I startes taking it apart to see how's the inside.
And, #horror ! Can you see it?

#retrocomputing #dos #intel8088

It's #batterybombed 😱
A spicy #varta still inside!

A better #motherboard view before removing the battery

#retrocomputing #dos #intel8088

Uuuuh some interesting #bodgewire !
It reminds me of some old #Commodore...

I think they are from the factory. I found a photo on an auction of a board with the sane wires and components attached...

I removed the battery and trying to clean the PCB with alcohol vinegar

...GROSS! 🤢

Cleaned all the traces the better I could, it doesn't seem the acid eaten them all the way down... so I tried to follow them and test them for continuity. They seem all to be still connected 🙂

#retrocomputing #dos #intel8088

I like to test the #powersupply before connecting the motherboard, but this one doesn't seem to start. It starts for a split second and it stops immediately...

No, wait! It needs some load on the 5v rail, like a lot of the switching PSU of the era!
And, sure enough, al voltages are spot on! 5,12v and 11.99v!

Let's try to start it.
Unfortunately I don't have a CGA or MDA screen here, but what I've got is an ISA VGA card that can be set to 8 bit mode!
Let's try...

We are ready!!! Ignition?

NO. WAY.
I've got a video output and it's clearly running! It's counting memory!
It has 640k, as usual

#retrocomputing #dos #intel8088

I'm not sure if the floppy drive is 720 or 1.44, but for food measure I popped in a 720k floppy from the #amstrad ppc-640 luggable pc.
...and it reads it correctly! It's booting DOS!!!
Let's find a compatible keyboard and play something!

#retrocomputing #dos #intel8088

UH-OH.

Every time I press a key, either it doesn't do anything or it prints a bunch of unrelated characters. It also beeps a lot of times, like if the keyboard's buffer was full, but it still prints characters 🤷‍♂️
I never debugged a keyboard problem and, honestly, have no idea how an #AT #keyboard works...

#retrocomputing #dos #intel8088

@penguin86 is it really AT keyboard..?

@root42 @scruss Good point! No idea, I couldn't find a lot of documentation about this PC unfortunately...I had experience only with AT and PS/2 keyboards, so I didn't consider there was another standard with the "big" DIN connector...
I should try to follow the traces on the PCB and see if they go to some decoder IC.
How is it usually implemented? Should I search for an ad hoc IC or it's only some logic chips?

@penguin86 XT uses the same connector but different scan codes.

@root42 @penguin86 Yeah I came here to say this. It's almost certainly designed for an XT keyboard, not AT.

@spacehobo @root42
Thank you guys! Unfortunately I don't own an XT keyboard, but I can try some converter/emulators.
I.e. something like this: https://github.com/luporl/at2xtkbd
If it works, I'll find a better solution... Tomorrow I'll try!

@penguin86 the older AT keyboards had switches hidden on the bottom to select AT vs XT.

@root42 @penguin86 And sometimes if there isn’t a switch on the bottom, there’d be a jumper (or pads for one) inside on the keyboard controller.

@eschaton @root42 cool, let's see. The one I'm using right now is a pretty recent one, it has the Windows meta key, but I should have an older one, untested, in a box somewere...

@eschaton @root42 OH YEAH

I've got this flithy Eagle that seems pretty old and, sure enough... it has the switch!
I'll flip it and try it! 🤞

@eschaton @root42 OH YEAH!!! It works perfectly! Thank you guys!!!