Imagine you’re time-warped back to 1979 and tasked with constructing a personal computer. Could you do it? [RadicalBrad] thinks he can, and his 6502-based “Super VIC” build looks like it’s off to a great retrocomputing start. Most emulations of old hardware these days go the FPGA route, and while we respect those projects immensely, there’s something […]
The Raspberry Pi is a great platform for running retro video games, and with the addition of some buttons, a TFT screen and some speakers it’s relatively inexpensive and easy to get a working console up and running. If you have access to even a cheap 3D printer, a good-looking DIY console is well within […]
Creating a game from scratch can be hard work. There are concepts to be designed, coding to be done, and art to be created to make it all happen. However, it doesn’t always have to be quite so difficult. There are a variety of development tools that allow budding game designers to get started with […]
We see a lot of retrocomputing projects here at Hackaday that take devices from the 8-bit era and re-create them in the 21st century. Sometimes they remain period-accurate and stick to all contemporary devices, but in other cases they take full advantage of four decades of advancing technology. [Pkiller]’s Z80 console is one of this […]
The Commodore 16 was a budget home computer from the mid 1980s, the entry-level model in a wider range of machines. As its name suggests it only has 16k of memory in keeping with its budget status, and while it has the rest of the hardware necessary to run software intended for its 64k stablemates, […]
There was a time when owning a home computer was kind of a big deal. In the days before the popularization of the Internet, so-called “computer shows” were the best way to meet with others to swap advice, information, and hardware. Of course today, things are very different. The kind of people who are building […]
The modern keyboard enthusiast is blessed with innumerable choices when it comes to typing hardware. There are keyboards designed specifically for gaming, fast typing, ergonomics, and all manner of other criteria. [iot4c] undertook their own build for no other reason than nostalgia – which sounds plenty fun to us. An Arduino Leonardo is pressed into […]
There are hundreds of modern, retrocomputing projects out there that put ancient CPUs and chips in a modern context. The Neon816 from [Lenore] is perhaps one of the most impressive projects like this we’ve seen. It’s a classic system in a modern form factor, with modern video output, mashed together into a MiniITX motherboard. The […]
Right up front, let us stipulate that we are not making fun of this project. Even its maker admits that it has no practical purpose. But this 3D-printed Commodore-style rotary dial keypad fails to be practical on so many levels that it’s worth celebrating. And indeed, celebrating deprecated technology appears to be what [Jan Derogee] […]
There’s never been a better time to build your own Commodore 64, apparently. Within a day of each other, we got tipped off on three (3!) separate C64 builds from two different hackers. This has been made possible by a series of disparate projects that have individually recreated a piece of the full machine. Replacement […]