EEVblog #1028 - What's All This PC/104 Stuff Anyhow?

Forget Arduino & Raspberry Pi being the embedded platform computing standards, PC/104 has reigned supreme for over 25 years and is still THE industrial embedded computing standard.
Dave boots up a 17 year old 80386SX PC-104 board with Disk On Chip flash drive. Well, after a lot of frustration anyway.
And does anyone remember ThunderByte anti-virus?

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[aatheus]

I remember PC/104. Arduino and Raspberry Pi weren't the first, but they were the first affordable ones. PC/104 was sold at industrial prices, that's for sure.

[ANTALIFE]

So that's what the random PCB sitting on my desk for the past 2 years is...

[dialupdavid]

Dave, this video is amazing. I highly recommend more content like this.. These vintage machines are incredibly cool. Thank you so much for posting this!

[ElmerFuddGun]

5:34 - Never trusted specs from a company that uses "Mhz" instead of "MHz"...

[ashwinnarayanVlog]

I use these in my lab with real-time Linux for controlling robots! Very expensive but amazing performance compared to things like the Raspberry Pi! This is mainly because SBCs like the Raspberry Pi do not have their PCI / ISA buses broken out. You get them with high performance CPUs like the Intel Atom.

[kevincozens]

Thanks for the trip down memory lane. I haven't thought about PC/104 for many a year. I didn't ever work with these devices but I remember reading about them a lot back when I used to read BYTE magazine. Back in the day the size of the boards was made to fit on the back of 5 1/4" floppy disk drives.

[PlasmaHH]

I love how the battery holder sits halfway over the chip ^^

Also next year there will be the question why the new µCurrent uses PS/2 connectors...

[MkmeOrg]

Pretty happy to have the massive Arduino community, access to my fav $3 Nanos and the option to go to a full Linux system for under $10. Good times these days. Cheers.

[FolixOrision]

Great video. I'm a Software Engineer. First time hearing of this stack-able system type.

[Direkin]

Oh man, I remember seeing those PC/104s in the computer arcades here. Totally forgot about those things until now.

[WouterWeggelaar]

Hi Dave,
CubeSats actually do not use the full PC/104 spec. I build CubeSats and CubesSat systems, and I have to always explain to customers it is NOT PC/104. Only the mechanical mounting holes and the connector location of the PCI variant PCI-104 is used. The electrical specs are usually violated. So CubeSat boards generally do not stack into PCI-104 stacks. they do not have the ISA bus side at all. Most bigger CubeSat vendors like us are now using other connectors to save space or improve signal integrity.

[GermanToolReviews]

I've written a lot of software for PC104 systems, they were very reliable and not cheap. They would be manufactured to IPC class 3 standards with most companies doing everything in house to control quality. These boards would go in mission critical equipment. I probably have bunch setting around that were blown up during EMI testing that were considered "unrepairable."

[saddle]

Reliability vrsus price and convenience. Most people now are trained to accept poor reliability over convenience, programmers included. I used to work on multi-user single processor databases that were designed to recover properly from any shutdown. That is, get 16 people to sit doing invoicing and throw the power switch of any any point and they would recover, without grabbing backups, OS included. Fully journaled datapaths, including journal recovery. You get what you pay for. I know it is not databasing, but you don't get that in a PI project with lots of module code written by "whoever". "Try version 1.1" or "Go back to version 0.87" type statements about fixing problems with addons or the kernel, makes me worry when people put them into machines that can hurt someone when they go wrong.

[SuperToughnut]

This video was really fun to watch! Thank you so much for taking the time. Ah the simple DOS days. Eh, kinda simple. Remember autoexec.bat? Having to tweak it?

My first computer was an IBM PC Jr. It could do color and sound. My Dad and I would spend hours typing in programs from old computer magazines. I learned so much.

Now I'm a successful senior software engineer. That pcjr was the start of it all.

Good stuff!

Thanks again!

[NetworkXIII]

Great job Dave, this video was a blast. Forgot all about the SYS command, but I'm a bit rusty on my DOS commands after 20 years.

[maddogkilla]

We use PC/104 at work. Got tons of them.

[eight-double-three]

Wow. This was actually heart-warming. I did my thesis project on a PCI-104 board. That was fun...

[Milkex]

I just wanted to say the following:

You've really sparked my interest in electronics repair/hobby!

I've gotten a $40 O-scope (GOS-622G) that had a sticker which showed it was used in a University's electronics program! (hopefully the calibrations kept it in good shape, haha). I've accrued an almost entire electronics laboratory and have been repairing loads of stuff!

I actually repaired a Wacom tablet that had been overvolted (faulty USB port), they had a previous repairman take a look at it and he completely ripped out the fuse solder pads! I made them promise to test their USB ports they would be using this device on and bypassed the fuse circuitry (they're a student so they couldn't well afford a new one!)

I adore your videos and greetings from Arkansas!

[JWH]

I have an XPS420 I use as a linux server still. Was funny seeing you still have one.

[ludz]

Absolutely amazing! I didn't know that these things still being used. My first computer was a 286. That was a very reliable technology and really makes me happy to know it stills alive. Thanks for your video!