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1. 🌲Number 1 Pleroma Criminal on XBL 🇵🇱|🇺🇸 (phenomx6@fedi.pawlicker.com)'s status on Saturday, 07-Jan-2023 17:42:51 JST 🌲Number 1 Pleroma Criminal on XBL 🇵🇱|🇺🇸

   • pistolero :thispersondoesnotexist:
   • Trade Minister Tagomi
   @p @TradeMinister the funny thing about x86 is it was perfectly possible to build a system that wasn't a PC from it. In Japan there were multiple incompatible x86 computers that could not run exes for or use expansion cards for the PC.
   
   It's just nobody did for obvious reasons; there was no reason to outside the server realm or monopolistic vendor locking reasons and when windows 95/nt came out, all of them were able to run each others software. Windows was the moment where it all homogenized imo.
   • Wrongthink (wrongthink@cdrom.tokyo)'s status on Sunday, 08-Jan-2023 00:10:44 JST Wrongthink

     in reply to

     • pistolero :thispersondoesnotexist:
     • Trade Minister Tagomi

     @PhenomX6 @TradeMinister @p The patents expired for “modern” x86 just a little while ago. It should now be possible for 3rd parties to devise x86 family architectures sans the latest extensions.

   • 🌲Number 1 Pleroma Criminal on XBL 🇵🇱|🇺🇸 (phenomx6@fedi.pawlicker.com)'s status on Sunday, 08-Jan-2023 04:18:33 JST 🌲Number 1 Pleroma Criminal on XBL 🇵🇱|🇺🇸

     in reply to

     • Wrongthink
     • pistolero :thispersondoesnotexist:
     • Trade Minister Tagomi
     There's a company making an updated version of the old Rise MP6 CPU arch (that was sold to SiS at one point) and the idea is literally the same; a cut down x86 core.
     
     It's low power but the selling point is that it can run x86 code, and enthusiasts wound up embracing this to the point there's one project using a system on module and one using an arduino clone.
     
     https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=80651
     https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=84880
     
     Vids:
     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJEp4ZUG7BI
     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ER3wFQB3pD0
     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFZJjNTxgu8
     Wrongthink likes this.
   • pistolero :thispersondoesnotexist: (p@freespeechextremist.com)'s status on Sunday, 08-Jan-2023 04:18:34 JST pistolero :thispersondoesnotexist:

     in reply to

     • Wrongthink
     • Trade Minister Tagomi
     @wrongthink @PhenomX6 @TradeMinister I don't know why you would.
   • 🌲Number 1 Pleroma Criminal on XBL 🇵🇱|🇺🇸 (phenomx6@fedi.pawlicker.com)'s status on Sunday, 08-Jan-2023 04:43:33 JST 🌲Number 1 Pleroma Criminal on XBL 🇵🇱|🇺🇸

     in reply to

     • pistolero :thispersondoesnotexist:
     • Trade Minister Tagomi
     So the interesting part about the PC-98 and FM Towns/FMR is that they run MS-DOS...but it's a port and uses none of the same Ints or IRQs, has a widely different BIOS, the video hardware doesn't even resemble VGA, and while some sound cards/video cards are similar to PC sound cards, most games use the YM2203 or YM2608b (which is backwards compatible with the 2203). The FM Towns on the other hand uses the YM2612 and is allegedly more similar to a PC but still incompatible (I've never looked into this).
     
     The PC-98 also has some undumped port of CP/M and ROM basic (called N88-BASIC), which like a lot of extended BASICs of the day was fairly powerful and had numerous games written for it. In fact a lot of the PC-98 games during the first few years of the platform (when gaming was unpopular on it) were written in this BASIC.
     
     Also booter games were a lot more common on both platforms, most FM Towns games are CD booters while the PC-98 had a lot of booter games as well (first with BASIC and later with DOS). The same went with software, and it wasn't uncommon for even the mid-90s PC-98s to be sold from the factory with dual floppy drives and no HDD with the final PC-98 model having a dual floppy drive option even. Just imagine, Japan's computer market was so weird that in the mid-90s you could order a Pentium 90 with dual 5.25 drives.
   • pistolero :thispersondoesnotexist: (p@freespeechextremist.com)'s status on Sunday, 08-Jan-2023 04:43:34 JST pistolero :thispersondoesnotexist:

     in reply to

     • Trade Minister Tagomi
     @PhenomX6 @TradeMinister
     
     > the funny thing about x86 is it was perfectly possible to build a system that wasn't a PC from it. In Japan there were multiple incompatible x86 computers that could not run exes for or use expansion cards for the PC.
     
     Yeah, that's not an x86-specific thing, though; but that's still going on, the PS4/PS5 use x86-64. (I think DOS did get ported to the PC-98, though.)
     
     The old ARM desktop systems used to have a PCI board with a 486 on it; they'd run Windows in a window on your RISC-OS machine. That always seemed like fun.
   • 🌲Number 1 Pleroma Criminal on XBL 🇵🇱|🇺🇸 (phenomx6@fedi.pawlicker.com)'s status on Sunday, 08-Jan-2023 04:48:20 JST 🌲Number 1 Pleroma Criminal on XBL 🇵🇱|🇺🇸

     in reply to

     • Wrongthink
     • pistolero :thispersondoesnotexist:
     • Trade Minister Tagomi
     I'm sure the only reason (that isn't just using something on the market already) comes down to "MS-DOS games and software".
   • pistolero :thispersondoesnotexist: (p@freespeechextremist.com)'s status on Sunday, 08-Jan-2023 04:48:21 JST pistolero :thispersondoesnotexist:

     in reply to

     • Wrongthink
     • Trade Minister Tagomi
     @PhenomX6 @wrongthink @TradeMinister
     
     > It's low power but the selling point is that it can run x86 code, and enthusiasts wound up embracing this to the point there's one project using a system on module and one using an arduino clone.
     
     Yeah, but that's what I'm saying: I don't know why it's worth doing your own chipfab just to get a clone of a CPU that kinda sucks. (Obviously, I'm not gonna stop anybody, it's just not what I would do if I could fabricate chips.)