{"id":769948,"date":"2026-09-14T02:52:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-14T02:52:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/769948\/"},"modified":"2026-09-14T02:52:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T02:52:11","slug":"a-386-pc-for-your-rp2350","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/769948\/","title":{"rendered":"A 386 PC For Your RP2350"},"content":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re at a fortunate moment: microcontrollers available at modest prices are edging into the capability level previously reserved for full-fat systems and can, through emulation, run software beyond classic 8-bit home computers, consoles, or old arcade games. A project we\u2019ve been watching for a while is tiny386, an emulator for ESP32 boards that provides a 386 PC with just enough 486 and 586 instructions enabled to run a modern Linux kernel. Now we\u2019re pleased to note that this platform is making it to the RP2350, with ports for both the FRANK emulation platform<\/a> and the Waveshare Pi Zero boards<\/a>. You can now have a 32-bit PC with all the peripherals, including VGA and DVI\/HDMI, for the cost of an inexpensive development board.<\/p>\n

Having seen tiny386 run on its minimum-spec ESP32 platform, we\u2019ll concede that while it\u2019s usable, it\u2019s not the fastest experience, but the RP2350 port promises better performance. It\u2019s not for a modern full-fat Linux distro, but should work well for running older operating systems such as DOS, or Windows 3.1 and 95, or even a lean Linux setup. This has fascinating potential: while these systems are old, they still have an enormous software library. The idea of useful general-purpose computing, 1990s style, in the palm of the hand, is interesting.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re curious, you can find tiny386 here<\/a> and the FRANK boards here<\/a>. Maybe they\u2019re a better route to \u201990s fun and games than a 386 laptop<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We\u2019re at a fortunate moment: microcontrollers available at modest prices are edging into the capability level previously reserved…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":769949,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[59,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-769948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-gb","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=769948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769948\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/769949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=769948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=769948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=769948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}