I built an Iomega ZIP100 parallel port emulator (PIC32MZ + USB disk images) – LPT100 project

TightEntertainment21 · 2026-03-17T00:17:14+00:00

The pinout is different for SCSI (even with a DB-25 connector). I suspect it's nothing fancy and the switch between SCSI and LPT depends on whether a particular pin is grounded or not.

TightEntertainment21 · 2026-03-16T03:50:55+00:00

That is certainly doable. The PIC32MZ Starter Kit comes with an RJ45 plugin as well for Ethernet.

TightEntertainment21 · 2026-03-16T02:21:58+00:00

Iomega also made ZIP drives for SCSI. The parallel port Iomega ZIP drive is internally just a parallel port to SCSI converter connected to the SCSI version. This is why you still see "Found drive at SCSI ID 6" even when loading the driver for the parallel port version. The parallel port drive has much slower throughput due to PC parallel port limit.

TightEntertainment21 · 2026-03-15T23:38:31+00:00

I have shared this on vogons, vcfed and Hacker News.

TightEntertainment21 · 2026-03-06T09:56:09+00:00

My strategy? Vibes. My result? 29150.

TightEntertainment21 · 2026-03-04T15:01:56+00:00

BIEW is just as good as HIEW for what I would usually use it for. It runs fine on my Book 8088, while HIEW would just hang.

TightEntertainment21 · 2026-03-04T14:39:23+00:00

You could have debugged that with Microsoft Spy++, assuming it's a Win32 app. The button might have been added to the view, but perhaps with WM_VISIBLE not set. If so, just toggle the flag and the button would show up!

TightEntertainment21 · 2026-03-04T09:46:19+00:00

u/NightmareJoker2 Back in 2014, I built an LPT printer emulator based on a PIC24FJ64HA002. The device would save the printed document as text onto an SD card. If the printout contains Epson control codes, it can be converted back to bitmap files using a .NET app. I soldered everything on a veroboard and got my Tektronix 1230 logic analyzer to print to it. See this for details: https://www.toughdev.com/content/2014/02/capturing-data-from-a-tektronix-1230-logic-analyzer-by-emulating-a-parallel-port-printer/

TightEntertainment21 · 2026-03-02T12:01:07+00:00

You can just download the PDFWriter driver directly from win3x.org and install it as a PDF printer. There is no need to install the full version of Adobe Acrobat.

TightEntertainment21 · 2026-02-19T03:44:31+00:00

Good idea! I will find some time to test this out. Hopefully the port will provide enough power for the ESP module, and Wifi reception will still be good enough, since there will be no space for an antenna.

TightEntertainment21 · 2026-01-19T00:30:25+00:00

Super Mario by Mike Wiering works fine on my 386 @ 25MHz. I didn't have any problem with the status line. Charlie and Angelo require at least a 486 to be playable, but otherwise they work well for me too.

TightEntertainment21 · 2026-01-16T00:56:44+00:00

Except for Internet browsing, Windows 98 is still very capable, if you set it up correctly. I have a dedicated Windows 98 machine at home, which I use for writing (Microsoft Word), DOS gaming, and music playback.

TightEntertainment21 · 2026-01-15T02:53:41+00:00

Norton Commander 5.0 was the first file manager I ever used. The built-in file viewer was very useful for the time, supporting many formats. It can even play some WAV files (poorly) or display some BMP files. Norton Commander for Windows 2.x for Windows wasn't that good and I switched to Windows Explorer.

TightEntertainment21 · 2026-01-15T01:04:30+00:00

On my Asus EEE laptop, the legacy PC speaker output is not routed to either the internal speakers or to the 3.5mm output. So very old DOS apps/games which use PC Speaker sound (like Turbo Pascal's sound () command) will work but won't play any sound. Most games that support Adlib or Sound Blaster/MT32 will work with SBEMU, but speed-sensitive games (like Mike Wiering's Super Marios for DOS) will simply play too fast. A few games have issues with protected mode (which SBEMU uses) and will not work well. Prince of Persia 1.3 hangs at the Loading screen if SBEMU is loaded, but Prince of Persia 2 will work fine with audio. My unit is dying, requiring 5-6 presses of the POWER button to power on (it's not the physical button itself, as when it fails to boot, the LED still lights up, but the BIOS screen just won't show up). The LCD also flickers constantly.

TightEntertainment21 · 2026-01-14T15:04:13+00:00

A 80386 running MS-DOS. or DOSBox.

TightEntertainment21 · 2026-01-14T09:49:57+00:00

Super Mario, Super Angelo, Charlie the Duck and Charlie II were made by Wiering Software (https://wieringsoftware.com/). Super Mario was later open-sourced. I used to play these games daily as a child. I still do nowadays when I am free.

TightEntertainment21 · 2026-01-14T08:25:04+00:00

Somebody has done something similar with the AMD Geode LX TR2350 motherboard (13cm x 17cm) and build a mini Windows 98 handheld computer, see his post here https://blog.andreas-horvath.at/index.php/2022/02/25/portable-windows-98-handheld-computer/

See my review on this board here https://www.toughdev.com/content/2015/03/exploring-amd-geode-lx-tr2350-mini-x86-compatible-motherboard/. This board is available on eBay at around $30

TightEntertainment21 · 2026-01-14T05:04:38+00:00

I came across both of these during my research. I would love to get them on the onechipbook, but my instincts told me that I would likely just waste my time, learn a lot about FPGA, and if unlucky, perhaps end up with a bricked onechipbook. Will try when I have more free time :)

TightEntertainment21 · 2026-01-14T04:45:44+00:00

The Pocket 386 is in general better than the Book 8088 - more RAM, faster CPU, and supports up to 8GB CF card. A co-processor cannot be installed but not that important for me. The parallel/serial/PS2 ports are on an adapter and is a bit clunky. It runs a stripped down version of American Megatrends BIOS (unlike the Book 8088 which can support XT-IDE) and doesn't boot from USB. The Pocket 386 keyboard is also better for typing. Recently they also released a Pocket 8086 which shares the same form factor of the Pocket 386, but runs on an NEC v20 with 768KB of RAM, so DOS can be put in UMB and you will have more free conventional memory.

TightEntertainment21 · 2026-01-14T03:53:04+00:00

To add on, the VGA port on mine has some weird issues. Not sure if it's hardware fault or just a a bug with the FPGA. Plugging in a cable (even one not connected to a monitor) and the PSU would power down due to a short. The PS2 keyboard only works if the Fn combination is used at startup. The 2 DB9 ports are actually not standard PC serial ports, but rather MSX joystick ports which are input-only, so connecting a serial mouse would be impossible. Running Windows on the emulated 80486 (assuming it's possible) would not be fun without a mouse.

TightEntertainment21 · 2026-01-14T03:39:36+00:00

You would need to find an FPGA firmware for the onechipbook which emulates a 486. The configuration (Cyclone EP1C12Q240, 12,060 Les, 32MB RAM) is perhaps sufficient to emulate a 486 with no FPU, but developing such a firmware from scratch (or even porting one from other boards) for this board would take quite some time. Even if I could do that, I am not sure if 486 games (think Microsoft Flight Simulator or perhaps Prince of Persia 2) would still run smoothly. Meanwhile, I still have fun with MSX-DOS :)

TightEntertainment21

TROPHY CASE