do 800x480 desktop on Win95?
Also, the USB chip have any drivers for Win95? If I remember, Win95 OSR2.5 had USB support, maybe that chip may alow yoy to connect some other stuff there, like a regular USB port.
Altough I do not feel that Win95 is suitable for a 386 computer it seems that the OS alone works well; have you tested it with some early windows games/software? You may install and use Win3.11 that will work better with 386 processing power. Also, where one can find those ghost files to recover the CF card image?
I’m not sure what drivers are being used. The manual states the USB controller being used will only work with storage devices, so I’m not sure if it will do anything else in windows, even with another device. I don’t know what the video chip is either, but it would be nice to find a better driver that would allow full 800x480 on the desktop with no stretching. I’ll play around with it and post an update if I find anything. I definitely need to find the ghost files as well, and you’re right about Win 3.1.
That’s too bad the ISA bus is only 8 bit, was hoping to plug in my GUS and AWE32 in mine.