Fpga Based Ibm-PC-Xt
Postedabout 2 months agoActiveabout 2 months ago
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FpgaRetro ComputingIbm PC-Xt
Key topics
Fpga
Retro Computing
Ibm PC-Xt
A developer has successfully implemented an FPGA-based clone of the original IBM PC-XT, a pioneering personal computer from the 1980s.
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- 01Story posted
Nov 14, 2025 at 3:48 PM EST
about 2 months ago
Step 01 - 02First comment
Nov 15, 2025 at 2:53 AM EST
11h after posting
Step 02 - 03Peak activity
1 comments in 11-12h
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Step 03 - 04Latest activity
Nov 15, 2025 at 2:53 AM EST
about 2 months ago
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Discussion (1 comments)
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burnt-resistor
about 2 months ago
I've been experimenting with making an IBM AT (the "braindead" 286) compatible with a real CMOS 25 MHz 286 and a real 287XLT with 16 MiB of RAM while shoving all of the BIOS ROM, bus, keyboard controller, and glue logic in an FPGA. This seems to be a more flexible and genuine approach rather than total emulation that's bound to be flawed in subtle, inauthentic, and incompatible ways. It's not completely authentic compared to a model 5170 type 3 but it aims to be most likely to offer the best performance, flexibility, and faithful reproduction of historical bugs. I try to stick to known good BIOS dumps and schematics to be sure the functionality is 1:1 identical, but may have to tweak things like wait states and such to make it work. 6 16-bit ISA and 2 8-bit ISA slots, fingers crossed. I'm thinking about using an external battery-backed RTC that's better than an MC146818 but the FPGA presents the functionality of it.
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ID: 45931998Type: storyLast synced: 11/20/2025, 1:32:57 PM
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