November 16, 2025
Boot screens and beefy takes
FPGA Based IBM-PC-XT
Retro PC remake to play Monkey Island sparks joy, nitpicks, and a license fight
TLDR: A maker rebuilt an IBM PC XT-style machine using a modern chip board and a vintage-compatible CPU to replay Monkey Island with authentic sound and mouse. Comments erupted into nostalgia, accuracy nitpicks, and a licensing spat, proving retro builds are fun—and open-source expectations are serious.
A hobbyist rebuilt an ’80s IBM PC XT clone with a modern twist so they could replay the EGA version of Monkey Island — complete with mouse, a faux hard drive, and that sweet AdLib music — and the internet instantly split into nostalgia tears vs. nerd nitpicks. One camp flooded the thread with warm memories of their first beige box. Another swooped in to cry “actually…” about the title, pointing out it’s not fully inside the FPGA: it uses a real 8088-compatible V20 chip and a big SRAM, while the FPGA does the video and drive tricks. Meanwhile, the ASMR crowd crowned the build for adding hard drive sound emulation: “silent SD cards kill the vibe,” said one fan, effectively launching the Great Clicky Disk War of 2025. Then came the drama bomb: no open-source license. That set off the “looks cool but we can’t legally use it” chorus, turning the comments into a mini law seminar. And because it’s the internet, someone asked if it can run a DOS clone and do FFTs (fancy math), because why not. Love it or nitpick it, the community agrees on one thing: this retro rig slaps and makes Monkey Island’s theme sing again.
Key Points
- •A low-power NEC V20 CPU (UPD70108H) was used to recreate an IBM PC XT-compatible system and interface to a 3.3V FPGA.
- •Hardware includes a 1MB SRAM (CY62158EV30), icesugar-pro FPGA (Lattice LFE5U-25F), PS/2 ports, microSD storage, YM3014B DAC, and PIT-driven piezo speaker.
- •A custom bus controller state machine was implemented to handle 8088-style bus cycles and meet timing requirements.
- •Memory architecture loads BIOS into FPGA block RAM, mirrors video writes to video RAM and SRAM, and uses the spare video RAM read port for VGA output.
- •Diagnostics were performed using a virtual Supersoft/Landmark ROM and a basic CGA adapter to test memory and peripherals.