You're one of the few people on KZfaq who's long ass videos I watch to completion. Your commentary on the insides of stuff keeps me coming back.

Oh dear God I feel soooo old. I have an IBM 8086 machine in the closet downstairs. My very first venture into the digital world......... plus a number of new (old stock) 8086 IC's , my brother still has his ICE down in his basement as well. Now he was a wiz on that thing...I just couldn't keep up at all with all the machine's he had going at the same time and he worked for an electronics company and was getting paid for it, And me, well I was a blue screen of death champion. Keep up the good work, Mark

I used several Microtek emulators. Used them for the Z80, 80186 and 68000. They were a pain. Often they would glitch the system RAM when hitting a breakpoints Were good enough to get the hardware going. We ended up writing our own software debuggers for higher-level stuff. The 68K one flat out would not work right. So, one of my first projects was actually designing a 68K emulator. Fun! The main production board had a custom pair of headers for the emulator to plugin. The 80186 was real nice for embedded work. We used Microsoft 16-bit C. Was a nice development environment at the time. The 8086 and the 68K were basically the last CPU's that had full-speed emulation. After that, higher speeds and onboard caches made tracing via capturing the bus impossible to do in a deterministic. manner. Heck on the 68K, if the code had a conditional jump over an instruction, the bus trace would be the same if it made the jump or not due to prefetch. I was so glad to see newer chips with JTAG and background debug pins. Eliminated those messy ribbon cables and worn-out CPU sockets.

14:00 I think there is no more bond out chips now - every chip is technically a bond out through the use of JTAG.

Thanks Dave keep the great videos coming !

Very nice addition to the Lab well done bud

I'm a power supply nerd and I love when you tear into various devices and show the power supply and while I was watching I was hoping at some point you would peek into the power supply, and you did and I let out a little "YES!" and I'd like to say thanks I really appreciate it! So when you are tearing into something in the future, there are probably more than a few power supply nerds watching and we are grateful for the extra effort showing the power supply guts, thanks :)

Christ, seeing that box sent me right back to the 1980's.......great vid as always, keep up the bonza work fella!!!!

My old computer on my desk that's still in use, uses an 8086.

Fantastic! Thank you for this video. For computing student like me this video is made of pure gold! Thank you again!

The ISA card is only a parallel port. Any motherboard with a simple parallel printer port will work. You may also need an RS232 serial card too but both are available in PCI format and as such are still compatible with current PCs.

I've eaten at Outback off and on for years. Only once did I hear a proper Aussie accent there, and it was from a customer, quietly deriding the serving of Fosters, at the table next to me. An experience I never forgot.

Epic score man!

It is in so good condition that It would be nice for the collection.

January 1989. I was born along with this guy haha!

It takes a lot of time for KZfaq to process a 1.7GB 50min video....

Well what's the ultimate tool then, if these are the penultimate?

Dave, If you ever find cap screws stripped like that, you can tap a T10 or T15 torque bit (depending on the size)into the head, and undo them that way.

I work at a NPP in the states and we have many Rad monitors which use 8086's and we have a hell of a time getting replacement parts. Luckily the computers dont break much. Our power range neutronics uses 386 sx's too.

Ah, Microtek... maker of inexpensive flatbed scanners that worked very well, but were disposable because the drivers were never updated... Looks like their engineering was great on this ICE, too.

Amazing bit of tech.

I used a MicroTek 80286 emulator back in the early 1990's. The processor "probe" was a bit twitchy. If not seated in the processor socket on your target board perfectly, all sorts of weird things would happen. It made for a very delicate setup. $20K price range if memory serves. When it worked, it was able to help solve many a firmware bug; especially anything having to do with interrupt processing. Many processors these days have debugging features built-in. Interesting vid.

The reason why these are not used as much is modern CPUs have a lot more debugging support built in. I had a Z80 ICE myself.

The hassles and costs Dave mentioned regarding bond out versions of micros is one of the reasons why JTAG has become so ubiquitous. Also why you hardly see any special bond out versions of chips nowadays, since JTAG works on any production chips with embedded debug circuitry.

No idea! Suggestions?

