New arrival: Amstrad Mega PC 386SX

This is the first ever post in the inblog, I am a huge fan of gaming and emulation in general but specifically MAME and its sister project MESS. This blog will log my latest arrivals to my collection of obsolete and ancient computers and consoles. All of which will be dumped to aid their emulation. :)


This beast arrived yesterday, Its the Amstrad Mega PC 386SX an IBM-compatible PC with a difference. It contains an entire Sega Megadrive on an ISA card.

Powered by an Intel i386SX running at 25 MHz. It has 1 MB of RAM and a 40 MB Seagate hard drive, not bad for 1992!

I found mine on eBay, sold as broken and very cheap. I snapped it up thinking I could just replace a resistor and muck around with it until I got into DOS and then dump its BIOs using debug. I was overly optimistic...


This is the site that greated me when I removed the case:


A leaky NiCad has eaten its way though the tracks, No worries, I bought it as broken and the interesting bits ;) are pristine, namely the BIOs roms and the ISA card.

As I couldn't power up the board (nevermind make it into DOS, heh) Im going to have to dump the BIOs roms the harder way. Thankfully they are nicely socketed :)


As I don't have an EPROM programmer I went shopping and found that most EPROM programmers are stupidly overpriced. After a recommendation I found http://www.mcumall.com/ and picked up a EasyPRO 90B USB Universal EPROM Programmer not a very catchy name but it supports over 6000 devices! Also it doesn't come with a financially crippling pricetag. While I wait for my programmer to battle is way though the postal strike I think I'll make myself a Guru certified Chip-Clip^TM