Modder builds Windows 98 handheld gaming PC with Intel Pentium inside

I’m a fan of builds with a retrofuturistic aptitude, significantly palmtop tasks that think about a conveyable previous that by no means existed. Taking a leaf from the ‘Windows the place it should not be’ chapter out of the modder’s playbook, one solo tinkerer has constructed a throwback handheld gaming PC that is rocking Pentium inside.

Built by maker Changliang Li, his Windows 98 handheld gaming PC performs all of the contemporaneous hits, like StarCraft and Tomb Raider II (with of-the-era body charges, too). Contained in a 3D printed, plastic shell spray painted an genuine shade of yellow that harkens again to its forebears, the homebrew handheld even encompasses a Logitech rollerball mouse (through Hackaday).

As for mouse clicks, these are tied to a lonely little set off button on the highest right-hand nook of the console. It’s a management scheme that appears as nightmarish as it’s additional, however that is not probably the most fascinating aspect of the challenge. Given how svelte APU chips must be to suit inside even the bulkiest of today’s best handheld gaming PCs, it’s worth remembering how bulky 90s desktop mainboards used to be—so, how does this throwback build achieve such a reasonable form factor?

Rather than emulation, Changliang Li instead chose to crack open decommissioned medical apparatus from the ’90s for surprisingly small, contemporary hardware. This effort turned up a pc104 industrial motherboard with support for Intel Pentium, plus all the ports you could want. Before you ask, yes, you could in theory hook up a floppy drive to this thing.

Even the screen is practically an antique, with the modder salvaging a 480p resolution LCD and its accompanying motherboard to match the 4:3 aspect ratio of many games of the era. However, the PS/2 keyboard features a fairly unique layout that necessitates a bespoke PCB (which has since been redesigned and gone open source).

Given what a revelation it was to me to have the ability to load up Diablo II on my severely underpowered uni pocket book not even a decade in the past, this handheld Pentium PC would’ve little question blown my tiny little thoughts again in 1998. However, with design quirks similar to the facility change being located between the rollerball mouse and the keyboard, maybe it is simply as effectively this was a techie highway not taken.

It most likely does not assist that the construct seems not not like a Nintendo 2DS that obtained misplaced someplace within the ’90s. When it involves techie time journey, getting Windows 95 on a hacked Nintendo 3DS proved a equally cursed endeavour for one more modder—to say nearly nothing of this try and jam Windows 95 onto a Sony PlayStation 2.