Valve Releases Hardware And CAD Reference For New VR Headset

October 10, 2026 by Donald Papp 9 Comments

Valve recently began shipping its long-awaited VR headset, the Steam Frame. Now, there is a hardware reference repository that includes everything a budding modder might need, and then some.

No need to 3D scan or break out the calipers if one wants to design their own add-ons.

Want to design and 3D print some add-ons, or a carrying case, or some other doodad? There’s no need to break out the calipers or 3D scan the hardware. The repository contains STEP format models of the VR core module, head strap, and controllers, so it’s as easy as possible to design things that’ll fit. The location of the IR tracking LEDs embedded in the controllers is also documented, so one can ensure their design doesn’t occlude them.

That’s not all. The Frame has a user-accessible hardware expansion port at its front. This port exposes two interfaces: high-speed MIPI camera and PCI Express. This expansion port is documented in the repository, and even has a simple reference design built in both KiCad and Altium.

We’re glad to see Valve maintain their hacker-friendly hardware design with the Steam Frame. Demand for The Frame outstrips supply so far, so if you’re on the waitlist, you might want to browse the repository and get an early start on whatever customizations you have in mind while you wait for your confirmation. And when you get something working, drop us a note on the tips line!

A man's arm is shown against a mountainous backdrop. The man is wearing a black watch with an orange segment on one side.

Restoring An Altimeter Watch To Former Heights

October 10, 2026 by Aaron Beckendorf No comments

Finding inexpensive broken hardware for sale, buying it, and restoring it to working condition is a long-standing tradition for hackers on a limited budge. But there are some devices that are so difficult to repair that it’s usually not worth the trouble. [Vintage560] is braver than most, though, and restored an internally-damaged Casio AW-330-AT altimeter watch.

The exterior of the watch was in good condition, other than missing a readily-replaced strap, but the battery had leaked into the interior, and the watch didn’t respond in any way to new batteries. Cleaning out the guts with isopropyl alcohol, repositioning a plastic insulator, and bending some contacts back into shape at least got some segments of the LCD display to activate, while over two days of turning the crown smoothed out resistance in the analog train.

Actually getting the LCD to work properly required disassembling the watch, taking particular care with the altitude sensor. It wasn’t clear what was wrong with the LCD — the controller seemed to be working properly, and several rounds of cleaning and adjusting the ZEBRA connector didn’t make any difference.

Eventually, [Vintage560] simply purchased a new screen. On close inspection, it looked as though chemicals from the leaking battery might have dissolved some of the transparent indium tin oxide contacts on the old display. With the watch now working [Vintage560] tested it on a trip to the Alps, and with a few periodic calibrations, it remained quite accurate.

Usually when we see Casio watch hacks, the watch in question is the F91W, whether it’s being used for contactless payments, being retrofitted as a smartwatch, or going 5,000 meters underwater.

The Weirdest Video Games Were Hacks

October 10, 2026 by Elliot Williams 27 Comments

We were looking into the marvelous recent project by [Throaty Mumbo] to recreate and reimagine the forgotten world of VHS-tape-based video games. Wait, what? Yes, back in the day, when computer graphics were more primitive, there were attempts to mix the gameplay of video games with the graphics from a video cassette. Take the Action Max system. It worked with a light-gun that pointed at the screen while the video played, and you tried to shoot at things as they flew by. Think Duck Hunt, but in glorious VHS video quality with cheesy acting, and the same gameplay loop every time, because it’s on the tape.

The unreleased Control-Vision VHS gaming system, co-developed with none other than Steve Wozniak, took the idea a little further and ran simultaneous sub-videos, and your actions would choose which of the sub-tracks would play at any given time. This let them do things like switch between videos depending on whether you caught the bad guys or missed them entirely, for instance.

These games came in the late 1980s, though, and they were all derivatives of the seminal Dragon’s Lair, which is probably the least fun video game I’ve ever had the chance to play, but among the most entertaining in a weird way. Instead of a linear VHS tape, Dragon’s Lair, and the later but equally unplayable Space Ace, were based on the then-new video disc technology that could swap between entirely different tracks almost seamlessly.

“Almost” is the key word here, though. Although the animations were absolutely marvelously cartoony, and looked stunning in an arcade up against video games of the time, there was a significant fraction of a second of delay between commanding an action with the joystick and the machine swapping up to the correct track. There were a couple of sections where back-to-back actions were necessary, and the challenge was to work around the game’s exact track-swapping-glitch time. As good as they looked, the gameplay was no fun.

