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Pocket 386

OrangeTide said:
Sell it on eBay for a whole lot less than what I paid. I don't know it.
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You could actually probably get back what you paid for it less shipping, especially if you write up a nice description of how you bought it, used it, the things you liked about it, etc. They are being listed on eBay for the same price.
 
OrangeTide said:
Power cycling will leave you back to the last value you set the RTC's time.
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Is it literally to the second the last time it was when you set the DOS date/time? To me that sounds like the 32khz clock crystal that should be driving the hardware RTC isn't working. (I'm fairly certain that in AT-class machines the time/date in DOS is maintained independently to the hardware RTC the same way it is in XTs, IE, by counting clock timer interrupts; the only time it touches the RTC is when it's read on bootup and any time it's explicitly set.)
 
Eudimorphodon said:
Is it literally to the second the last time it was when you set the DOS date/time? To me that sounds like the 32khz clock crystal that should be driving the hardware RTC isn't working. (I'm fairly certain that in AT-class machines the time/date in DOS is maintained independently to the hardware RTC the same way it is in XTs, IE, by counting clock timer interrupts; the only time it touches the RTC is when it's read on bootup and any time it's explicitly set.)
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Yup. That's what I see. I think the oscillator isn't running at all. It could be the crystal or it could be something complicated from the rather sketchy looking power circuit for the RTC. When I'm not incredibly swamped with real life nonsense, I'd like to get an oscilloscope on it and eliminate or confirm some of our guesses.
 
polpo said:
Yep, using the Femto style card. I’d like to build more to sell due to the increased interest due to the release of the Pocket 386, but I do worry about people blaming it for losing their CMOS settings. But it seems like people are losing their settings anyway, regardless of what’s plugged in.
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PLEASE make more of the Femto Edition!
I've been waiting for a new batch for weeks. Imho, this is the biggest flaw of the Pocket386 (not having digital audio).

As you said, the device loses cmos settings anyway. Mine does it eratically and very frequently, even without any isa cards installed.

If you need someone for testing, I volunteer immediately :)
 
By the way, for anyone, who is as frustrated as I am, having to disable the floppy drive and to enable mouse support every single time after a cmos-reset, I have attached a modified bios (made using AMIBCP).

This one includes:
- Floppy disabled by default
- Mouse support enabled by default
- All "hidden" settings visible, however, I don't know if they do much. Feel free to test.

Use at your own risk. I don't know, which tool is appropriate for flashing, I ended up taking the chip out and using a programmer, so again, please be careful.
 

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I got a Pocket386, honestly it's terrible in most aspects. I mean, the keyboard is cramped, you can't do much of anything with it, I mean it suffices for playing Wolf3D, I figured it would be a fun little productivity machine. it seems to have the penchant to take itself out. I dunno if it doesn't have low voltage protection on the chips, or what but it seems letting the battery die risks nuking the system.

The installation of Windows 95 seems odd, but I think it was done purely for Fat32 support, and not meant to be used. I tried installing Office 95 and it took an hour and a half. It's just there. Better than the jank DOS 7.1 standalone I guess. I was going to do a DOS 6.22 install and put 3.1 on there, and decided against it.

Honestly, it's a good idea but it needs much better execution. Maybe widen it a few inches to accommodate a bigger keyboard, add a better power system so the system doesn't wreck itself if the battery goes low, and it would be a better product overall.
 
tgotr said:
ITX would be preferable to me, or one of those mini PCs.
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ITX fits in an ITX tower, so I'd take it, but ITX won't mount very many expansion cards. And really that's what attracts me most. Would like something with onboard VGA, then let me add my own everything else.
 
hunterjwizzard said:
ITX fits in an ITX tower, so I'd take it, but ITX won't mount very many expansion cards. And really that's what attracts me most. Would like something with onboard VGA, then let me add my own everything else.
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I dunno how hard it would be to mount this board in a PC chassis and maybe adapt the ISA break out to a backplane or even mount the ISA adapter in a case. It has onboard VGA already.
 
tgotr said:
I dunno how hard it would be to mount this board in a PC chassis and maybe adapt the ISA break out to a backplane or even mount the ISA adapter in a case.
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The onboard power supply and clock circuitry seems to be suspect at best, it would make way more sense to just make a clean motherboard. After reading the datasheet for the SoC and seeing how little there actually is to the schematics of the Pocket 386 I would optimistically chuck out there the suggestion that it's just a matter of someone doing the work to lay it out.

(Per my previous commentary it looks like an interesting feature of this SoC is it can actually take more RAM than a normal 386sx, up to 64MB. If you could find a source for the apropos EDO DRAMs it could make for an interesting machine to run DOS multitaskers like DesqView on with more breathing room than any mere mortal would have had in 1990.)
 
