[expressive jazz tunes] [computer buzzes, beeps]
Greetings folks, and if you’ve found yourself circling around
the same drain of vintage computer news I have,
then you’ve likely seen these things pop up in one social media feed or another.
Yeah, these weird Aliexpress retro PCs known as the Book8088 and the Hand386,
built in low quantities by a guy in China and briefly made available for purchase to anyone
with more curiosity than sense. Or, with a YouTube channel – I think half these were snapped up by
jerks like me within a day, and they’ve been sold out ever since at the time of recording. And in
hindsight I kinda wish I hadn’t bothered, since I truly don’t like covering new devices that people
no longer have the option to grab themselves. However, after a few weeks shipping I have both
the Book8088 and the Hand386, so we may as well take a closer look! Who knows maybe they’ll come
back in stock. And we’ll begin with the question of: just what the balls are these? Well they’re
not emulation boxes, you won’t find a Raspberry Pi or a lone FPGA controlling everything inside.
These are DOS PCs running on an 8088 and 386SX processor, respectively. Each system uses legacy
chips on custom PCBs inside, melded with various open source projects, off-the-shelf components,
and injection-molded enclosures. In other words, the Book8088 and Hand386 combine just about
every homebrew project in the enthusiast retro computing hobby over the past several years,
smooshed into attractive little palmtop/handheld cases. Well, somewhat attractive, those decals
are distractingly bad and I can’t force myself to look at them a moment longer. Mm, that’s better.
Anyway yeah, the components powering these computers are nothing new. But the form
factors are unusual for hardware of this vintage, basically taking this and this,
and shrinking them down into this and this. Naturally this comes at a price,
which at the time I bought them was 1399 Chinese Yuan each, or roughly 196 dollars US apiece.
So for the 8088 that included the computer itself, a little red power button, and a 12-volt power
adapter. Along with a breakout ISA extender, more on that in a bit. And this sound board,
a neat little thing containing a Yamaha OPL3, the always-welcome YMF262. As for the 386,
it came with... itself. Along with a USB power adapter and cable, and an I/O board which breaks
out PS/2 keyboard and mouse, and VGA. Rechargeable batteries were also included and already installed
in the machines, and while they aren’t immediately accessible, they're held together with Philips
head screws making disassembly simple. Also, I gotta say, the size difference between the
Book8088 and the Hand386 is way off from what I was expecting. The former is basically a netbook,
but that 386 is surprisingly small and light. Actually close in size to a floppy disk,
at 128 x 150 x 16mm, and weighing just 307 grams. Downright miniscule, to the
point where my first impression is the Hand386 is almost unusably small. Guess we’ll find out soon.
For now, let’s start with the Book8088! Effectively a Turbo
XT PC in a clamshell case. So inside it’s running an NEC V20, clocked at either 4.77 or 8MHz,
swapping between speeds by pressing Fn+F6. It also boasts the always-enough 640K system RAM,
along with 32 kilobyte CGA graphics, PC speaker output, and an AdLib-compatible sound card.
Although there is no volume control, despite these function keys. The only thing those do is mute,
eliminating all sound from both the top panel speakers, and headphone output on the side.
The systems run on a 4000mAh lithium ion battery installed inside, but that only lasts a couple
hours, so the 12-volt AC adapter is recommended. Its design falls in line with the trend of
subnotebook and palmtop PCs of the early to mid 90s, although its display and keyboard more bring
to mind the netbooks of the late 2000s. And I imagine this was due to the availability of
components. So you get a 7-inch color LCD panel at a 16:9 aspect ratio, and a generic Windows
keyboard with several keys that are useless on an MS-DOS PC. Although that “.com” button
could actually have some use in DOS considering all those COM files, but it’s disabled here,
as with all other extraneous keys. And actually the display’s aspect ratio isn’t so out of place,
considering most portable computers in the 80s used wide panels too. So I wouldn’t be
bothered with it except that, even though it’s stretching horizontally, it doesn’t
fill the whole screen vertically! So you’re left with an extra wrong aspect ratio on an already
wide display. Arguably even worse is the LCD’s unfortunate combination of dimness, reflectivity,
and narrow viewing angles. It’s one of the worst displays I’ve seen, and I’m compensating a lot
in-camera and editing to make it look decent for the rest of this video. As for the keyboard,
it’s a perfectly decent-feeling membrane thing with good key travel. No problem typing on once
you’re used to the shrunken keycaps, measuring a few millimeters smaller than full-size.
