Pocket 386

The Pocket 386 is a small portable computer with a 386SX processor. It’s a mix of a recycled core chip and new custom components, including breakout pins for ISA cards and parallel, serial, and PS/2 ports.

Loading additional software

I ordered mine from Aliexpress and the seller provided backup copies of DOS/Windows 3.11 and Windows 95 upon request. I was able to use these to install Windows 95 on a new 2GB Compact Flash card. It’s cool to see it work, but it’s a little slow for everyday use.

The easiest way to install or run additional software is to grab a small USB drive, format it as FAT16, and drag and drop folders there via your regular Windows, Linux, or Mac computer. You can then copy to your C drive or run it in place. Note that a 128MB flash drive worked great, but the included CH375 driver is a little slow and never finished booting a couple of 2GB flash drives. An optimized CH375 driver is available from FreddyVRetro.

Linux on the Pocket 386

The mainline Linux kernel dropped support for the 386 architecture in 2013, but Gray386linux is a small Linux distro build around the last 3.7 kernel which supports it. I haven’t tried this yet, but it’s on my list.

Slackware 4.0 via zipslack and loadlin is probably the easiest way to get Linux running on the Pocket 386.

1. Download zipslack.zip from a Slackware 4.0 archive.
2. Remove the Compact Flash drive from your Pocket386 and plug it into your computer (with an adapter if required).
3. Either unzip zipslack.zip on to the root of the mounted Compact Flash drive, or unzip it into a local directory and make sure you copy both the LINUX folder and the --LINUX-.--- file to the root of the drive.
4. Unmount and replace the Compact Flash drive in your Pocket386.
5. Boot up your Pocket386. Change to the LINUX directory (cd LINUX) and edit LINUX.BAT (edit LINUX.BAT). You will need to update the configuration to use the local hard drive (compact flash card) instead of a zip disk to boot.
   1. Find the line below rem Here are some SCSI zip examples: and add a rem to the beginning of that line. It should now read rem \linux\loadlin \linux\vmlinuz root=/dev/sda4 rw.
   2. Find the line below rem These examples are for an IDE hard drive: and remove the rem from the beginning of that line. It should now read \linux\loadlin \linux\vmlinuz root=/dev/hda1 rw.
   3. Save and edit by typing Alt-F and x, selecting Yes when asked to save the file.
6. You can now boot by typing linux at the prompt. Log in with the username root and no password.

OS/2 Warp 3 on the Pocket 386

Nino Ivanov has posted a tutorial on YouTube showing how to install OS/2 Warp 3 on the Pocket386. I haven’t tried this yet, but this sounds like a great use of an extra 2GB Compact Flash card.