Pixel x86: A New Mini MS-DOS & Windows Gaming PC!
[smaller-than-usual jazz music] [computer buzzes, beeps] - Aw heck yeah, vintage computers! Old PCs are great, especially if you're into '90s computer gaming. It is quite often the best way to play certain titles that are tricky to run even through modern virtualization and emulation and all that. Plus it's just fun to experience how things were and mess around with the hardware and get in there and tinker around and mess around with modern home brew things. And there's just so much good stuff to enjoy with old computers. But at the same time, things are constantly in a state of iffiness. There's the aging parts and the repairs and component level failures that are going to happen eventually that you're gonna have to address.
Not to mention the scarcity increasingly so of that original hardware, especially the more sought after stuff from the '90s, plus there's the size of them when it comes to the full size desktops and even with laptops, you're still dealing with all of the other potential drawbacks that arise from using original hardware. Well, that is where projects like this come into play. The Pixel x86 series of miniature retro PCs, nearly small enough to fit in your hand, but it is not a little emulation box or anything like that. These are actually using old school hardware and old software and old operating systems and drivers and all that. It's effectively like a '90s PC, kind of a late 1997, early 1998 one in terms of performance just without a 3D accelerator.
And while it is made with a lot of recycled and new old stock components, there's a fair number of new things in here as well. Industrial stuff that is otherwise meant to be used in very boring applications and has been put to use as a neat little gaming PC. And this allows you to run pretty much everything for DOS and Windows and 3.1, 95, 98, up to about 1998 in terms of the year of release.
And just looking at it, you can tell there are some compromises. It might not have every bit of IO that the neediest '90s nerds among US desire, but with SD card storage, multiple USB ports, a 15 pin MIDI capable game port, stereo audio and VGA output, plus 10/100 ethernet. Yeah, the majority of your connectivity bases are covered provided you're prepared to plop down a peripheral or two. So what we're gonna be taking a look at here in this video are two models, the only two currently available as I'm recording this at the end of 2024 from Pixel x86. And yeah, they were both sent to me for review from the people behind it in the Czech Republic or at least that's where these two were shipped from. And while they look very similar to each other and do basically the same thing, they are rather different inside in terms of how they're laid out and what hardware they're using.
So this one right here is the first one they released, which is the DX. And this is in performance roughly equivalent to a Pentium clocked at 300 megahertz. And this one over here, this is the Mini, which performs more like a Pentium at 100 megahertz at least according to my testing. And these are offered in different cases with these right here being their lovely aluminum metal case, nice and hefty.
And I've got the engraved logo and everything. But you can also get them in a full 3D printed case if you don't want to pay as much. But as these are configured here it is 485 euros for the DX in the aluminum case, and 395 euro for the Mini in the aluminum case. And again, that goes down depending on which options you choose.
And yeah, you also might be wondering like I was, why is this called a Mini when it's practically the same size as the DX and it's wider and kind of shorter in one direction but overall they're like the same weight, they're the same thickness and everything. But yeah, this one is less performant, so I guess they just went with Mini being Mini in terms of performance. I don't know. It also uses the Mini PCI Express bus in addition to ISA for the graphics card. And in my opinion it's better thought out. So instead of having the power being on the front of the unit, it's around the back.
And it's also got two PS2s ports that are separated there instead of having to use a splitter like on the DX here, which yeah, this does come with. So that is how you get your keyboard and mouse. Yeah, overall it's just a much better designed unit in the Mini even though it costs less and is slower. When speaking of speed, let's just go ahead and take a look inside here and see what makes these things tick. And yeah, there are normally six bolts or screws on these, but I've got most of them removed because it's really annoying, the sizing on these Allen key, the hex head things, this is the only tool I have that fits this.
It's a 5/64th. [chuckles] But yeah this is the higher powered DX model right here. So these each make use of an ICOP Vortex86 system on chip. So these are industrial system modules that in this case are mounted to a custom interface board which Pixel x86 has put together here.
