Book 8088 A new retro computer

3/18/2024

Browsing through Ali-Express I came across this interesting offering.

A notebook sized computer built with an Intel 8088 processor and a handful of other 

1980’s era support chips but enhanced with a few modern support components.

This device comes loaded with MS DOS 6.2  and Windows 3.0. and the cpu runs 

at the original 4.77MHz (the version I got actually came with a NEC V20 cpu, a common 

 plug-in upgrade to the 8088 allowing it to be boosted to 7 Mhz)

At just under $200 I first thought it was a somewhat expensive toy, but the more I read 

about it, the more I wanted to own one. ( I honestly can’t explain why )

I have collected a few vintage computers and have always dreamed of owning an early 

IBM-PC 5150 but a complete working system would cost nearly $1000 today.

And then once you had one, finding 5 ¼” diskettes is getting harder every year.

The Book 8088 could easily satisfy my desire to play with the vintage era hardware 

without the expense and hassle of dealing with vintage storage devices.

In this case the Book 8088 uses a removable 512 MB Compact Flash cards as it’s hard disk.

Allowing me to transfer files from my modern PC directly to/from the disk.

Furthermore, it also includes a USB port that’s good only for reading & writing a USB 

flash drive.  So transferring data couldn’t be much easier.

So I pulled the trigger and ordered on. As soon as I did that, somehow my desire for one increased.

While waiting for it to arrive I dove into any online forums discussing this little computer and watched all the videos I came across. I loaded up several IBM-PC emulators to re-experience the slow performance of these early PCs. I even managed to get a hold of a schematic for the Book 8088 and a copy of the CF/Hard drive contents. So once it arrived I was ready…

One of the unit’s features that was most hotly discussed online is the computer’s BIOS.  

It was taken from and open source project created by Sergey Kiselev but stripped of all the copyright

 messages that gave credit to it’s author.  That didn’t stop Kiselev from creating a new version of 

his BIOS specifically designed for the Book 8088 which improved performance quite a bit.

Installing this new BIOS was one of the first modifications I made to my device since I had the 

appropriate EPROMs and a way to program them.

The Book 8088 appears to be available in 3 versions with version 2 being, in my opinion,  the best.

This version includes a serial port and parallel port and VGA graphics support.

(for some reason version 3 doesn't have these features but is a little less expensive)

There’s a huge array of downloadable software available online for use PCs of this era or emulators.

Of course on the original vintage hardware, getting them transferred could be a problem if your modern PC doesn’t happen to sport a 5 ¼” floppy drive.

Not so much of an issue with the Book 8088 as there are tools to extract file from the “disk images” 

 most often offered online and simply copying to a flash drive then over to the Book 8088.

I’m now loaded up with a few classic PC games, assemblers, a C compiler and utilities that I remember from the days when I used to own one of these early PCs.

Most of the classic games that will no longer run on modern PCs work just fine on the Book 8088.

Another modern addition is the built in 7” LCD screen that emulates a CGA or VGA monitor quite well. Although it’s a but tiny, it eliminates the need to drag out a real CRT monitor and wait for it to warm up, always with fingers crossed that the 40 year old electronics still worked.

One of the most recent modifications I made to my Book 8088 was to add a connector that allows 

connection to an external LCD VGA monitor.

The keyboard is somewhat cramped and a bit difficult to type very fast on.

Hopefully the tinkerers out there will come up with and easy way to plug in a full sized keyboard.

For now I’m brushing up on my 8086 assembler and re-living my early days as a DOS programmer.

Having access to the serial and printer ports also gives me a way to communicate and control devices 

outside the computer.  Oh I didn’t mention the Book 8088 version I got also comes with an ISA 

expansion cable that connects to a few external 8 bit ISA slots.  Those could prove to be fun to play with too.

Some photos of the Book 8088 V2 Boards and my VGA modifications

Description of download links:
BOOK8088.pdf Book 8088 Schematic (V1.0)
BOOK8088manual EN.docx   Book 8088 Manual
DEMO1.zip LPT port demo with LEDs, LCD & RC Servo
MENU_X.zip Sample C project created with MS Quick C 2.5