Alice Averlong🏳️⚧️So my roommate bought that weird Hand386 portable PC that popped up on aliexpress. Let's tear it down (nondestructively for once, since I'm borrowing it).
first off, lemme get the spoilers out of the way: It's real, it runs DOS/Windows 95, and it can run Doom (badly) and VGAPride.
It's easy to open (this image came out blurry, but I'm just using it for navgiation)
We've got two terminal connectors on the left, plus a 3.5mm audio jack. The right has a USB port and a barrel jack power connector.
First off, the CPU. This is surprising! It's an DM&P ALi M6117D.
This is a modified version of the chip made by ALi/ULi, licensed to DM&P. ALi's chip division was bought by Nvidia in 2006.
This is a modified version of the chip made by ALi/ULi, licensed to DM&P. ALi's chip division was bought by Nvidia in 2006.
So the M6117D is a 386SX-compatible system on a chip.
It's a static 386SX Core (apparently licensed from Intel?) plus ram controller, peripheral controllers, IDE support. It runs at 25-40mhz, and up to 16 megabytes of RAM
It's a static 386SX Core (apparently licensed from Intel?) plus ram controller, peripheral controllers, IDE support. It runs at 25-40mhz, and up to 16 megabytes of RAM
Chip info here:
Also, I was wrong. Apparently it goes up to 64 megabytes of RAM:
Next to the CPU, we've got four DRAM chips. AMIC A420616AS-50F, 2-megabyte chips.
So we're looking at 8 megabytes.
So we're looking at 8 megabytes.
Then we've got our VGA chip: A Chips&Technologies 65535.
This is a fully integrated chip with built in CRT controller/flat panel support, RAMDAC, and and clocks.
It supports up to 1280x1024 resolution with enough VRAM, or 640x480 16bpp truecolor.
This is a fully integrated chip with built in CRT controller/flat panel support, RAMDAC, and and clocks.
It supports up to 1280x1024 resolution with enough VRAM, or 640x480 16bpp truecolor.
For VRAM, a Sharp LH6A4260K-60, which I'm pretty sure is a 512 kilobyte chip, but I can't be sure.
The really surprising chip is this, a Yamaha OPL3 YMF262-M...
Yeah, this thing has real OPL3 sound. Assuming this chip is genuine, of course.
Yeah, this thing has real OPL3 sound. Assuming this chip is genuine, of course.
There's two SST39SF512 half-megabyte flash chips.
The left is labeled VIDEO and the right is labeled BIOS.
The left is labeled VIDEO and the right is labeled BIOS.
Ell 🏳️⚧️@foone Delighted by the mirrored silkscreen. Wonder what happened there...maybe they were originally placed on the other side, and we ended up flipping the footprints but only changed layers for the label?
@foone Looking at how most of the traces immediately bury themselves, seems possible! And comparing with the backside, it looks like they go to internal layers (is this a 4-layer board?), and there aren't any components on the opposite side of the board "underneath" these. The board isn't terribly dense, but the rest of that half of the backside is fairly populated other than that area.