Eudimorphodon said:
The onboard power supply and clock circuitry seems to be suspect at best, it would make way more sense to just make a clean motherboard. After reading the datasheet for the SoC and seeing how little there actually is to the schematics of the Pocket 386 I would optimistically chuck out there the suggestion that it's just a matter of someone doing the work to lay it out.

(Per my previous commentary it looks like an interesting feature of this SoC is it can actually take more RAM than a normal 386sx, up to 64MB. If you could find a source for the apropos EDO DRAMs it could make for an interesting machine to run DOS multitaskers like DesqView on with more breathing room than any mere mortal would have had in 1990.)
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Think there would be a way to put a 486 based SOC on the board?
 
tgotr said:
I dunno how hard it would be to mount this board in a PC chassis and maybe adapt the ISA break out to a backplane or even mount the ISA adapter in a case. It has onboard VGA already.
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Two problems with that: 1) as mentioned the thing is a nightmare; and 2)most of that $219 price tag is the case, screen, battery, and keyboard - all things I sincerely do not need.

Eudimorphodon said:
(Per my previous commentary it looks like an interesting feature of this SoC is it can actually take more RAM than a normal 386sx, up to 64MB. If you could find a source for the apropos EDO DRAMs it could make for an interesting machine to run DOS multitaskers like DesqView on with more breathing room than any mere mortal would have had in 1990.)
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See now this would also be really cool. Unnecessary. But very cool.
 
OrangeTide said:
My experience with the Pocket 386 is that it has a useless RTC.

1. Entering BIOS setting will reset the clock to 1948
2. Using date/time from the DOS command line will report the time from the last time you set it.
3. Power cycling will leave you back to the last value you set the RTC's time.
4. Glitches, multiple reboots, turning the power button on/off/on really fast can all wipe the CMOS NVRAM and time/date.

I didn't look at the schematics, but I've been in charge of RTC silicon bring-up in another chip (ARM) and this behaves like it has incorrectly powered the wrong rails and possibly violates the power rail sequencing for the RTC. It's retaining the CMOS and RTC but not running the RTC oscillator.

When I run the date/time commands above. This may be showing the timer interrupt counter rather than reading from RTC each time. I don't know DOS 7 internals well enough to say which. But at some point during DOS start up, it had read the RTC correctly.

There's a lot I like about the Pocket 386. And I enjoyed playing games on it. But I think overall I made a mistake in buying it. I also have a v1 Book 8088 and I preferred the larger keyboard of the Book 8088. The display on the Pocket 386 is heads and shoulders above the v1, and it's not even because I'm dealing with CGA. It's sharper and brighter. And the serial/parallel interfaces on the 8088v2 is especially appealing to me, because I think an ESP8266/ESP32 based fake wifi "modem" would be a real treat on this. I could "dial up" to one of the many online BBSes.

I imagine that the RTC issues are fixable with some rewiring with a soldering iron and patch wires. But is it even worth anyone's time to fix it? Should I gut it and try to upgrade my 8088v1's LCD. Sell it on eBay for a whole lot less than what I paid. I don't know it.
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If it operates like a real PC, DOS reads the RTC only once at boot up and then keeps track of the time and date itself in reserved RAM locations using interrupts. Using the TIME and DATE commands to read the time and date will use the current DOS values from the RAM locations rather than the RTC chip's registers. However, using TIME and DATE to reset the time and date will update the RTC registers and re-read them into the DOS locations. If the RTC chip isn't being powered properly, it might either reset its registers or keep the last values set.
 
The fix for the RTC problem is to remove R38 (next to the M6117D). Schematics say this should be NC, but it was installed on mine. Clock started working correctly after I removed it.
 
nallwolf said:
The fix for the RTC problem is to remove R38 (next to the M6117D). Schematics say this should be NC, but it was installed on mine. Clock started working correctly after I removed it.
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OK, I will try it and reply back. Does it also resolve the other CMOS option save issues? thx
 
sampson said:
OK, I will try it and reply back. Does it also resolve the other CMOS option save issues? thx
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I haven't had any issues with CMOS settings outside of time stuff before fixing the RTC. It does reset if you let the rechargeable battery die or go too low, but that's expected since it uses it for CMOS too instead of having a dedicated CMOS battery
 
Has anyone had issues when using an external mouse and trying to play Wolfenstein 3D or Doom on the Pocket 386? Using WASD and the mouse, the character will continue moving even after I stop holding the key. I've tried multiple different mouses and had the same issue, though it seems more like a keyboard issue.
 
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