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I recall awhile back Linus Tech Tips pointed out that the primary failure point for old machines wasn't the CPUs which tend to be piling up cheaply (I can't say

by leeter 4y ago

I recall awhile back Linus Tech Tips pointed out that the primary failure point for old machines wasn't the CPUs which tend to be piling up cheaply (I can't say how true this is for pre PIII parts) but instead the motherboards. I wonder if in some sense there isn't a market for someone to just make new motherboards instead for this stuff using modern parts. I realize there are some licensing issues after a certain point, but in theory everything up to a PIII should be doable. Particularly since memory controllers are in the chipset there are options to use things like modern ram chips and then 'downgrade' performance to be compatible in the chipset. This could also be used to allow for modern M.2 SATA drives to be run in IDE emulation mode locally or even have SD/CF options directly on the board. The main downside at that point is space of course, hardware always takes up more space than an emulator ;)

sidewndr46 4y ago
For the Intel chips up to and including the Pentium 4 licensing a chipset would not be an issue. VIA made chipsets back when those products were new. I think there was a lawsuit about it, but VIA prevailed. You could license the chipset from them, then use it with an authentic Intel CPU. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_VIA_chipsets#:~:text=VIA%20chipsets%20were%20alternatives%20to,i386%20in%20the%20early%2D1990s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_VIA_chipsets#:~:text=V.... But to your original point: CPUs don't really fail unless abused is my understanding. The bad ones are filtered out at the factory before they ever get to consumers.
- leeter 4y ago
  That might even be ideal insofar as the chipset is driver compatible with equivalent from the time. Via wasn't anything special but they were super common and thus decently supported IIRC.
- Zardoz84 4y ago
  Except Pentium 4
drewzero1 4y ago
I kind of miss add-in processor cards to allow a computer to run software from another architecture. Those devices were basically a whole computer on a card or add-on that would use the host computer for I/O with some level of integration. Stuff like the Apple IIe card for the Macintosh LC, or the MacCharlie sidecar for the original Macintosh that allowed it to run PC programs. I bet there are modern PCI cards out there that can add a hard-to-emulate processor to a consumer/prosumer-grade system, but I'm not sure what to search for.
- maccard 4y ago
  Honestly that's pretty close to what a usb c dock is.
  - emteycz 4y ago
    Well if we're going that far, why not just connect your phone to your PC and adb shell into it?
kitsunesoba 4y ago
This is an avenue I’d like to see more pursuit of, and not just for x86 machines — new PowerPC mac motherboards that can be fitted into standard ATX PC cases and can be powered by unmodded off the shelf PSUs would be huge.
- crest 4y ago
  Where will you get your supply of custom chipsets? Do you want to reverse engineer Apple's already badly documented chipsets and reimplement them on fast enough FPGAs maybe even support more modern RAMs or improved off-chip caches? It would be nice to have a mATX NewWorld Mac you can maintain for playing old MacOS games, but the farther you go into the G4 (or even worse G5) era the more advanced GPUs you would have to reimplement as well. The PPC6xx era 2D on-board graphics may be in reach of such a project, but I can't see anyone without Nvidias active support releasing a Quadro FX 4500 compatible GPU clone.
  - kitsunesoba 4y ago
    Chipsets indeed prove a challenge, but it’s not insurmountable. QEMU’s emulation of a G3 tower is a decent example of this. There’s decent availability of PCI and AGP GPUs supported by OS 9 and early OS X, especially if you include PC variants that can be flashed to work with Mac OS, so I wouldn’t worry about video too much in the short term… just make sure the motherboard has a PCI or AGP slot.
jbjbjbjb 4y ago
There is a precedent for that with the reproduction Amiga motherboards that came out a couple of years ago. Those were actually just pcbs but something more accessible would be cool.
dehrmann 4y ago
Maybe you could do a hardware version of that the emulation community does and say "this FPGA should act like a chipset X, here's how to program it, but don't ask us for the blob."
happycube 4y ago
Chinese companies are making new boards for >=Nehalem Xeons using recycled server chipsets, mostly because they're still OK for gaming on a budget. If there was a demand they could probably do the same for older models if they can harvest enough chipsets. There were quite a few 430HX's on embedded modules that could be recycled...

by leeter 4y ago

sidewndr46 4y ago

For the Intel chips up to and including the Pentium 4 licensing a chipset would not be an issue. VIA made chipsets back when those products were new. I think there was a lawsuit about it, but VIA prevailed. You could license the chipset from them, then use it with an authentic Intel CPU. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_VIA_chipsets#:~:text=VIA%20chipsets%20were%20alternatives%20to,i386%20in%20the%20early%2D1990s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_VIA_chipsets#:~:text=V.... But to your original point: CPUs don't really fail unless abused is my understanding. The bad ones are filtered out at the factory before they ever get to consumers.

leeter 4y ago
That might even be ideal insofar as the chipset is driver compatible with equivalent from the time. Via wasn't anything special but they were super common and thus decently supported IIRC.
Zardoz84 4y ago
Except Pentium 4

drewzero1 4y ago

I kind of miss add-in processor cards to allow a computer to run software from another architecture. Those devices were basically a whole computer on a card or add-on that would use the host computer for I/O with some level of integration. Stuff like the Apple IIe card for the Macintosh LC, or the MacCharlie sidecar for the original Macintosh that allowed it to run PC programs. I bet there are modern PCI cards out there that can add a hard-to-emulate processor to a consumer/prosumer-grade system, but I'm not sure what to search for.

maccard 4y ago
Honestly that's pretty close to what a usb c dock is.
- emteycz 4y ago
  Well if we're going that far, why not just connect your phone to your PC and adb shell into it?

kitsunesoba 4y ago

This is an avenue I’d like to see more pursuit of, and not just for x86 machines — new PowerPC mac motherboards that can be fitted into standard ATX PC cases and can be powered by unmodded off the shelf PSUs would be huge.

crest 4y ago
Where will you get your supply of custom chipsets? Do you want to reverse engineer Apple's already badly documented chipsets and reimplement them on fast enough FPGAs maybe even support more modern RAMs or improved off-chip caches? It would be nice to have a mATX NewWorld Mac you can maintain for playing old MacOS games, but the farther you go into the G4 (or even worse G5) era the more advanced GPUs you would have to reimplement as well. The PPC6xx era 2D on-board graphics may be in reach of such a project, but I can't see anyone without Nvidias active support releasing a Quadro FX 4500 compatible GPU clone.
- kitsunesoba 4y ago
  Chipsets indeed prove a challenge, but it’s not insurmountable. QEMU’s emulation of a G3 tower is a decent example of this. There’s decent availability of PCI and AGP GPUs supported by OS 9 and early OS X, especially if you include PC variants that can be flashed to work with Mac OS, so I wouldn’t worry about video too much in the short term… just make sure the motherboard has a PCI or AGP slot.

jbjbjbjb 4y ago

There is a precedent for that with the reproduction Amiga motherboards that came out a couple of years ago. Those were actually just pcbs but something more accessible would be cool.

dehrmann 4y ago

Maybe you could do a hardware version of that the emulation community does and say "this FPGA should act like a chipset X, here's how to program it, but don't ask us for the blob."

happycube 4y ago

Chinese companies are making new boards for >=Nehalem Xeons using recycled server chipsets, mostly because they're still OK for gaming on a budget. If there was a demand they could probably do the same for older models if they can harvest enough chipsets. There were quite a few 430HX's on embedded modules that could be recycled...