Hi guys! I just subscribed to the forum, and I wanted to get some feedback on a couple of ideas I have. The main one is how would you go about building a truly universal computer? What I’m thinking is to build a huge oversized motherboard (like the old 286 dev board) that size, and spaced out on the board are all the proprietary connections of the era, divided up by dip switches that control power into the respective bits. RAM would be common among all, with removable plastic bits, to accommodate the notch. (is there a voltage difference between DIMMS of the same era?) and the same for intel CPUs, the only thing is I think there should be a more robust sort of BIOS that contains a sort of auto-detect but governed by the switches as to what range is.
What do you mean by truly universal? As in, can support all architectures?
lol
yes. basically I have a large amount of old PC parts laying around, and one day I was drinking coffee at my kitchen table, and thought “what if I could use all of this stuff instead of it just laying around”?
You bring back memories of a lady I met on Ebay that wanted to join 4 identical mobo’s to build some “super PC”. She bought a board from me for the project and we remained friends for a few years but lost contact a decade ago. She never did get it to work. Her idea was to use legacy boards with similar RAM, riser cards, really didn’t understand the fact that there’s no simple way to get 4 mobo’s to communicate with each other. What I think you’re getting at is the same plan.
The OS would be anything but Windows but the main issue is getting even 2 boards to communicate, given both have CPU’s and BUS’S that even at “matched speeds” would never sync. I suppose if you had a way to make one CPU the “main” and the rest “secondary” while using the exact speeds off the primary board, it might be done??? To connect them serial ports or some kind of “daughter card” from I imagine an ISA slot? All the RAM would need to be the same architecture, meaning all PC100 or 66, you get the idea and yes most had different voltage needs. Power supplies would need to be per board, unless you found a way to daisy chain a say 500W to feed 4 legacy boards. I’m just tossing “4” in because that was her idea.
Now is any of this practical or worth the effort? Not unless you just want a side hobby of frustration or you’re a “mad scientist”, lol. An easier way to ditch the old stuff is on Ebay where there are plenty that buy the really old stuff going way back pre 70’s even. Computers have been around since the late 1930’s but were the size of a large wall and used punch cards. There was no “memory” all data was on a card with holes or slots and the “processing power” was next to nada. The first calculator would’ve had more.
i guess if you can design your own PCBs… then it sounds possible
first off, I only want to connect multiple parts to a single MOBO. But with basically ‘adapters’ for things like ram and CPUs. In my mind, I’m thinking a flat electrical plane on the mobo and the adapter would bridge the gap to the pins, and internally dictate what voltage went where. (if the CPU has pins) If not, I’m also thinking about a push pin system kind of like a child’s toy, where it’s got a bunch of steel rods, and you can push your hand in and it stays there. and yes this not a commercial endeavor. and second I’m limiting the era to 8088s. That way the RAM is either single DIPP style chips or dimms. Insofar as the power or usefulness of the machine, yes the individual machines may be weak. The true power iof the machine is in the ability to take a processor, ram, and storage of any vintage, and cobble them together into a working computer of some sort. Think post apocalyptic PC. So I want to include support for things like internet over packet radio, stuff like that. That’s why I said the included switches, would control the power distribution so that even if you needed an isolated mobo it could be physically on the same PCB. And yeah there are problems with the idea. A whole host of them, that’s why I’m asking on here.
yes very custom indeed. a one off, I imagine.
Like making a multi-boarded server?
This sounds like something a beefy FPGA card could manage without much of the hardware “fun”.
no not at all. I’m talking about one GIANT PCB, something that has universal communication through multiple eras of PC hardware.
once again, this isn’t about being convenient, or even really practical, just IF it CAN be done. And I haven’t yet decided on how to implement graphics on such a system.
There’s nothing to say that you can’t communicate with different CPUs over pci express. I think
And as for ram, you need a controller for each type of ram on die. So, the cpu and ram would have to be a paired module.
PCIe alone, is a formidable piece of hardware support, in addressing internal / external connectivity. Obvious backpedalling example being 3.0, yet operating a 1.0 era GPU
see this is the stuff right here. What’s the type of chip that controls ram typically and how has it changed over the course of “modern” PC development?
The way I’d see something like this working is you’d have a master and slave heirarchy for the CPUs. From there, you’d have the “human interface” which consists of inputs and outputs, all residing in the master node, and compute modules or other important components residing on the slaves
Master would communicate with slaves over pcie with control software, sort of like infiniband and Hadoop. Honestly, youd need a fully functioning computer (short of storage) for each slave node.
That’s an incredibly complex question.
First part, it’s called a memory controller, and a unique example is found in every different cpu architecture for as long as I can remember. Additionally, the memory controller is always found on the cpu die (it’s an integral part and cannot be removed or replaced) So basically, they cannot be shared.
Second part, I can’t even begin to speculate.
fair enough, I’m an ‘advanced’ user, and I can build modern systems, but with plug and play being in everything that means less these days. but I’m 100% self-taught, so I know I have gaps in my knowledge.
Would I be too far off for thinking that you could use the fpga’s I have mentioned to “just” load up the correct instructions and just mimmick what you need in the controller? Obviously you’d need a BIG BIOS.
In any case, this would be the mechanical version of the Necronomicon.
Yeah, the idea of separating a memory controller would require making custom CPUs, not just custom circuit boards.