There is no mouse, not a big deal for DOS. But there’s not even a place to plug one in,
or practically anything else for that matter. It does have USB on the left-hand side,
but that’s used exclusively as a CH375B USB storage interface. This is something I’ve
covered before over on LGR Blerbs, letting you use USB flash drives in DOS, up to a certain capacity.
A nice companion to the CompactFlash interface it uses as the primary hard disk,
and is really hard to grab and remove here so leaving it in place is preferred. The machine
came with this 512MB card too, already filled with roughly 20 megs worth of operating system,
software, and games. Of entirely dubious legality. On that note...
[system starts, beeps]
Straight away here I wanna mention the BIOS, which you’ll note is labeled “Cycle Computer BIOS,
Copyright 2022 by Cycle Logic.” And it’s entirely bogus. In reality, this is the “8088 BIOS”
developed by Sergey Kiselev. An open source project that could’ve been used legitimately,
but the version included on this Book8088 has the copyright and GPL license removed,
violating its open source terms. Reportedly this has been changed for future machines,
but still. The author being removed on mine leaves a bad taste, especially when giving credit costs
nothing. On the other hand, these old copies of MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.0? Eh whatever,
Microsoft will survive. As for what you can do on here, well, it’s a Turbo XT class PC,
so. The usual stuff! I’ve covered lots of machines with similar specs already,
and honestly I think they’re great. There’s a restricted slowness to them that makes
pushing their limits enjoyable, and examples of what it can do have been playing throughout
this video. 8MHz, 640K, CGA, and an OPL chip go a surprisingly long way.
[Commander Keen Goodbye Galaxy gameplay]
[unceremonious Keen death]
Again though, that display really holds it back. It’s such a dim, abysmal image, and the fact that
it looks washed out from every angle? It just sucks. You don’t even have controls for adjusting
brightness or anything either. Either physical or through software, according to the manual
document provided to me through email. I reached out to the creator of the system about this,
and he said I could take apart the LCD and change the R3 resistor to 7.5ohm. Not something I’m gonna
do immediately but the option is better than nothing I guess. Speaking of nothing,
how about the 8088’s lack of I/O, meaning no video out to bypass that LCD. But also no joysticks,
no serial or parallel, and no keyboard connector. That being said, at least you have this:
an external ISA bus expansion board! For me, this add-on took the system from just,
“oh that’s kinda neat,” to “ooh, I have to have it.” Use a ribbon cable to connect to the PC,
plug in the same 12-volt power supply that charges it, and enjoy a trio of 8-bit ISA slots.
A good number of cards you could add to an original PC XT work great here, like sound cards,
disk controllers, I/O interfaces and so on. Adding an 8-bit Sound Blaster is possible, too. Not
that there’s much to use it with considering the 8088+CGA combination. But still, it’s neat to try!
[Sound Blaster Parrot speaking] -”Hello there! I’m a talking parrot.”
-”Welcome to the show!” [taps key] -”Go away!”
Of course, it already has a more suitable choice: that OPL3 card. Which plops into the bay on the
right, with three more sockets over on the left housing the CPU and ripped-off BIOS. That’s also
where an optional 8087 math copro would go, but I’m not doing that. Some folks state that
it runs hot to the point of concern, possible from being tightly packed in that plastic case.
Otherwise yeah, the system overall works well for what it is! The fact that it’s using legit
old chips for processors, DMA, timers, and controllers and stuff makes it amusing to
watch do its thing. Like an HP 200LX that grew up, went off to college, and came back with a
full color display. I just wish I could see that display, without waiting till daggum midnight.
So what about the Hand386 then? Obviously they took quite a different approach here,
opting for something closer to a Nintendo 2DS, or that little Pocket Popcorn computer
from a couple years back. It’s a square-ish slab of silicon and synthetic materials,
with a satisfying soft feel to the fingertips. And its 5-inch display is thankfully much better
compared to the one on the 8088, being more vibrant with wider viewing angles.
Regrettably though, that’s about where the positives end for me in terms of user experience.
While the display is better than the 8088’s, its output is unavoidably soft and wide, like some
of my best friends over the years. But unlike a friend, it’s difficult to communicate with the
Hand386, and that’s all down to its itty bitty keyboard. Now don’t get me wrong, I love a good
handheld QWERTY device. Many favorite phones over the years have had tremendous little keyboards!