Basically it breaks out all of the most important I/O into full sized ports. And then really everything is happening on this module except for basically audio. And that is all taken care of down here and gives you sound along its internal ISA bus. And then the Mini which uses a different annoying hex head. So yeah, it's still using a Vortex but quite a different board design here and a much smaller SOC. So this one you can kind of see right there is the SOM-128-EX.
So this one over here uses the Vortex DX and this is the Vortex EX. And if all this is sounding familiar, then you might remember that I covered this back in 2021. This is the WeeCee done by Andy of "TheRasteri" YouTube channel. And he put this together using the same exact SOC and the same sound chip and you know it's very similar indeed. It's not exactly the same design at all. This was much smaller, it doesn't have as many ports.
Pixel x86 did come up with their own board here, but it's clearly inspired by this at the very least. And then this one here, the Mini, this one is actually similar to another home brew thing, the TinyLlama. Now it doesn't have the Raspberry Pi stuff that that does, but uses the Vortex86 EX SOC and many other similar features but expanded, altered and released as an actual full product for sale.
Whereas with the WeeCee, this was never actually made for sale, Andy just made some of these just for fun really and put the designs out there online. And with the TinyLlama I think Eivand released some kits in a limited form or at least put the documents out there so people could put their own together. So Pixel x86 has effectively taken these kind of ideas and done their own thing with them and then gone farther in terms of actually producing them to be something that you could just buy. You don't have to put together yourself or source all the parts and it doesn't improve on things in some welcome ways. So compared to the WeeCee for instance, this does actually have actual power and reset buttons that WeeCee didn't have 'em at all and has USB-C instead of Micro USB for powering the thing and it has an additional USB port there, which is, yeah, it's just good to have additional IO.
And the Mini I think is even better because it moves the power from the front around to the back where it makes more sense and it has different PS2 ports for your keyboard and mouse, so that we don't have to use a splitter. It's also nice to have this Dream sound chip for wavetable General MIDI onboard where you don't have to rely on a wavetable header right there for that kind of thing for your MPU-401. The Pixel X86s also have a real-time clock battery on there for your CMOS setting. So yeah, it actually remembers your time and date and other options in the BIOS now. But yeah, overall, I mean they're very, very similar, especially this one to the WeeCee.
So you get the exact same 800 megahertz Vortex86 DX with its ISA bus 256 megabytes of DDR2 RAM, a 32 megabyte XGI Volari Z9S VGA chip set built in. And then you get that same crystal audio chip for Sound Blaster Pro and emulated AdLib compatibility. So that's the CS 4 2 3 7 B.
And then for the Mini, you get the 466 megahertz of Vortex86 EX with 128 megabytes of RAM, so half that but as DDR3 instead of 2. And in addition to the ISA bus, this also has PCI Express built in, so X1. And then that is what this is making use of right there. This is a swappable VGA card, so a four megabyte Vortex86 MINIPCIE-9160, although Pixel x86 is working on their own little thing based on the Silicon Motion SM750. So that'll be like a 16 megabyte MPCIE that you can swap out and get a little bit of extra graphics. It does have the same sound chip from Crystal right on there for your Sound Blaster and ad-lib compatibility but no Dream chip integrated into the thing.
However, you do have the wavetable header and they got this little thing they call the Pixel MIDI, which is the tiniest little wavetable daughterboard thing with your Dream chip right there. So capabilities are the same, but this is an optional thing. Again, this is supposed to be like cost-reduced to a degree. So if you don't choose to get this little guy, yeah, save a little bit of cash.
And then you just don't have wavetable MIDI. But yeah, you also notice that it actually has this here unpopulated and that is for a PC speaker, a little piso electric thing. And so while there is a header for it, it's not populated on this revision at least because I asked 'em about it and they said the sound, well, it just wasn't good. Sounded awful and muffled inside of this little case, I still would like to have it. I wish it was there, 'cause otherwise you gotta rely on something like uni sound to send the PC speaker sounds through the Crystal chip and then it comes through your regular computer speakers.
