RetroBrew Computers Wiki

Welcome to the RetroBrew Computers (RBC) website/wiki. This site is a place for hobbyists, tinkerers, and makers of all types to share information and designs for homebrew computers. Many of the designs have a “retro” flair, but computers of all types are welcome here!

Our wiki is “under construction” while we move over from our legacy location.

Special thanks to all of the members who are currently working to re-build the new wiki. Your efforts are greatly appreciated by everyone in the community!

The RetroBrew Computers Forum is available for community discussion.

To get edit access to this wiki & posting access to the forum, complete the user registration form on this wiki and then send an email to admin@retrobrewcomputers.org requesting edit/forum access. You should receive a response within 24-48 hours granting access.

There are five main types of computer designs that you will find on this website:

1. Single Board Computers

- self contained boards which are complete computers on their own

1. EuroCard Bus Backplanes, Processor, I/O, Memory, and Accessory Cards

- boards which form a system using the EuroCard Bus

1. S-100 Bus Backplanes, Processor Cards, and I/O Cards

- boards which form a system using the S-100 Bus

1. ISA Bus Backplanes, Processor Cards, and I/O Cards

- boards which form a system using the ISA Bus

1. Other

- Utility boards that can be used in multiple systems

Note that some of the single board computers may also have bus connections allowing them to be used both on their own and with one of the buses. Where this is possible, the card should be listed on both wiki category pages.

Software projects for the various boards can be found in the sections below:

1. Board Firmware & OS Distributions (including BIOS-type routines, OSes built into ROM & running off of disk, and any other software that runs out of ROM)
2. Application Software (including applications, games, utilities - anything that runs on top of an OS or inside an environment like ROM BASIC)

For projects that are still in the initial 'brainstorming' or 'Alpha' state, there is a separate Development section. This section is mainly for boards that meet one or all of the following criteria:

• Have limited distribution to a small group of testers
• May require significant corrections to hardware errata - traces that need to be cut, patches, or subsystems that may not even work properly
• Are 'stepping stone' boards on the path to a final design that has not been completed or (may never be completed!)

Individual community members wishing to document their board builds, experimentation, etc for the group may create an individual “namespace” under their user name located within the “builderpages” Wiki namespace. For a list of all such namespaces, please click here. Instructions on how to add yourself are located on the page as well.

For a list of currently available boards and who they can be purchased from, please visit the Board Inventory Page. Alternatively, the Electronic Design Automation (EDA) files for many of the boards can be found on the site and builders can order boards from the PCB fabrication vendor of their choice.

Non-board-specific tips on sourcing components, building up boards, HOWTOs, tutorials, information on 'special topics' like retro BBSes, etc can be found at Build Tips (note to wiki users - please place board specific information within the respective board namespaces. Thanks!)

The following archives of the legacy discussion groups & wiki are available (see “Historical Note” below).

• Static HTML archive of discussions from the N8VEM Google Group with corresponding Google Custom Search Page
• Static HTML archive of discussions from the N8VEM-S100 Google Group with corresponding Google Custom Search Page
• N8VEM PBWiki Archive with corresponding Google Custom Search Page

A significant portion of the work that went into the board designs and information on this site was done by Andrew Lynch as part of his “N8VEM” projects. Andrew L has moved on to other things in life and requested that we discontinue the use of the “N8VEM” designation (which is his amateur radio callsign), but we all thank him for his effort in getting the ball rolling. As a result of the migration from the prior wiki, this site is currently “under construction” as board information, files, and other data are migrated into the new website structure.

Documentation for the DocuWiki software used to create this site can be found here. Please review the syntax page prior to editing the wiki.

In the most general sense, new pages are added to the wiki be creating a link to them on an existing page (which wil then show up in red underlines), clicking on the red underlined link, and then clicking the “create page” button on the “This page has not yet been created” page that pops up.

The pages on this wiki have been divided into a number of nested “namespaces” for future organizational purposes. Please maintain this structure as new pages are added. This structure can be seen on the navigation sidebar on the left hand side of each page. Within the board type namespaces, each board should be given its own namespace to allow Media Files related to that board to be uploaded into a centralized location. A 'template' page for a new board page is provided here and can be copied and pasted into a new page. For an example of a board page that has been migrated over to this new wiki, see the 6x0x-ATX-6U page.

The CKGEdit plug-in has been installed to provide a WYSIWYG editor. The original text-based markup editor can be accessed with the button next to 'Save' on the edit page, which switches between the two editors. (DKW Edit = switch to standard DokuWiki editor, CKG Edit = switch to CKG Editor)

The following plug-ins which extend the DokuWiki syntax are installed on this wiki:

• The filelist plug-in can create lists of the media files in a given namespace, and is used on many board information pages to list available files
• The note plug-in creates distinct “notes”, including warnings, tips, etc on wiki pages
• The indexmenu plug-in creates a browsable tree index of wiki namespaces
• The gallery plug-in creates image galleries from the photos in a namespace
• The keyboard plug-in allows for text in pages to be designated as 'keypresses' such as CTRL + ALT + DEL.

• 11/11/15 - Tweaked settings so nav bar shows up to public non-logged in viewers. Installed custom plugin to fix wiki new user password and password reset emails.
• 11/10/15 - Set wiki to publicly view-able.
• 11/07/15 - Added note plug-in. Set front page (only) to publicly viewable.
• 10/31/15 - Enabled uploads for all file extensions used on the prior wiki, with the exception of .htm, .html, and .mhl.