DIP-2 capacitors are still available, but are on the expensive side compared to other packages. The X2212 is a Xicor nonvolatile SRAM.

what a nice bit of technology that is! it surprises me that they don't still build them as a learning aid for those new to the art. it kind of pee's me off a bit (a tad jealous, I guess) when the Aussie MoD sells the surplus off like they do. the Brit MoD scraps their kit - due to the bloody 'health and safety' laws and all that liability bollocks, no doubt....meh I would of liked to see the wee 'beastie' running though....just for nostalgic reasons, mind. seeing all this vintage stuff makes you realise how old you have become - not because it was nigh over three decades ago (and seems like only yesterday) that this hardware first saw the light of day, but because seeing 'gucci' hardware makes your todger twitch....only then to find out nothing 'is' twitching downstairs. next teardown: "a look inside the new hydrogen fuel-cell powered movement assistance device, built and designed by some ankle-biter for the borderline middle-aged"

47:08 Oh Dave, you know us all too well ;D I was so relieved when you finally opened the TEXTOOL/3M socket ... mmmhh ... ohh yeah.

Nice video :3

Just found this video - reminds me of the hours I spent behind an Intel Blue Box ICE doing 8086, 80186, and 80286 assembly programming ( used the white box for the 286.).

Love those things, used a HP9000 ICE mainframe for 8031 a long time back. I miss this .

Did anyone else notice that it says "memeory" in the manual?

That fast Pyramid-Tech Ram is most likely for memory mapping those bigger ram banks.

You could always find an IBM PC or PC XT, connect the ICE to it, and then build ISA card-based peripheral projects. I used to use an Apple II (still have one) with a prototype card to drive hardware projects such as analog-to-digital converters, lighting up LEDs in patterns, etc.

Yes, that's how you would erase those particular models so that you could write another program to them. He even mentioned it in the video.

52 mins of awesomeness :D

I'll always have a soft spot for 8086/8088 hardware. I had an original XT for quite a few years, on which I began my journey of learning hardware and developing software. Not to mention it's where many of my BBS memories took place. I only wish I had the same detailed knowledge of the hardware back then as I do today, since I would have been able to do quite a bit more with it.

A very good video

I think an awesome follow up to this would be like a Fluke 9010A!

In my school I find out that there the same emulator but for the z86 chips!

The vertical chip on the EMM board doesn't have its own bypass cap. (Not counting the tantalum? bulk cap.)

SoftICE was pure win back in the day for cracking stuff.

14:00 I would THINK that modern ICE type devices would use fiber instead of copper - no attenuation (or at least none significant enough to matter in short runs) and no interference, now I am no Electronics engineer as you are, but if memory serves, light is actually a fair bit faster than electricity as well - in terms of travel speed. Speaking of which, do you know what the average delay per meter of fiber versus copper? And thinking more on it, is there any significant delay in the conversion from light to electrical signal? Because obviously, to emulate any system, embedded or otherwise, the signal will have to be electronic at the end destination of the data flow.

Good old days IBM PC 8088 bootet via a floppy disc and DOS 2.1 :-)

Time to dig out the old PC AT!

x2212 is nonvolatile memory

Nice find Dave, but will you ever use it?? Or is it just a curiosity item to show folks? Jack

i learn assembly nice to see it in real rather then on paper thx

say, is that foil traces I see on those boards? puffed up in the middle from the soldering process? because they didn't have good epoxy back then?

I have always wondered - why do some of these chips have windows? I seem to remember from being interested in Acorn A5000's and the like that you used to be able to erase their eproms by exposure to a UV source. Is the PIC something similar?

Yeeguds, seeing the copyright year on this thing drives home how old one is.

Well done sir! Great fun! :) (wouldn't it be fun to have a complete working system and a 8086 design to debug?!)

So what are you going to use the MICE for? Parts? Or just for the collection?

I'm not familiar with this particular ICE. When I did ROM-BIOS engineering for Phoenix Tech during the late 1980s, we used the real Intel 80x86 ICE's. We would burn our code to EEPROM, stick the EEPROM into a motherboard, and with the ICE replacing the CPU, we were able to troubleshoot down to the microinstruction level. We also used these for developing other kinds of firmware, such as EGA and VGA controllers (I worked on the C&T chipsets) and even keyboard controllers with the 8085.

