He Chunhui's Tiny386 Turns an ESP32-S3 into a Fully-Functional 386-Powered PC

https://www.hackster.io/news/he-chunhui-s-tiny386-turns-the-humble-esp32-s3-into-a-fully-functional-386-powered-desktop-pc-5454cf6e36a1

95•HardwareLust•3mo ago

Comments

accrual•3mo ago

Super cool work! Here's the emulator source: https://github.com/hchunhui/tiny386

I wonder what the "effective" clock of the emulated CPU is, maybe we could run Speedsys or Landmark under DOS on it to see how it fares against a real 386. I happen to have a top-end 386 at 40MHz, 16MB FPM, and S3 801 VGA, but it's not quite fast enough to "enjoy" Win95 for me. :)

stavros•3mo ago

From the looks of the video, neither is this project, which might mean that performance is comparable to the real 386!

gerdesj•3mo ago

Blast! 80386 was removed from Linux only a few years ago. Ironically enough it was the first supported platform because Linus T had one.

mjg59•3mo ago

The article says it supports enough 486 and Pentium instructions to boot modern Linux

M95D•2mo ago

Why not run Linux directly?

https://www.hackster.io/news/running-linux-on-an-esp32-s3-0d...

HardwareLust•2mo ago

Pretty sure this project was for entertainment purposes only, not as a solution for an existing problem.

fouc•3mo ago

I was curious what the "cheapest" ready-to-use ESP32-S3 setup would be, it seems like there are dev boards with built-in displays ranging from 3.5" to 5", WiFI/BT/USB-C for $20-$30 on ebay.

I guess those of you doing IoT / home assistant stuff would likely know about these. Just found out about ESPHome[0]

[0] https://esphome.io

dccoolgai•3mo ago

You can buy the Microcenter knockoff one (Inland) for under $10

fouc•3mo ago

Inland seems to be a Microcenter brand. Not sure what model you're referring to, got a link?

mickelsen•3mo ago

I’ve picked up a few boards from the Waveshare and Spotpear storefronts on AliExpress:

https://wvshare.aliexpress.com/

https://spotpear.aliexpress.com/

There you can find the latest launches and different versions depending on your use case. Also, checkout the Luckfox Pico.

phibz•2mo ago

Seems like a better fit for Win 3.11.

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