I don't know. I would just rather have it in there. Maybe I'll try to solder one in those in myself sometime. Another thing I wish that somehow they'd managed to fit in here is parallel or serial, especially serial. It seems like maybe you could put somewhere in there.
I don't know. It's just nice to have on older systems and the actual SOC in here, the Vortex86s, they support that, they have it on the bus, but you have to use one of those USB 2.0 serial or parallel cables and just plug that in if you wanna make use of those. Eh, it's enough rambling for now though. Let's go ahead and get these things plugged in and put 'em through some paces with some games and benchmarks and things. And they do also include SD cards if you choose.
So it's got this one right here and this one right here. Each of them have Windows 98 pre-installed actually from Pixel x86. I was surprised to see. And speaking of C, USB-C required for power, definitely make sure that you pair that up with a power supply that is gonna be pretty decent.
If you don't give it enough juice then it's gonna be crashing quite a bit, especially if you plug in peripherals like USB floppy drives or CD-ROMs. But yeah, let's plug these in and enjoy some stuff. [mellow music] And no surprise without fans or spinning discs, the Pixel x86s each power on in complete silence. You'll only hear a startup beep with speakers plugged in or a startup jingle in the Mini's case. [pc jingles] I have the sudden urge to hunt some ducks.
And yeah, while the DX model uses the same lovely AMI BIOS as the WeeCee did, the Mini uses a customized CBIOS. It's a hodgepodge of various existing open source BIOS ROM projects resulting in this minimal set of configuration options, including a virtual aid drive with files included as part of the BIOS that are meant to make it easier to install an OS without booting from an external drive. And on both models you get excellent CPU clock dividing options for cranking down the processor's speed, which combined with disabling caches means you can make things run like a low end 486 SX or even slower if desired. Speaking of slowness, each of the Pixel x86 models are dog slow when it comes to file management and installing large programs can be painful with significantly more sluggish transfer speeds than your typical hard drive and even slower than some of the IDE flash interfaces I use on my full size desktops. And the same thing happened with the WeeCee though, so it seems that the Vortex bus and I/O controller is just easy to bog down.
So installed larger games from an external USB stick or optical drive and let it right to the card that way instead of going from the SD card to the same SD card using an ISO and Damon tools or whatever. But yeah, this is only a passing problem. Once everything's loaded up, things run far smoother. Windows 98 is the go-to OS that Pixel x86 puts on the SD card. And while you can install whatever you prefer, it's a solid choice for a system like this. As mentioned earlier, the DX performs like a Pentium 300 megahertz and the Mini like a Pentium, 100 more or less.
And in top bench you can see that the former scores a 512 and the latter, 150, making the DX around three and a half times faster in this particular test. But of course we get to run some others. So we've gotta go with the venerable 3D bench test, the Superscape Benchmark thing and the Mini scores a 62.3 and the DX goes all the way up to 240. So yeah, a substantial difference.
As for the high detailed "Doom" benchmark, the Mini does it in 2,905 realtics and the DX in just 959. So again, several times faster. And the "Quake" timedemo at 320x200 resolution software rendering of course, the Mini system resulted in 35.9 FPS and the DX was getting dangerously close to 60 at 51.7. Honestly, both are pretty darn playable and I'm happy with both systems when it comes to games, especially from 1995, 96, like with the omnipresent "Duke Nukem 3D."
That test we've always gotta do. And the game runs on the DX roughly two and a half times faster than the Mini. You can see the little frame rate counter in the top left there.
But yeah, either way you're getting frame rates above 70 quite often at 320x200 resolution in "Duke 3D" on both systems. So no real complaints either way here like can play," Duke Nukem," and that's all that matters. [GRABBAG theme plays using Dream chip] [atomic explosions] - [Duke] Come get some! [ominous MIDI music] Groovy. [alien screams] [Devastator blasting] - [Clint] That said though, you're not always going to have the better experience on the DX. There are random things that should work but sometimes just don't, especially when you start getting into very late 90s titles that are just slightly iffy like UbiSoft's "POD."
