ZaidPirwaniFirst pictures of the machine. inside and out and the backside.
The front, I think the name in the logo is ASTRA, tagline is "The Complete Computer", there are 2 5 inch floppy drives, one RESET Button, one TURBO Button and a keyhole for Locking the system.
Motherboard 01
Motherboard 02 - the so many ICs on the bottom right are the RAM (I think).
Floppy drives and the Power Supply
Font close-up of the 2 drives
that's the processor, 8088 - apparently this one is made by NEC, when we learned about these in the courses, only INTEL came up as the manufacturer.
one of the 2 ICs on the bottom is an IO multiplexer IC and the other I have to check (dont remember atm) - the black thing on the top side is basically done by me, the sticker came off of the EEPROM, I only had scotch tape and black marker at the time.
the RAM Bank.
The Power Supply, 180W
Ports at the back - no idea what these are - two of these look like DB9 and DB25, but need to check what the signals are actually.
Anyone know how and what type of DISPLAY goes with it - or what can i use in place of a display, SERIAL TERMINAL, maybe? made of Arduino or Pi
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That is an old PC, 8-bit only. Probably 640k of RAM. You can boot some old version of MsDos - just search which one accepts 8 bit architecture. Floppies are 360k single density. Those black slots are called ISA (Industry System Architecture if I remember). The video output is CGA, you can find the pins here:
You can build a CGA to VGA adapter easily, just search for VGA pinout on google and connect the pins: R, G, B goes to R, G, B; V is VSYNC, H is HSYNC, and do not forget the GND. Be careful to look on the connector(s), you will see the pin numbers written very small. It's easy. The maximum resolution you will get is 320x240. Use a CRT display to be sure it works, then you can switch to a LCD display. If you use LCD directly, you may have surprises because it may not accept these parameters.
Good luck with that.
Later edit: nope, not CGA. that connector is the serial port. There's a composite video connector on the back side, located at 2nd slot from the right (last picture) - or the black+red wires (picture "Motherboard02". Connect that to a TV composite-in. I recommend to use a Black&White TV (or an old TV tuner), not digital TV, because of the same problem: you can see directly if "something" comes out; the display is not conditioned by a valid signal like in the modern TVs.
Last pic, first connector, bottom left side (black DIN-5 under the two holes) - this is the keyboard. There are DIN5 to PS2 adapters.
2nd connector, first slot, up (DB15): this one looks like a joystick connector but I am not sure.
3rd connector, first slot, down (DB25M): serial port 2
4th connector, 3rd slot, up (DB9): serial port 1
5th connector, 3rd slot, down (DB25F): parallel port.
last one - CVBS or composite or AV: this is your video output.
Watch out on the r/w heads of the floppies. They are full of dust and they will destroy any floppy disk. You MUST clean everything with pressurized air, then alcohol.
Unless you really enjoy pain, repair it, clean it, repaint, make two boot disks and several application disks and sell it to some collector, then use the money to buy some serious stuff. These old monsters cause only trouble. I have an Olivetti 8088 computer, the CPU is made by Intel and the logo is from AMD (it happened before some Intel engineers left and formed the AMD company), so I know what I am saying.
Are you sure? yes | no
Some CGA cards had composite-output as well ;)
I used to play BlockOut (3D-Tetris!) on a system just like this one... several of these motherboards in my scrap-bins. As I recall, I upgraded one to 1024KB RAM by swapping out all those DIPs, probably still have a few dozen sitting 'round.
Are you sure? yes | no