- Yeah!

It might not play Crysis

but it does play Battlezone, so I'm good.

Oh game over, what? Never mind.

[smooth jazz music]

Greetings and welcome to another LGR retro computer build!

And this time I've got something I've been excited

to put together since the moment I heard it existed.

We're gonna build the NuXT MicroATX Turbo,

an IBM XT-class computer system

that functionally wouldn't have been out of place in 1987,

but is an entirely new design

using modern hardware and components when possible.

No emulation, no FPGA recreations,

just a straight up IBM PC-compatible

with a mixture of brand new and new old stock parts.

And this is here courtesy of JD in New Zealand,

who runs an online shop there by the name Monotech PCs.

He sent along a whole bunch of awesome things actually,

all of which I'll be able to use on future projects,

so thank you very much sir!

But yeah, right now the star of the show

is the NuXT: a newly-designed open source motherboard

running an 8088 CPU.

It's based on a number of other open source projects,

with no shortage of them coming

from the venerable Sergey Kiselev,

and the result is a basis for a phenomenally capable PC XT.

Right off the bat there's the DIP-40 CPU socket,

accepting processors ranging

from a 4.77 megahertz Intel 8088

to a 10 megahertz NEC V20, with the ability to switch

between three different clock speeds on the fly.

The V20 is what JD chose to include here,

a nice choice and a popular upgrade

for IBM PCs in the 80s that'll run at either 4.77,

7.16, or 9.55 megahertz.

There's also a spot for an 8087 math coprocessor,

which is completely optional, but he sent one of those

as well, so I'm gonna go ahead and plop that in there.

As far as RAM, the NuXT includes 832 kilobytes

of onboard memory, with a maxed-out 640K conventional

and an additional 192K for upper memory blocks.

Another standout feature of the NuXT

is the integrated XT-CF card interface,

with an included 64 megabyte CompactFlash card,

completely eliminating the need for a controller card

or spinning hard disk.

There's also an onboard floppy controller

supporting the majority of 5.25-inch

and 3.5-inch disk drives, from single density

and double density, on up to high density

and even extra high density drives.

Video output is taken care of as well,

with an integrated Trident TVGA9000i SVGA chipset

from the mid-90s, one that's register-compatible

with VGA, EGA, CGA, and even MDA and Hercules.

It's configured with 256K VRAM by default,

with sockets allowing for a total of 512K,

though running higher-res 256-color graphics

on this system is gonna be sluggish.

Of course, integrated graphics means

you get a 15-pin VGA port for outputting

to your monitor of choice.

And yeah, this I/O section alone is a nice improvement

on the original XT, with a 9-pin serial connection

and a PS/2-compatible keyboard port.

Plus, the AT2XT-programmed microcontroller means

that you don't have to worry about converting AT keyboards

to XT scan codes, so no Soarer's Converter is required.

As for sound, well, it's an XT PC

so you've got the PC speaker, with pins included

to add an external speaker if ya like.

I'll be adding a sound card using one

of the four 8-bit ISA slots though.

And yes, it only has four

instead of the original XT's eight,

but it's a MicroATX board, so there's only so much room.

Besides, all those integrated components

means you don't need as many slots anyway.

Another nice addition are the ROM sockets,

with the 128K system ROM using flash memory

that saves even without power,

meaning there's no need for a CMOS battery

to save BIOS settings.

And above that is an Option ROM socket

presenting ROM upgrade opportunities,

also doubling as an EEPROM programmer

that can write to compatible chips.

Neat!

And lastly, the board generates

its own negative five-volt rail

and accepts a 20-pin ATX connection,

so you can use almost any modern power supply

without modifying it.

Yeah man, the NuXT really is a dream team

of retro and modern hardware,

making for a nearly all-encompassing PC XT solution

in a compact package.

But enough with the tantalizingly technical tomfoolery,

it's time to put this thing together

and play some classic DOS games!

Okay, so before we get everything all built,

let's make sure that it is functioning first of all,

and for that, I've got one of these

Focus power supplies by Seasonic.

It's a 450-watt, absolutely overkill for what we need.

The original XT only had, like, I think 130 watts,

but you know, it'll totally do the job

and it's one of these nice-looking semi-modular units,

so cool by me, let's get this thing plugged in

and you only need the first 20 pins on there,

the extra four for modern motherboards

will not be used here.

Just gonna grab a VGA monitor here.

This classic Packard Bell will do just fine.

Plug that in, plug the power in, and yeah,

let's turn it on for the first time

and see what happens. [XT beeps musically]

Huh, that custom startup beep sounds a little familiar.

[Intel sound plays]

Yeah, it's like a slowed-down,

slightly off-key Intel sound.

