Devices and Hardware Leftovers

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Jul 09, 2023

• Reverse-engineering the 8086 processor's address and data pin circuits

  The Intel 8086 microprocessor (1978) started the x86 architecture that continues to this day. In this blog post, I'm focusing on a small part of the chip: the address and data pins that connect the chip to external memory and I/O devices. In many processors, this circuitry is straightforward, but it is complicated in the 8086 for two reasons. First, Intel decided to package the 8086 as a 40-pin DIP, which didn't provide enough pins for all the functionality. Instead, the 8086 multiplexes address, data, and status. In other words, a pin can have multiple roles, providing an address bit at one time and a data bit at another time.

• Acorn Archimedes A5000: Restoration Part 1

  I recently acquired a new Archimedes for my collection, the A5000. It was bought mostly working, but needs a little work to get it running again. Here is my journey.

• CTL Chromeboxes feature Alder Lake and Raptor CPUs

  The CBx3 and CBx3-7 are two compact devices based on a Celeron processor from the 7000 Series and an i7-1355U 13th Gen processor respectively. These compact devices offer an array of features including Gigabit ethernet, Wi-Fi6E/BT5.3, dual HDMI ports, etc.

  As mentioned above, the CBx3 Chromebox is equipped with a Celeron P7305 processor while the CBx3-7 is powered by an Intel Core i7 processor with the following features:

• Lichee Pi 4A available with up to 16GB RAM and 128GB eMMC

  Sipeed recently launched new variants of the Lichee Pi 4A with more RAM and eMMC storage. This RISC-V based SBC comes with 2x Gigabit Ethernet ports, 4K display output and support for wireless networking.

  At the heart of the Lichee Pi 4A is the TH1520 System-on-Chip, built on a 12nm process and featuring the RISC-V 2.0G C910 quad-core architecture.