HN Explorer

18 comments

[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 49.5 ms ] thread
geerlingguy
I was able to see the development card in person at VCF Midwest last year; it's a very neat project! The version he had at VCFMW was in a transparent plastic case[1], which looks even better than the IBM-inspired design of the one on this page.

[1] https://youtu.be/hF0NKvmQmVA?t=47 (I couldn't find a good picture elsewhere)

Edit - I found this video on his YouTube channel with more info (with the latest version of the card): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-04EoGlayY

riskable
For those who aren't aware what PCMCIA stands for: People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms
cperciva
And obviously PicoPCMCIA means "very small people can't memorize computer industry acronyms".

(Or possibly s/computer/complicated/, that's how I remembered it at least.)

catskull
I thrifted a shirt once that said it stood for "Peppy Cheerleaders Move Crowds into Anarchy". Wish I still had it!
fallat
The RP2XXX microcontrollers are so incredible in terms of what it's opened to hobbyists. I hope microcontroller-based computers become a thing.
dlcarrier
It's more a matter of exposing hobbyists of one vertical to what exists in another. Low-power RISC microcontrollers and microprocessors were superseded in popularity by the ease of a Raspberry Pi SBCs running Linux, that could act as a host to its own development.

Now that Raspberry Pi has entered the market, hobbyists that were only familiar with SBCs are now being introduced to the flexibility of Low-power RISC microcontrollers and microprocessors.

There's also some new products on the market that are the best of both worlds, with the system-in-package form factors and easy bare-metal development of the RP2XXX line, that still have the ability to run full Linux, like the Bouffalo Labs BL808 and the Sophgo SG2000. Check out the Ox64 from Pine64 (https://pine64.com/product/128mb-ox64-sbc-available-on-decem...) or the Duo series from MilkV (https://milkv.io/duo) for breakout boards and development boards.

klipklop
A dream device for 486 and pentium laptop enthusiasts. Got in line to get one.
vyr
this looks sick as hell. i wonder whether there are viable NE2000 drivers for PowerBooks running classic Mac OS? modern WiFi (even limited by PCMCIA) might be preferable to era-appropriate WiFi. not much you can get an Orinoco card to talk to these days if you can even find one.
tssva
If you have a PowerBook with SCSI support you can use a BlueSCSI v2. Besides emulating SCSI storage devices it can emulate a Dynaport SCSI/Link network device to allow wifi connectivity for Macs running classic Mac OS. https://bluescsi.com/docs/WiFi-DaynaPORT
netrap
Awesome !!

I have an old Thinkpad and had a similar idea for wifi, but I was thinking about MiniPCI.

Emulating NE2000 is great :)

kfarr
TIL the Newton had a PCMCIA slot!
_whiteCaps_
I had a small bugfix in a PCMCIA driver for the Linux kernel, and I was thinking the other day that nobody uses it any more. But I guess they still are!
chem83
I love this project. It will bring great audio to a bunch of Pentium-era laptops and essentially expand this list: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpd2CM3_384.

Problem with them, for the most part, will be about rebuilding the batteries and dealing with the poor quality of old screens.

agentifysh
tangent but inspired by this: what about a retro-console development board? like saturn or playstation, would that be hard to do?

obviously this is way over my head, would be great if LLMs can help noobs

jdabney
I think this is something like that, https://github.com/webhdx/PicoBoot. RP2040 for the Gamecube. Mostly they are using it for booting homebrew but I don't see why you couldn't edit the code and do anything you want with it.