At least, that's what I'm hearing.

Wonder if there's any way to customize that,

but yeah, everything is looking good up to this point.

We get the Micro 8088 BIOS doing its thing

and checking everything out, and yeah,

everything is checking out.

Even got a little custom greetings here.

[chuckles] Nice touch!

-Nice.

Right, so for the case situation,

well, I considered a bunch of different things

but ended up deciding on this Apevia X-QPack3

Micro ATX Cube Case.

I considered using, like, an original IBM clone case

from back in the day, but I don't know.

The idea of using this in a modern case appealed to me

and this particular one appealed to me

for a multitude of reasons,

mostly just because I think it looks cool,

but it's also this white with blue accents

that really brings to mind kind of the IBM aesthetic.

It's not IBM beige, but blue is definitely their color,

so yeah, it looks clean and awesome to me,

and it's also got two drive bays up front.

Something you're seeing less and less on modern cases now,

but yeah, 5.25-inch and 3.5-inch,

I'm definitely gonna use that larger one there,

and yeah, I don't know, just something

about this overall design appealed to me like crazy,

from the blue-tinted windows to the form factor

and, I don't know, kind of looks like a mini fridge,

and yes, it does have a bunch of ports

that are gonna be completely redundant.

I mean, we can't use USB

or these audio plugins on this board,

but it does have LEDs and power and reset buttons

that are compatible with this board.

No turbo button, but that's okay

because this is a tri-mode turbo thing,

and that's controlled through software.

And here's another reason that I really was attracted

to this case, and check this out.

Look at the way the motherboard mounts in here.

Yeah, it goes in there horizontally, not vertically.

It's very much the way that the original IBM XT

horizontal desktop form factor computers were built as well,

so you have the cards going in vertically there,

kind of like a test bench as well.

It gives me a whole lot of room

to just plug and play with all sorts of different cards

and add-ons and whatever I wanna do in the future.

And yeah, let's go ahead and get the power supply

installed in there, and I'm gonna do my best

in terms of cable management.

Thankfully it looks like this case is pretty well-equipped

to get cables and stuff them out of the way,

and with that installed

underneath the motherboard area there,

we'll just get rid of a lot of these cables,

especially like the audio and USB headers.

We don't need those at all, so I'm just gonna, again,

tuck those completely out of sight.

And yes, every one of these front panel headers here

will have a spot to plug in on the motherboard.

Hard drive and power LEDs, reset and power switch,

and yeah, that's all that stuff taken care of.

Just gonna get the motherboard screwed into place here,

and now to make use of that 5.25-inch drive bay

on the front here, and I've got a new old stock,

IBM personal computer, 5.25-inch, 360K disk drive.

Something picked up from Computer Reset, yep.

Absolutely new that I wanted one of these,

so yeah, we're gonna use it, hope it works.

I also got a new old stock floppy disk drive cable here.

It is a wide ribbon cable, but, you know,

we'll get it out of the way as much as we can,

and the front of the case just pulls right off of there

and we can get the drive tucked into place,

for the most part.

See, this is actually configured for optical drives,

so it's got one of these toolless plastic locking mechanisms

that's supposed to make life easier,

but yeah, it doesn't actually do anything

for keeping our floppy disk in place,

so we will not be using that, but you know, whatever.

We'll get the front of the case back on here,

and just use some traditional screws.

Now, I might install a 3.5-inch disk drive later on,

but really, a 360K 5.25-inch is pretty much all

that I wanna use with an XT-class machine.

All right, ribbon cable power plugged in,

and that's that, looking good.

Ah, I was really hoping this would look

as awesome as it does. [laughs]

I think this looks awesome,

flat black and flat white, oh yes!

All right, well, let's go ahead

and get the sound card installed.

I'm gonna go with this

Lazy Game Reviews Edition AdLib clone card.

And yeah, here's another little weird quirk about this case,

it has this cover that goes over the screws

of the expansion cards.

Yeah, you have to unscrew this panel, pull that off,

then you can plug things in, screw the card into place,

and then, if you want, you can put that panel back,

and yeah, I'll put it back.

It kind of makes it look clean, I guess.

And really, that's about it.

I mean, with everything being all integrated

onto the motherboard, there's not much else

I wanna add right now.

Maybe something with a game port

and a parallel port down the line,

but yeah, that's about it.

Just get the disk drive protector out of there

and I've got another couple things

that I wanted to install on here.

I got these neat little custom case badges recently,

and I thought it would look awesome

on the front of this case with that black floppy drive

and white case design,

and something about the reflective silver

just appeals to me, and yeah, the brushed metal,