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The retro SBC - introduction
May. 22nd, 2025 12:00 amThis was a project that came to my mind when I learnt about old industrial SBCs. Basically, those come in the form of ISA or PCI cards with a full-fledged PC on them. They are connected to a backplane, which is a bit like a PC motherboard but with no logic, just a bunch of interconnected ISA/PCI slots.
There's something I like about this sort of hardware. It's just nifty.
I had the idea of using such a SBC to build a small setup for old (circa 2000) games. For example, take Rayman 2 -- I was able to get it to run through Wine on my laptop, but it had all sorts of audio issues and, given how important sound is to my brain, that wasn't going to cut it.
I saw an eBay listing for Portwell ROBO-6710 SBCs, so I ordered one. It seemed perfect for this sort of project. It is period-correct hardware and has all the needed features for this -- 3D acceleration, sound, etc.
This particular SBC takes the form of a PCI card. However, during testing, I found that it doesn't need to be connected to a backplane. You can feed power into the Molex connector in the top-right corner, and it will run just fine, so that's nice.
I set up the SBC for testing. The power supply comes from some old tape drive, but it is perfectly suited for this. The CDROM drive comes from a dead computer.
I found that my SBC works fine, so that's nice. However...
The BIOS is locked behind a password. Resetting the CMOS settings achieves nothing, because apparently the default state is to have a password. The default boot order did still allow me to boot from a floppy or CDROM, but... yeah.
The documentation I found online doesn't mention the default BIOS password anywhere. Which is odd, since it goes in detail over a lot of stuff, including the various jumpers, connectors, and their pinouts.
So I ran one of those programs for recovering the BIOS password...
It did find some possible passwords, but I was still stumped... I later figured it out by trial and error. The password is ROB-6710, but the password entry screen assumes the keyboard has the US layout, and my keyboards have a different layout (and also the numpad doesn't work). Once I accounted for that, I was able to get into the BIOS setup and disable the password.
Now I could try and install Windows XP on this thing, but this also gave me trouble.
This SBC has IDE connectors (both regular and laptop form factors), but also has a CompactFlash slot on the back, which is handy. But, as I found out, you can't just use any CF card in there... I got a no-name 32GB card, but I was unable to install Windows on it, and when I was able to, it would fail to boot.
So I got another card from a reputed brand, and this time the process went smoothly. I was running Windows XP on the SBC.
I had to install a filter driver to force Windows to recognize the CF card as a fixed disk. Having XP installed on a removable disk causes some problems, like swap not working. Normally, you're supposed to use industrial CF cards, which are set to be recognized as a fixed disk. However, the filter driver solution also works.
Speaking of drivers, I had to do some digging to find adequate drivers for the SBC. Since it uses laptop hardware, one can look for laptops with the same chipset and get the drivers for those.
I did a test run with Rayman 2, and it runs just fine, so that's great. I noted that it seems to struggle a bit to render smoothly at higher resolutions, so I might have to stick to a 'period-correct' resolution, too. That, or figure out how to get a beefier graphics card connected to the SBC's PCI interface, I guess. But I think the SBC itself will be just fine.
I also took a while to clean up the heatsinks and replace the CPU fan with a larger, quieter one.
The next part of this project is going to be building a case for this SBC. I had a case in mind (from the same dead computer the CDROM drive came from), but it isn't too well suited and would only work if the power supply was external, which sucks a bit. The alternative is to design my own case and either build it out of wood or 3D-print it. Could be the occasion for me to get into 3D printing.
There's something I like about this sort of hardware. It's just nifty.
I had the idea of using such a SBC to build a small setup for old (circa 2000) games. For example, take Rayman 2 -- I was able to get it to run through Wine on my laptop, but it had all sorts of audio issues and, given how important sound is to my brain, that wasn't going to cut it.
I saw an eBay listing for Portwell ROBO-6710 SBCs, so I ordered one. It seemed perfect for this sort of project. It is period-correct hardware and has all the needed features for this -- 3D acceleration, sound, etc.
This particular SBC takes the form of a PCI card. However, during testing, I found that it doesn't need to be connected to a backplane. You can feed power into the Molex connector in the top-right corner, and it will run just fine, so that's nice.
I set up the SBC for testing. The power supply comes from some old tape drive, but it is perfectly suited for this. The CDROM drive comes from a dead computer.
I found that my SBC works fine, so that's nice. However...
The BIOS is locked behind a password. Resetting the CMOS settings achieves nothing, because apparently the default state is to have a password. The default boot order did still allow me to boot from a floppy or CDROM, but... yeah.
The documentation I found online doesn't mention the default BIOS password anywhere. Which is odd, since it goes in detail over a lot of stuff, including the various jumpers, connectors, and their pinouts.
So I ran one of those programs for recovering the BIOS password...
It did find some possible passwords, but I was still stumped... I later figured it out by trial and error. The password is ROB-6710, but the password entry screen assumes the keyboard has the US layout, and my keyboards have a different layout (and also the numpad doesn't work). Once I accounted for that, I was able to get into the BIOS setup and disable the password.
Now I could try and install Windows XP on this thing, but this also gave me trouble.
This SBC has IDE connectors (both regular and laptop form factors), but also has a CompactFlash slot on the back, which is handy. But, as I found out, you can't just use any CF card in there... I got a no-name 32GB card, but I was unable to install Windows on it, and when I was able to, it would fail to boot.
So I got another card from a reputed brand, and this time the process went smoothly. I was running Windows XP on the SBC.
I had to install a filter driver to force Windows to recognize the CF card as a fixed disk. Having XP installed on a removable disk causes some problems, like swap not working. Normally, you're supposed to use industrial CF cards, which are set to be recognized as a fixed disk. However, the filter driver solution also works.
Speaking of drivers, I had to do some digging to find adequate drivers for the SBC. Since it uses laptop hardware, one can look for laptops with the same chipset and get the drivers for those.
I did a test run with Rayman 2, and it runs just fine, so that's great. I noted that it seems to struggle a bit to render smoothly at higher resolutions, so I might have to stick to a 'period-correct' resolution, too. That, or figure out how to get a beefier graphics card connected to the SBC's PCI interface, I guess. But I think the SBC itself will be just fine.
I also took a while to clean up the heatsinks and replace the CPU fan with a larger, quieter one.
The next part of this project is going to be building a case for this SBC. I had a case in mind (from the same dead computer the CDROM drive came from), but it isn't too well suited and would only work if the power supply was external, which sucks a bit. The alternative is to design my own case and either build it out of wood or 3D-print it. Could be the occasion for me to get into 3D printing.
