S80186: 16-bit 80186 compatible IP core

Wow, trip down memory lane. My &quot;starter&quot; project when I joined Intel out of college was to be the Systems Validation engineer for the 80186. Unlike the 8086 it was this new fangled thing called a &quot;system on chip&quot; (SoC) which of course is what nearly everything is these days. And because Intel chose the peripherals to put &quot;on chip&quot; as it were they picked the ones they liked, and Microsoft obligingly wrote a version of MS-DOS that could use those peripherals. Critically though, they were <i>not</i> exactly like the set of peripherals the IBM PC used so while it was &quot;cheaper&quot; to put all the interface chips together with the CPU (saving power, board real estate, and time) it meant using the chip would never be &quot;FlightSimulator&quot; compatible (where MS Flight Sim was considered the acid test of whether or not a clone was a clone.). So much commercial software bypassed the BIOS and wrote directly to the peripherals that the 80186 never became very popular in the commercial sector. It did however have a pretty strong military presence and a lot of the customers who sent in bug reports would decline to describe their systems :-)

Have a look at: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;zet.aluzina.org&#x2F;index.php&#x2F;Zet_processor" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;zet.aluzina.org&#x2F;index.php&#x2F;Zet_processor</a> which can actually run Dune 2: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;zet.aluzina.org&#x2F;images&#x2F;b&#x2F;bd&#x2F;Vga-4.jpg" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;zet.aluzina.org&#x2F;images&#x2F;b&#x2F;bd&#x2F;Vga-4.jpg</a> and more <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;zet.aluzina.org&#x2F;index.php&#x2F;Pictures" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;zet.aluzina.org&#x2F;index.php&#x2F;Pictures</a> like MS Windows 3.0, MS DOS 6.22 etc. This runs on an older Altera DE1 (Cyclone III-based) board

This is pretty cool. A PC with an 80186 CPU is a little weird, though; I don&#x27;t think many of those actually existed. It seems like virtually everybody went straight from 8086 to 80286

Pretty cool as a design like this should be able to better preserve old system behavior than what DOSBox etc. can achieve.<p>Although it seems a bit slow side at 50 MHz, I guess it&#x27;s not a pipelined design?<p>Not that original 80186 was pipelined either. :)

So neat. I was working on this exact thing at this exact time too. The massive draw for me was working with some companies that have a reliance on PC and PC&#x2F;XT workstations with tight hardware resources and needing a simple way to swap out machines. Things like KM4821U memory (and several compatibles) are becoming harder to come by.<p>I&#x27;d love to merge some of my work in if I can find some spots. I truly believe that simply getting a new piece of compatible hardware is just as good as the option of upgrading your software and hardware. Just because we&#x27;re all on 64-bit platforms doesn&#x27;t mean that the shop down the street using needs to use it for their POS&#x27; either.<p>Also of tangential relation to this, but my old IBM PC with a 80186 a few years ago finally lost its 6V Lithium battery. I called IBM at that time, referenced 8286121 as the IBM replacement number on the front, and for a bit of money, they sent me a new-old-stock one. I was really blown away.

I just had a play going through the source and adding support for a board of my own, and if OP is reading this, I want to share my appreciation for how well this project is laid out. A lot of hardware projects are sort of spaghetti dishes, but this one is very well laid out, tested very well, and feels very clean to work with. Because this helps me with something I&#x27;m working on, I wanted to express my gratitude for that.<p>Thanks :)

&gt; Intel Cyclone V<p>That&#x27;s still weird to see; it&#x27;s kind of like AMD Radeon was for a few years.

Next186 is a similar older project. It even has OPL sound<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;opencores.org&#x2F;project,next186_soc_pc" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;opencores.org&#x2F;project,next186_soc_pc</a>

Very very cool.<p>Boys and girls, <i>this</i> is how you do a resume. :)