Author: Jenny List

3312 Articles

A Couple Of New DOS PCs Appear

November 23, 2025 by 97 Comments

An interesting trend over the last year or two has been the emergence of modern retrocomputer PCs, recreations of classic PC hardware from back in the day taking advantage of modern parts alongside the venerable processors. These machines are usually very well specified for a PC from the 1980s, and represent a credible way to run your DOS or early Windows software on something close to the original. [CNX Software] has news of a couple of new ones from the same manufacturer in China, one sporting a 386sx and the other claiming it can take either an 8088 or an 8086.

Both machines use the same see-through plastic case, screen, and keyboard, and there are plenty of pictures to examine the motherboard. There are even downloadable design files, which is an interesting development. They come with a removable though proprietary looking VGA card bearing a Tseng Labs ET4000, a CF card interface, a USB port which claims to support disk drives, a sound card, the usual array of ports, and an ISA expansion for which a dock is sold separately. The battery appears to be a LiPo pouch cell of some kind.

If you would like one they can be found through the usual channels for a not-outrageous price compared to similar machines. We can see the attraction, though maybe we’ll stick with an emulator for now. If you’d like to check out alternatives we’ve reported in the past on similar 8088 and 386sx computers.

It’s Hard To Make A (Good) Oscillator

November 22, 2025 by 28 Comments

There’s more to making an oscillator than meets the eye, and [lcamtuf] is here with a good primer on the subject. It starts with the old joke that if you need an oscillator it’s best to try to make an amplifier instead, but of course the real point here is to learn how to make not just a mere oscillator, but a good oscillator.

He does this by taking the oscillator back to first principles and explaining positive feedback on an amplifier, before introducing the Schmitt trigger, an RC circuit to induce a delay, and then phase shift. These oscillators are not complex circuits by any means, so understanding their principles should allow you to unlock the secrets of oscillation in a less haphazard way than just plugging in values and hoping.

Oscillation is a subject we’ve taken a deep dive into ourselves here at Hackaday, should you wish to learn any more. Meanshile [lcamtuf] is someone we’ve heard from here before, with a comparative review of inexpensive printed circuit board manufacturers.

Remember XBMC? It’s Back!

November 21, 2025 by 31 Comments

The original Xbox was different from the consoles that had gone before, in that its hardware shared much with a PC of the day. It was found to be hackable, and one of the most successful projects to take advantage of it was a media centre. You know it as Kodi, but its previous name was XBMC, for Xbox Media Centre. The last version that still ran on an original Xbox saw the light of day in 2016, so it’s definitely a surprise that a new version has appeared.

XBMC version 4.0 brings a host of new features to the venerable platform, including the Estuary user interface that will be familiar to users of more recent Kodi versions, a better games library, and more. The plugin system has been revamped too, and while it retains the Python 2 version from back in the day it’s promised that a Python 3 update is in the works. That’s right, it sounds as though there will be more releases. Get them from the GitHub repository.

We’re not sure how many of you have early Xbox hardware along with the inclination to use it as a media centre, after all Kodi runs so well on a lot of very accessible hardware. But we’re impressed that the developers of this release have managed so much within the confines of a machine with a 2000s-era spec, and have released it at all.

If you’re curious about Xbox hacking, take a look at some of its early history.

So Long, Firefox, Part One

November 20, 2025 by 153 Comments

It’s likely that Hackaday readers have among them a greater than average number of people who can name one special thing they did on September 23rd, 2002. On that day a new web browser was released, Phoenix version 0.1, and it was a lightweight browser-only derivative of the hugely bloated Mozilla suite. Renamed a few times to become Firefox, it rose to challenge the once-mighty Microsoft Internet Explorer, only to in turn be overtaken by Google’s Chrome.

