Silicon Valley Was Built On Tubes Of Glass

November 2, 2017 by Charles Alexanian 53 Comments

Bill Shockley brought the transistor to a pasture in Palo Alto, but he didn’t land there by chance. There was already a plot afoot which had nothing to do with silicon, and it had already been a happening place for some time by then.

Often overshadowed by Edison and Menlo Park or Western Electric and its Bell Labs, people forget that the practical beginning of modern radio and telecommunications began unsuspectingly in the Bay Area on the shoestring-budgeted work benches of Lee de Forest at Federal Telegraph.

As the first decade of the 20th century passed, Lee de Forest was already a controversial figure. He had founded a company in New York to develop his early vacuum tubes as detectors for radio, but he was not very good at business. Some of the officers of the company decided that progress was not being made fast enough and drained the company of assets while de Forest was away. This led to years of legal troubles and the arrest of many involved due to fraud and loss of investors’ money.

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Finally – A Big-Screen Vectrex

November 2, 2017 by Lewin Day 26 Comments

The Vectrex is in no way the most popular console of all time, but it is one of the more unique. Eschewing typical raster-based rendering, it instead relies on a vector-based display. Since the average home television of the era would be completely unable to display such signals, the Vectrex had its screen built in. This got [Arcade Jason] wondering – would it be possible to hook the Vectrex up to a bigger screen?

First, a suitable monitor had to be found. The 19V2000 turned out to be a good candidate – much larger at 19 inches, and found in a variety of arcade cabinets from years past. From there, the project became a matter of identifying the signal outputs of the Vectrex. [Arcade Jason] took the liberty of modifying the levels of the signals on the Vectrex board itself, and then fixing the now-overscanned image on the original screen by adjusting the onboard trimpots. With the Vectrex’s X and Y signals now boosted somewhat, they were wired up to the inputs of the larger arcade screen. For the Z signal, things got even hackier – a Walmart “Computer Amplifier”, typically used for speakers, was instead pressed in to service to amplify the signal.

There are plenty of wires running all over the carpet in this video, but the fact is, it works brilliantly. Future plans involve upgrading to an even larger 23 inch monitor, and possibly even experiments with color vector displays. It just goes to show that the Vectrex, even today, maintains a die-hard following.

Perhaps you’d like to try this, but need to fix your original Vectrex screen first? Never fear – that’s possible, too.

Pi Handheld With A Mindblowing Enclosure

November 2, 2017 by Lewin Day 14 Comments

The Raspberry Pi is possibly the world’s most popular emulation platform these days. While it was never intended to serve this purpose, the fact remains that a small, compact computer with flexible I/O is ideally suited to it. We’ve featured a multitude of builds over the years using a Pi in a mobile form factor to take games on the go. [Michael]’s build, however, offers a lot more than a few Nintendo ROMs and some buttons from eBay. It’s a tour de force in enclosure design.

The build starts with the electronics. In 2017 it’s no longer necessary to cobble together five different accessory boards to handle the controls, battery charging, and display. Boards like Kite’s Super All In One exist, handling everything necessary for a handheld game console. With this as a starting point, he then set out to recreate Nintendo’s classic Game Boy, with a few tweaks to form and function.

It’s a textbook example of smart planning, design, and execution. We are taken through the process of creating the initial CAD drawings, then combining 3D printed parts with wood and carbon fibre for a look that is more akin to a high-end piece of hi-fi gear than anything related to gaming. The attention to detail is superb and the write-up makes it look easy, while [Michael] shares tips on how to safely cut carbon fibre to make your own buttons.

The final results are stunning, and it’s a great example of why a fine piece of wood is always a classy way to go for an enclosure. For another great example, try this walnut keyboard, or check out the roots of the Raspberry Pi Game Boy movement.