But this ain’t one of ‘em. For starters, there’s a big difference between using a tiny keypad with
software optimized for a phone, and using a tiny keypad on a retro PC where nothing is optimized
for it at all. Plus, every QWERTY portable device I’ve owned had somewhat tactile keys,
but the Hand386? It’s as mushy as overcooked peas, instilling zero confidence in your typing,
not being useful for anything other than slowly pecking in commands. And there’s still no
integrated mouse, either. Thank goodness this thing actually has some ports you can plug in!
Being able to use a proper keyboard, mouse, and monitor is truly its saving grace, despite killing
portability. For storage there’s a CF interface once again, packing a 2 gig card from the get-go.
Which boots up using an American Megatrends BIOS from the mid-90s and an operating system to match:
Windows 95. For... some reason. Don’t know why it’s not DOS 6.22, this is a poor choice for a
386. Especially this one: a DM&P M6117, which is a 40MHz embedded 386SX with a 16-bit data bus,
half that of a DX chip. These are typically found in industrial single board computers, same as many
other components in these PCs. It also has 8 megabytes of RAM, and Chips & Technology
F65535 graphics with a meg of video memory, pretty good for a 386! But the rest of the
build is simply too slow for 95, so maybe that’s why it also has an install of Windows 3.0 on the
card? But that’s annoyingly restricted compared to 3.1 so it’s a confusing choice all-around.
Naturally you can install whatever you like, or stick to pure DOS mode. And in DOS things
work just fine for a 40MHz 386! Albeit one without turbo, so games like Bubble Ghost or
Test Drive III coded for a slower 386 will run too fast. Unless using slowdown software, disabling
cache or what have you. And on the flipside of speed, games from 1993 and beyond mostly run like
sludge. So it’s best to choose games from that in-between sweet spot. Titles like Duke Nukem
II and Wolfenstein 3D function well, there’s ample speed for early 90s EGA and VGA gaming.
[Wolfenstein 3D gameplay]
Sad to say the Hand386 lacks Sound Blaster compatibility though, so it’s AdLib and PC
speaker only. And there’s still no physical volume controls for the speakers or headphones, what
the heck? You can at least add a Sound Blaster using another one of those $20 ISA bus extenders,
but these aren’t 16-bit slots, so using it also means being limited to 8-bit ISA capabilities.
But yeah, it’s the fact that you can do this at all that’s so appealing,
without needing a huge docking station as we often did with expandable portables in the 90s.
And that’s about it for these funky little Aliexpress portable PCs! And boy,
they sure are an odd mixture of skillful engineering, compromised hardware,
and sketchy software being used. I’d find it difficult to recommend either one of them at $200,
presuming they go up for sale again in the future. They’re cool for a weekend of messing about,
but beyond that? They seem more like a proof of concept for cramming legacy hardware into a small
form factor, rather than finalized products in and of themselves. Weirdly enough the Book8088 is the
system that’s more “usable,” so to speak, due to its keyboard and size. While also being less
useful due to its slower speed, bad display, and lack of ports. And the Hand386 has more potential
for use, being the faster machine with more I/O. But as a portable, it’s also the worse experience.
If only the two were mashed together to create a 386 PC in a clamshell case with more ports,
then you’d have something awesome. Or more accurately, you’d have something like the
Palmtop PCs from the ‘90s. Such as the IBM PC110, exactly the type of thing I’d rather use.
It’s sadly super rare and expensive though, so how about a Toshiba Libretto? Models like the 50CT can
still be purchased for between $150 to $200, and not only do you get a nice keyboard and more I/O,
but also a 75MHz Pentium, 32 megs of RAM, and a 6-inch 4:3 LCD that looks great for its
age. Clearly, vintage machines aren’t getting any younger, caps and displays are failing, batteries
are kaput and so on. But if your aim is to have a capable little DOS PC for two hundred bucks?
A 90s original is worth considering. Though I will admit these Aliexpress systems are fun to
experiment with as a retro tech obsessed weirdo. I love the base concept here, repurposing old
chips and creating something new with them. They really need more time in the oven to address the
concessions and oversights, but they’re still nifty little gizmos! Just make sure you know
what to expect, or more importantly – what not to expect. Cuz there’s a lotta trade-offs here.
[jazz music plays over AdLib game sounds]
And if you happen to have one of these lemme know your thoughts! Or if you
don't and have questions leave ‘em in the comments. Either way, there are always new
LGR videos in the works so I hope you stick around. And of course, thanks for watching!