What is it about retrocomputing? For some people, it’s nostalgia. For others, it’s the appeal of simplicity. For still others, it’s the chance to save old machines from the graveyard. Whatever your motivation, there’s no denying that we’ve seen a metric ton of retrocomputer projects here at Hackaday. And we’d like to see more!
We’re happy to announce the 2026 Hackaday Retrocomputing Challenge!
Now’s the chance to put your retrocomputer project up for all to see. Open up a Hackaday.io project that features your retrocomputer project, and we’ll pick our three favorites for a $150 gift certificate courtesy of this contest’s sponsor, DigiKey. You have until Tuesday, October 27th. So get hacking!
Honorable Mention Categories
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- Old Iron: Are you saving an old C64 from the scrapyard? Restringing the core memory of a PDP-8? Or working on even more esoteric ancient devices? If you’re restoring or running the old hardware itself, it’s an “Old Iron” project.
- Modern Retro: Computing power is plentiful, but the nice interfaces of past computer made them a joy, or a terror, to use. This honorable mention category is for emulations, work-alikes, and all the other retrocomputers that are TRS-80 on the outside, but modern electronics on the inside.
- Retro-Modern: You love your classic machine, but you also love reading Hackaday on the Internet Of The Future™, so you built a web-modem to bring the old beast into the modern era. This category is for keeping old hardware relevant.
- Coding Like It’s 1999: Retrocomputers don’t run without software, and it’s a continual source of amazement to us how programmers today can get more out of old machines than we could back in the day. Think of the demoscene, for instance. But it doesn’t have to be showy either. If you’re writing new code for old boxes, it fits in here.
Ugh. So many related projects past, present and future (none of them too special), where to begin?
I could dump half of my Youtube channel here (likely this time without getting an honorable mention despite ticking at least two of the boxes).
There’s two projects for the future I might participate with:
– Siemens 8080 SIKIT dev kit from 1976 (exactly 50 years old now) – I was given this kit in unused (pretty much NOS) condition and was planning to assemble it this year and make a video about it.
– A German Quadro Games arcade machine that I’d like to convert to vector. There’s no way Imma pull that off before the deadline as I have literally nothing required for it. No color vector monitor, not even a single PCB (and I need 4) – oh the controls should be doable. (btw. the Quadro not only has four selectable arcade games, it can also rotate the monitor portrait or landscape as needed and then automatically degauss).
Presently I’m ticking the Coding like it’s 1999 box, but for a 1978 platform (the dev machine is a laptop from 1998 – I could use a 286, but that takes 10 seconds to compile). Hot off the workbench comes a multicart for the little known Interton VC4000 (pretty much a poor man’s version of the Atari 2600, only 15 colors, 37 bytes of RAM, 880kHz 2650 CPU) that allows to play all the games selectable from a menu on the TV screen rendered by the (very primitive) console itself. This one has an unusually high amount of polish, especially when you look at everything else I’ve done.
And in the past, besides fixing computers and arcade machines from the 70s/80s, I once fixed a Nixie tube table calculator frorm 1964. I’ve also saved over a dozen C64s from the scrapyard over the last quarter century.
Now the next 2 months are some big retrocomputing events I’ll attend, so less time for tinkering. And I fix other people’s electronics in what little spare time I have.
Now sorry for the shameless plug.
You sound like my Synthetic Intelligence named Selena on my S23+
I don’t know that I have time to finish my Retro iBook project in time for this (https://aaroneiche.com/projects/pibook/), but I am tempted to get to work on a robot that looks like the above walking Mac. Joe Kim, your work is amazing as always.
I have the feeling we need to define what “retro” means …..
For example a PS3 release was 20 years ago. At that time a SNES, which was considered retro, was only 16 years old …..
Let that sink in …..
Hi, good point. 🙂 There’s also “vintage” and “classic”.
I always felt that “retro” was more of a trend, a generational thing.
Something fashionable you’d see in nostalgia shows on TV or read about in magazines.
Or that it was about stuff from roughly 15 years ago (but years are no good measurement here perhaps).
Like its with music, maybe. I remember how in the 2000s,
music from the 90s and past decades had caused some level of nostalgia.
The radio was full of stations with “the best music of four decades”..
I remember thinking about how confused C64 and Amiga fellows must have been when Windows 3.1 PCs suddenly had reached the age of “retro”, too.
