A New Atlantis

Mr.Kermit
Hardware, Retrocomputing

Some time ago I decided to build myself a new PC for retrocomputing and programming. For one part I wanted to be able to install the latest version of FreeDOS on modern hardware, on the other side I was very eager to install, at last, Arch Linux on a dedicated PC. As I expect this project to become a sort of exploration journey in an unknown territory, I decided to name this new PC atlantis.

Because I do not have much free desktop space at my disposal, I wanted the new PC to be as small as possible. After some research on my favourite online shops, I settled for the Mini-ITX standard and bought these components:

  • Mainboard: GIGABYTE’s GA-E6010N for the AMD A socket;
  • CPU: AMD E1-6010 APU (2 cores at 1.4 GHz each, 2 MB L2 cache, SoC);
  • Graphic card: AMD Radeon R2 (SoC);
  • RAM: 8 GB DDR-3;
  • Disk: SanDisk SDSSDA-240G-G26, 240 GB, SATA6;
  • Case: LC-Power 1400 with an integrated 200 W power supply unit;

atlantis - Front view

What made me choose the GA-E6010N mainboard was the fact that it has a good mix of old and new interfaces:

  • 1x RS-232 serial port;
  • 1x parallel port;
  • 1x VGA port;
  • 1x HDMI port;
  • 2x USB 3.1 ports;
  • 4x USB 2.0 ports;
  • 1x Gigabit Ethernet port;