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A project log for BBTC

Big Beautiful Trump Card

jacques-pelletierJacques Pelletier 11/18/2025 at 08:090 Comments

My assembled Trump card isn't tested yet, I need a PC to test it. I ordered a Nano 8088 kit with a motherboard but it doesn't work so I need to test both. I make some tools to be able to test the hardware at the lowest level. I call that Alien probes, the name says it all. 

I made one for the PC XT bus, one for the Z8001, one for the 8088 and a generic one to monitor bits and generate digital signals. These are based on the STM32F405 chip which is similar to the MCU on the black board I used on the Z80 ICE.

I plan to make Alien Probes for other CPUs used in the retrocomputing community. This will help locate hardware faults.

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