Intel Terminates X86S Initiative After Formation Of New Industry Group

Although the world of the X86 instruction set architecture (ISA) and related ecosystem is often accused of being ‘stale’ and ‘bloated’, we have seen a flurry of recent activ…

A Modern PC With A Retro OS

Despite the rise of ARM processors in more and more computers from embedded systems to daily driver PCs, the x86 architecture maintains a stronghold in the computing space that won’t be going…

Reverse-Engineering The AMD Secure Processor Inside The CPU

On an x86 system the BIOS is the first part of the system to become active along with the basic CPU core(s) functionality, or so things used to be until Intel introduced its Management Engine (IME)…

A 64-bit X86 Bootloader From Scratch

For most people, you turn on your computer, and it starts the operating system. However, the reality is much more complex as [Thasso] discovered. Even modern x86 chips start in 16-bit real mode and…

Comparing X86 And 68000 In An FPGA

[Michael Kohn] started programming on the Motorola 68000 architecture and then, for work reasons, moved over to the Intel x86 and was not exactly pleased by the latter chip’s perceived shortc…

A System Board For The 8008

Intel processors, at least for PCs, are ubiquitous and have been for decades. Even beyond the chips specifically built by Intel, other companies have used their instruction set to build chips, incl…

BASIC Classroom Management

While we don’t see it used very often these days, BASIC was fairly revolutionary in bringing computers to the masses. It was one of the first high-level languages to catch on and make compute…

Why X86 Needs To Die

As I’m sure many of you know, x86 architecture has been around for quite some time. It has its roots in Intel’s early 8086 processor, the first in the family. Indeed, even the original …

Wandering Through Old Word Processors Yields A Beast

The world once ran on hardcopy, and when the digital age started to bring new tools and ways of doing things, documents were ripe for change. Today, word processors and digital documents are so ubi…

How to Run Android Apps in Linux Without an Emulator

Follow this guide and learn how to run Android apps in Linux with WayDroid. You can get faster performance and install any APK on Linux PCs.

Emulating X86 On Apple’s AARCH64 X64 Emulator

You might know [Evan Martin] as the developer of retrowin32. It’s a Windows and x86 emulator designed to run on a Mac or on the web. He’s recently been exploring how to run 32-bit x86 b…

BIOS POST Card Built Using Raspberry Pi Pico

A computer’s BIOS includes basic diagnostic tools for troubleshooting issues. Often, we rely on the familiar beeps from the POST system for this reason. However, error codes are also availabl…

Intel Suggests Dropping Everything But 64-Bit From X86 With Its X86-S Proposal

In a move that has a significant part of the internet flashing back to the innocent days of 2001 when Intel launched its Itanium architecture as a replacement for the then 32-bit only x86 architect…

A Cycle-Accurate Intel 8088 Core For All Your Retro PC Needs

A problem faced increasingly by retrocomputer enthusiasts everywhere is the supply of chips. Once a piece of silicon goes out of production its demand can be supplied for a time by old stock and se…

Tiny Pinball Machine Also Runs X86 Code

As arcades become more and more rare, plenty of pinball enthusiasts are moving these intricate machines to their home collections in basements, garages, and guest rooms. But if you’re not for…

Homebrew An OS From Scratch? Snowdrop Shows How It’s Done

Ever wondered what it would take to roll your own OS? [Sebastian]’s Snowdrop OS might just provide you with some insight into that process, and maybe even some inspiration. [Sebastian] create…

AVX-512: When The Bits Really Count

For the majority of workloads, fiddling with assembly instructions isn’t worth it. The added complexity and code obfuscation generally outweigh the relatively modest gains. Mainly because com…