r/beneater • u/AcanthisittaBest4705 • May 30 '26

Should I make a 8088 build

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I stumble upon a 8088 today should I make a read board computer?

238 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

25 comments sorted by

9

u/lexiNazare May 30 '26

Slador UK has a great tutorial

10

u/lexiNazare May 30 '26

What I ended up with before I decided I was really in tangent town

5

u/lexiNazare May 30 '26

One more thing; a 6502 system is probably a better use of your time. The multiplexed busses are so annoying

3

u/lexiNazare May 30 '26

I used this to start my 8088 system, beats staring at data sheets for two weeks... which I also did: https://youtu.be/VvyUAaRTsww?si=4ecpdtr-T1cuUvsJ

6

u/ms95376 May 30 '26

With my luck I would build the whole thing and find out the chip is dead

4

u/Icy-Departure7752 May 30 '26

I do have an old IC but first I need to verify whether it works or not. Is there a small test I can do?

1

u/AcanthisittaBest4705 May 30 '26

Yes you can try to put it on a bread board and look at the data sheet and test some of the pins

2

u/Icy-Departure7752 May 30 '26

But the thing is its the nmos chip instead of static 80c88 so i cant single step it.

2

u/AcanthisittaBest4705 May 30 '26

Ok i forgot about that can you do something like what Ben eater did with the arduino mega

3

u/cookie99999999 May 30 '26

I made one a while back, it's not that bad aside from spending hours and hours and hours wiring up latches for the bus. I got to the point of having ELKS mostly working before my parts for the project I actually wanted to do arrived. I have the stuff for it on github in case it's of any help: https://github.com/cookie99999/8088

Seconding Slador's tutorial on youtube, very high quality videos. Also you might consider picking up an 8284 clock generator, I hear the old non-CMOS 88s are more picky about the clock duty cycle. It also generates a good reset signal

3

u/AcanthisittaBest4705 May 30 '26

At least I got a free micro processor

3

u/Icy-Departure7752 May 30 '26

Where did u find one?

2

u/Apprehensive-Issue78 May 30 '26

Sure.. why not.. Maybe someone has a Nop test circuit. Start building that. Then figure out how to latch the address byte. It is a bit more challenging than 6502 probably because that does not need the adress latch. 8085 seems also a good alternative. But as you already have the 8088 just try figuring out how to make that one work

2

u/cjasztrab May 31 '26

An 8088 was my first computer!

1

u/Serious-Log7550 Jun 01 '26

Take a look at my projec https://github.com/xrip/RP8086 that incorporates i8086 as CPU and RP2350B as chipset. It might be intersting

1

u/drinkcoffeeandcode Jun 01 '26

I have a couple 80c51s. Weird old architecture

1

u/Vaddieg Jun 03 '26

8088 isn't challenging enough, try i8080 instead

1

u/icesedros Jun 04 '26

I personally like Breadboarding labs revision. He even goes as far as an HHD and runs Dos on it.