The non MMX version works straight away on the Mini system. Not very well, but it does work. You can play it technically, but on the DX it won't even start a race at all. And yes, I've tried different versions, I've tried down clocking the system and messing around with that because sometimes this game can be iffy with faster processors, but nope, it just will not work on the DX for me at all. But thankfully this is the less common outcome for the most part. Like I said earlier, pretty much everything from the '80s and into the '90s up until about 1998 or so is going to run in some form or another.
You don't have any 3D acceleration unfortunately, but anything that's software rendering, which is "Need for Speed: SE" here, it's perfectly playable on both systems and it's just so enjoyable to having a small little desktop that does so much. There are plenty more things that I can test. I'm just gonna let some gameplay go in the background here and you can see some things running. But yeah, that is about it for the Pixel x86 DX and Mini machines, at least in their current revisions. Both of them are a lot of fun, but both are also oddly compromised here and there.
And the fact that the more expensive, faster DX model has the worst I/O selection in terms of the ports and their placement and seemingly worse compatibility than the Mini in some cases is unfortunate, 'cause otherwise it's nice and quick. So really some hybrid update of the two models might be ideal, especially if things can be added on top like a proper PC speaker or a serial or maybe a parallel port, possibly a hard disc activity LED to know when things are actually loading instead of just getting nothing but silence when it's taking forever to load. The heck, maybe even a beefier model with a slimline CD-ROM or maybe an integrated GoTEK floppy emulator. It's just easy to get carried away. I can't help myself. The thought of expanding these mini PCs to the max is really appealing to me in the same way that I enjoy maxing out newer PCs and thin clients, especially since they already have more ports.
Which on that note, Pixel x86 also has an ITX motherboard version in the works offering up better I/O and support for 3D accelerator cards finally. Which looks real similar to the ITX-Llama board, which is already available for sale from retrodreams.ca. And it's something I'd really like to cover. As for the Pixel DX and Mini right now though, I am overall pleased with them for what they are. Costing between four and $500 hugely limits their appeal of course, making it more of a luxury item than a reasonable alternative to vintage hardware. But they are well built and seemingly well supported.
I haven't seen any specific warranties listed, but I've been happy with all the support that I've gotten both through email and through the company Discord. They've been really quick to respond and they also have a handy drivers and software section on their website. So rolling your own fresh OS install is a cinch. And on that note, there are a couple things about this that just feel slightly strange. So like the OS for instance, the fact that they include Windows 98 in full and possibly other copyrighted software and the SD card that they sell with it, that is unusual. And there's all these links to this Oldgameslab site, which they refer to as their sister website and it's just random downloads of all kinds of so-called abandonware games, not only for PC, they're even ads for the Pixels on there making their affiliation clear.
Now, do I really care that much personally? Not particularly. It is just an unusual and frankly ballsy move for a company to plaster warez links everywhere and include it with their products like this. And then the other thing about the website. It'd just be nice to see something about the homebrew projects that these systems appear to be based on and are certainly inspired by like the WeeCee, the TinyLlama, the altered SeaBIOS, the Orpheus and Dream Blaster cards, et cetera, et cetera. Of course, providing credit is not always required depending on GPL licensing agreements, but it's a solid gesture and goes a long way to building community goodwill towards a product that costs hundreds of dollars.
Because without hobbyists posting their passion projects freely online, products like this likely wouldn't exist. So you know, it'd just be nice to see. Anyway, a few unexpected choices aside, I think the DX and the Mini are both appealing little systems.
If you're looking for such a little system that is new-ish, but also retro and the price isn't a barrier Either way I hope that you enjoyed taking a look at these with me. And to the Pixel x86 folks for sending them over with no strings attached. They had no say in what I say or don't say here. It was just like, "Hey, here's the thing we think you might enjoy reviewing." And you know what? I did! So hope that you enjoyed this resulting video.
And I hope you stick around for the upcoming LGR things, which are continually in the works. Thank you very much for watching.
2025-01-08 06:27
