Chen Liang Is Turning a LILYGO T-Deck Into the World's Cutest IBM-Compatible, Complete with Windows

Vintage computing enthusiast Chen Liang is working on a tiny little pocket computer for MS-DOS and early-Windows gaming on the go — by emulating an x86 processor on an Espressif ESP32-S3 microcontroller.

Liang's project, likely inspired by the Hand386 portable IBM-compatible computer which uses original Intel 80386 and compatible processors, is designed for portability over performance. It's based on the LILYGO T-Deck, a device which combines a BlackBerry-inspired physical keyboard and trackball pointing device with a colour display and an Espressif ESP32-S3 module to drive everything.

While the ESP32-S3 is a microcontroller at its heart, the project — brought to our attention by Adafruit — uses the two 32-bit Tensilica Xtensa LX7 processor cores, running at 240MHz, to emulate something considerably slower: an NEC V20, an Intel 80188-compatible CPU released in 1984. The secret: an ESP32 fork of the Faux86 emulator, which takes advantage of the performance difference between host and target.

Coupled with the Turbo XT BIOS, the software side is enough to emulate the NEC V20 with VGA graphics — enough to run Microsoft's MS-DOS and, technically, Microsoft Windows 3.0.

The latter comes with a hefty caveat, however: it renders at the emulator's VGA resolution of 640×480, which is considerably larger than the 320×240 IPS display on the T-Deck — meaning the desktop extends off screen both horizontally and vertically, something Liang is working to resolve.

More information on the project is available on Liang's Twitter account; T-Deck specifications can be found on the LILYGO website.