Now in 2025 it’s a minority browser with an estimated market share just over 2%, and it’s safe to say that Mozilla’s take on AI and the use of advertising data has put them at odds with many of us who’ve kept the faith since that September day 23 years ago. Over the last few months I’ve been actively chasing alternatives, and it’s with sadness that in November 2025, I can finally say I’m Firefox-free.

Continue reading “So Long, Firefox, Part One” →

Damn Fine (Solar Powered) Coffee

November 19, 2025 by 30 Comments

The folks at Low Tech Magazine are here again, this time with a solar powered coffee maker. Lest you think of a large parabolic mirror with a pot at its focus, in this case the device is much more friendly. It’s a table-top appliance that relies upon a 100 W, 12 V panel for its operation.

They make the point that an electric coffee pot requires at least 300 W to work, so what’s the secret? In this case, insulation, as a standard moka pot is placed within a nichrome heating element set in mortar and surrounded by cork. On the outside are tiles, though they appear largely ornamental and the write-up suggests you could experiment with other materials to serve as an enclosure.

It appears to be an effective coffee maker, with the significant caveat that it’s hardly fast. In full sunlight the first pot takes over an hour to brew, with subsequent ones once it’s up to temperature being somewhat faster. But you can’t argue with the idea of free power, even if your favourite caffeinated beverage may now take a while to appear.

We like this idea, despite its slow brewing. We’ve featured Low Tech Magazine before, not least in their solar powered oven.

Cheap VHF Antenna? Can Do!

November 18, 2025 by 6 Comments

The magnetic loop antenna is a familiar sight in radio amateur circles as a means to pack a high performance HF antenna into a small space. It takes the form of a large single-turn coil made into a tuned circuit with a variable capacitor, and it provides the benefits of good directionality and narrow bandwidth at the cost of some scary RF voltages and the need for constant retuning. As [VK3YE] shows us though, magnetic loops are not limited to HF — he’s made a compact VHF magnetic loop using a tin can.

It’s a pretty simple design; a section from the can it cut out and made into a C shape, with a small variable capacitor at the gap. The feed comes in at the bottom, with the feed point about 20 % of the way round the loop for matching. The bandwidth is about 100 MHz starting from the bottom of the FM broadcast band, and he shows us it receiving broadcast, Airband, and 2 meter signals. It can be used for transmitting too and we see it on 2 meter WSPR, but we would have to wonder whether the voltages induced by higher power levels might be a little much for that small capacitor.

He’s at pains to point out that there are many better VHF antennas as this one has no gain to speak of, but we can see a place for it. It’s tiny, if you’re prepared to fiddle with the tuning its high Q gets rid of interference, and its strong side null means it can also reduce unwanted signals on the same frequency. We rather like it, and we hope you will too after watching the video below.

Continue reading “Cheap VHF Antenna? Can Do!” →

2025 Component Abuse Challenge: The VIA Makes Noise, Again

November 14, 2025 by 3 Comments

In the days of 8-bit home computing, the more fancy machines had sound chips containing complete synthesizers, while budget machines made do with simple output ports connected to a speaker — if they had anything at all. [Normal User] appears to be chasing the later route, making PCM sound by abusing the serial port on a 6522 VIA chip.

A serial port is when you think about it, a special case of a one-bit output port. It’s designed for byte data communication but it can also carry a PCM data stream. We’ve seen this used with microcontrollers and peripherals such as the I2S port plenty of times here at Hackaday, to produce such things as NTSC video. The 1970s-spec equivalent might not be as fast as its modern equivalent, but it’s capable of delivering audio at some level. The machine in question is a Ben Eater breadboard 6502 with a World’s Worst Video Card, and as you can hear in the video below the break, it’s not doing a bad job for the era,

If you think this hack sounds a little familiar then in a sense you’re right, because Ben Eater himself made noises with a 6522. However it differs from that in that he used the on-board timers instead. After all, the “V” in “VIA” stands for “versatile”.

Continue reading “2025 Component Abuse Challenge: The VIA Makes Noise, Again” →