That is very cool - if a little strange! Obviously something that didn't catch on widely or maybe flash and the like would use it now? Perhaps it was a little slow for modern data rates though.

Since the company is still around, you should see about getting copy of the software from them. I'd like to see this thing actually working.

that explains why the HD 720p video just dies at 12:12 mid sentence... I thought that was odd to say the least.

Chances are those relays were either switching signals too sensitive to survive a 3ns logic delay, or were dealing with elecrical pinout differences between similar CPUs.

It's the first thing I've ever scored on ebay at 99 cents!

NOICE DEBAHGAH!

Could you use USB and some glue logic to re-create the ISA interface and write some software in Java to interface?

How did you flip the icon upside down.

awesome

I remember programing on this back in the day...

You can't use it as parts... it's a piece of HISTORY. It may have cost 99c but I bet it really is worth more if you could find a PC with an ISA port. That MICE looks mint. Maybe use it in a comparison at a show of old tech vs new.

Yes, electric current have limited speed and yes, it is snail speed. Electric current flows in whole conductor no matter, if conductor is 1mm or 1m or 1km long and no matter of time it could be 1ps, 1ns or even 1µs

Hearing your voice makes me want to eat at Outback Steakhouse

49:57 And maybe that part on the left is a transistor driving the relay...

Dave, "penultimate" means 2nd (more precisely, the one prior to the ultimate or final item), not 1st or best.

.99 cents :) QC

cant you use software emulators now?

Don't my my last question, i was talking to my brother and wasn't paying attention to what i was writing... i meant to ask why would you use it, if it's so expensive and it only emulates the processor? won't it be cheaper to buy the cpu or microcontroller, program it and then assess how it would actually function? you'd also get better and more accurate results that way.. thx :]

The back plane looks very much like a VME system. I think by the way, that it just wasn't worth spending a lot of time and money to integrate stuff into ASICs or FPGAs or CPLDs or whatever. They're produced in such low volume that it just won't pay off. Besides, the places where these are used, are probably happy to pay 5 or 6 digit figures for something that they can use and that's reliable, and they would be weary of subtle problems that happen because of hiding stuff in ASICs.

Did you at least enjoy the food? We had an Australian lady at work years ago describe how her husband power washed the large deck on the back of their house to clean the fungus and mold off. It didn't sound like she was saying deck...

you can may by get the drivers at driverguide some times i find that old stuff there take a look you mite find it good luck

Does it work though?

Whoa the Sega Megadrive had one of those!!

apparently one can not post urls in comments on youtube, I hadn't the foggiest... Anyway I'm sure you can figure out how to get there =D Though Id love it if Dave put together a cool 7400 kit for us

I went to an Outback steakhouse once in the US, all I heard were bloody Yankee accents!

maybe ... 1. Soldering/Desoldering tutorial on the boards inside. 2. Use the case to build a power supply cum function generator.

Wintel? x86 is hardly limited to Windows.

I want one for the 8085

I just got an 8086 processor for free along with a bunch of random pentium, i386, and i486 CPUs

Come on, go real old-school, with the 8088. XTer for life. Lol

forgive my dumbness, but what's an in-circuit emulator? :\

47:31 Beautiful!

the eev blog website

Damn I thought that Dave was mostly just an analogue guy, but no. This guy must be a synthetic!

I am working With Z8 EIS tools

wait that for 99 cents ?!?!?!!

320p... I'll come back later.

Dave, penultimate means second-worst, not best. :)

More like a BOB. I use them troubleshooting electronics on cars. Those are expensive to get another plug to fit a new computer harness your looking at $700 plus.

I got an old pc10 III from commodore and i Realy need that ice ....

Pyramid Semiconductor is still Around apperantly they do MIL spec stuff

99c...why the hell I can't score a bargain like that?!

Dave, If ICE is the penultimate tool for embedded debugging, then what is the ultimate tool? Inquiring minds want to know. :)

E keepa callin me de bugger.

8186 views. Missed it by 100 :)

Send it to Photon