In 2025 we are spoiled for choice when it comes to displays, with affordable LCDs, OLEDs, TFTs, and e-ink panels of all sizes only a few clicks away. But in decades past, such exotica were not on the menu for casual construction. Instead there were a range of LED seven segment displays which have now […]
If you’re into retro CPUs and don’t shy away from wiring old-school voltages, [Mark]’s latest Intel 8080 build will surely spark your enthusiasm. [Mark] has built a full system board for the venerable 8080A-1, pushing it to run at a slick 3.125 MHz. Remarkable is that he’s done so using a modern Microchip FPGA, without vendor […]
When retro computing nostalgia meets modern wireless wizardry, you get a near-magical tap-to-load experience. It’ll turn your Commodore 64 into a console-like system, complete with physical game cards. Inspired by TapTo for MiSTer, this latest hack brings NFC magic to real hardware using the TeensyROM. It’s been out there for a while, but it might […]
It might be too soon to consider the innards of the old CRT monitor at the back of your closet to be something worth putting on display in your home or workshop. For that curio cabinet-worthy appeal, you need to look a bit further back. Say, about 150 years. Yes, that’ll do. A Crookes tube, […]
If you grew up with a beige Atari ST on your desk and a faint feeling of being left out once Doom dropped in 1993, brace yourself — the ST strikes back. Thanks to [indyjonas]’s incredible hack, the world now has a working port of DOOM for the Atari STe, and yes — it runs. […]
Remember The Clapper? It was a home automation tool (of sorts) that let you turn appliances on and off by clapping. [Kevin O’Connor] has built something rather similar, if more terrifying. It’s called The Screamer. The build is based around a Sonoff S31 smart switch. [Kevin] selected an off-the-shelf device because he wanted something that […]
The Intel 8051 series of 8-bit microcontrollers is long-discontinued by its original manufacturer, but lives on as a core included in all manner of more recent chips. It’s easy to understand and program, so it remains a fixture despite much faster replacements appearing. If you can’t find an original 40-pin DIP don’t worry, because [mit41301] […]
Magnets aren’t magic, but sometimes you can do things with them to fool the uninitiated — like levitating. [Jonathan Lock] does that with his new maglev desk toy, that looks like at least a level 2 enchantment. This levitator is USB-powered, and typically draws 1 W to 3 W to levitate masses between 10 g […]
If you want to keep eggs warm to hatch, you’ll need an incubator. You could buy one off the shelf, but they’re not so complex — just a nicely-controlled warm box you could easily whip up yourself. As it turns out, that’s precisely what [RCLifeOn] did. The incubator is built out of wooden panels screwed […]
The fact that modern-day x86 processors still pretty much support the same operating systems and software as their ancestors did is quite a feat. Much of this effort had already been accomplished with the release of the 80386 (later 386) CPU in 1985, which was not only the first 32-bit x86 CPU, but was also […]