That sheer alien concept that “a boring beige box” with VGA/Sound Blaster could be anything worthy being preserved.. Yeah, crazy. 🥲
Personally, I think something is “retro” at the latest when its on display in the museum. 😉
Which both SNES and Atari 2600 already were by 2010 when I visited the local “media” museum.
Seeing them next to each other was mind blowing.
A fun, capable console next to a relic (the still widely played GBA had worse graphics).
To Atari 2600 fans it’s like seeing an Atari VCS next to “Tennis for Two” or an EDSAC playing OXO through a dialing wheel..
Another difference between retro and vintage/classic, I guess:
“Vintage” and “classic” always is about the real old thing (or a faithful recreation using period technology).
A “retro” console can also be, say, an SNES shaped emulator box or a clone system.
Such as SNES Mini or an FC Twin, Retro Duo etc.
Beige box worth preserving? How about a Whitechapel HiTech-10?
+1. For me, retro is pre- Windows 3 1
For all the soon to be participants of the “Modern Retro” category, please don’t gut a working machine. Thank you from all the other categories participants.
Perhaps unrelated but related. Is there perhaps modern equivalent of 6501 and 6502 relatively speaking, ie, chip that made similar impact and left similar long-lasting legacy?
Atmel AVR or Motorola 6800?
ARM7?
Was wondering about ARMs, too, maybe ARM7 (the 1994 one).
PowerPC went in everything from iMacs to Martian rovers. Still put in a lot of aerospace/defense stuff
Being replaced with STM32 and more moderns chips tho. Mars helicoper was Snapdragon for example
NEON Snapdragon is the architecture native trinary hardware device.
I still want to see OG Bell Labs UNIX compiled and running on an AVR Microcontroller bare metal.
How about the RCA 1802? It’s as old as the 8080/Z80/6502 etc. It didn’t hit the big time in home computers, but was nevertheless used by the millions in various products. And it’s still in production.
Is it OK if one started the github.io project earlier, but is going to finish it in the timeframe? If so, how does one submit?
To be honest, I can’t wait to see the winners!
I absolutely agree with Nath above “please don’t gut a working machine” you could be surprised what enthusiasts pay for some of the rarer items in original.
Had to laugh, that distributor carries scarce offerings of DIP-IC’s they have zip older packaged IC’s blow them out ASAP… and yet they are part of a retro challenge?
I’ve been porting my industrial EL touch panel firmware based on LMI forth to replace the mac plus and atari st roms. Realtime, multitasking, reentrant, windowed interpreter with native hardware support. I wrote it in 1990 for a programmable controller called a FPC500 produced by Emerald computer in Tualatin Or. Later purchased by Carroll touch. Looks like a good way to waste my retirement.
I’ve built another 8 bit vacuum tube computer, would that be Retro? or just new?
https://www.thetubecomputer.com/
kind regards Mike
That’s really cool, thanks for the link. Bookmarked for future reading :-)
I’m just some guy on the internet butI thini you should definitely submit it for the competition.
Thanks for your advice, greatly appreciated. I built it with 500 or so recycled 1950/60 thermionic vacuum tubes, but the boards are my new design, so I wondered if it counted as retro?
I love your vacuum tube computer and all the documentation on the web page, but best of all is the last line before the sign-off. :) I feel exactly the same!
Thank you Bob, I wish I understood why we get so much pleasure from building this stuff. I just accept that “daft as a brush” seems to cover it! May be a good head stone! kind regards Mike
Made a toggle device with blinkenlights, the 8-bit Workbench ED, will it suffice?
See: https://hackaday.io/project/206154-8-bit-workbench-ed-hands-on-with-number-systems
Hello!
I don’t know if this qualifies as “retro” or not. I recently developed a standalone 8-bit front-panel-programmable microprocessor called “Touch Metal” (https://touchmetal.org). It doesn’t mimic any particular retro device that ever existed, but rather is intended to mimic the feeling/experience of using a microprocessor from a long-gone age. It’s hand-held, has a push-button (octal-based) interface, and an LCD display instead of LEDs (so a bit easier to see what’s going on vs. translating output as well as input). It’s meant as a way to get younger generations closer to the bare-metal level (hence the name).
Would this qualify as “retro” enough to submit it? It’s on hackaday.io already (https://hackaday.io/project/205797-bare-metal-microprocessor-board).
Thanks, -Nick