But the game was influential, as evidenced by its VHS-based clones. If you’d like to give it a try, you’ll not be surprised to hear that there’s an emulator for Dragon’s Lair and its spin-off games.

What do all of these have to do with each other? We love how these games took a current technology – in this case video discs or video tapes – and tried to make it do something else: These games were all hacks. If you look at them in that light, maybe you can look past the horrible acting in Night Trap or the frustrating glitches in Dragon’s Lair. (Or maybe not. Give me Robotron: 2084 any day.)

Why Every Microwave Has A “Popcorn” Button, But Every Bag Warns You Not To Use It

October 10, 2026 by Donald Papp 67 Comments

[Hyperfixed] has a podcast episode that does a deep dive into exactly why bags of microwave popcorn advise against using your microwave’s popcorn setting (in North America, anyway.) The answer is probably more complex than one expects, and involves the long history of microwave oven development as well as consumer behavior.

There are really two questions involved: one is “what does the Popcorn button actually do?” The other is “Why does every package of microwave popcorn say not to use it?”

The answer to the first question is “it depends”. Microwave ovens are amazing things, but the popcorn setting on any given microwave oven could be anything from just a dumb timer, to a setting that tells the oven to monitor popping sounds or humidity levels (because popping releases steam). These kinds of microwave oven features were figured out ages ago, meaning the technology to precisely handle a bag of microwave popcorn not only exists in equipped ovens right now, but has existed for decades.

The problem is not all microwaves are so equipped. A microwave oven where the popcorn setting is just a dumb timer is really an invitation to under- or overcook the bag. And when overcooked, microwave popcorn scorches and could even burn.

That brings us to the answer of the second question: why does every package warn not to use the popcorn setting? In short, because the popcorn maker has no idea what any given user’s microwave oven is doing. When people hit a button marked “Popcorn” they tend to leave the process unattended, and when a microwave oven ruins a bag of popcorn, the user blames the popcorn manufacturer.

This means microwave popcorn manufacturers stick to some variant of the only process known to work in all ovens: monitor the process, wait for popping to slow to a rate of one pop every two seconds, then stop.

That’s the quick answer, but [Hyperfixed] goes in a ton of researched detail across the entire spectrum of this issue. If deep-dive niche technical podcasts are your thing, we recommend queuing it up for a listen.

Another IKEA Product Yields An LED Matrix

October 10, 2026 by Jenny List 25 Comments

The IKEA Kortlinje is a digital clock that costs around 20 dollars, featuring a hygrometer and thermometer. It’s another cheap appliance, you might think, were it not that the display is a white LED matrix. Best of all, with three VK1640 LED controllers, it has hacking potential. You’re in at the ground floor if you hack one of these, but so far we’ve seen a post from the RevSpace hackerspace in the Netherlands, and the first glimmerings of a firmware on GitHub from [VIPnytt].

We have one on the bench here, and cracking it open we find the three LED drivers, an unidentified microcontroller with a 32.768 kHz watch crystal, and a mystery chip nobody’s yet identified that may either be some kind of I2C multiplexer or have something to do with those sensors. Neither has any markings, so no help there. The hackability comes in the relative ease of desoldering the microcontroller and substituting your own. In which case with access to I2C and the LED drivers, you can make it do your bidding.

This thing is part of a rich tradition of hacking IKEA products. Perhaps one of our favorites is the use of bowls from the Swedish furniture giant to make a telescope mount.

Super Mario 64 Comes To The Microsoft Zune

October 9, 2026 by Bryan Cockfield 8 Comments

As a portable media player, Microsoft’s Zune simply couldn’t compete with Apple’s juggernaut iPod — the latter essentially becoming the de facto personal media player until smartphones took over. But in 2026 it might be Microsoft that gets the last laugh, as thanks to [rsheldiii] the Zune can now play Super Mario 64.

The software is based on sm64ex, and notably doesn’t include the ROM file necessary to actually run the game. But presuming a legal dump of a cartridge has been done, building and loading it onto a Zune HD is straightforward enough. From there the player is presented with a controller interface on the device’s touchscreen overlaid with the video output from the game. Some interesting things are happening in the background here as well, like using NVIDIA’s Tegra tools to pre-compile shaders so the 2009-era processor can handle the rest of the gameplay.

Although it didn’t enjoy the mainstream success of the iPod, the Zune was actually a pretty solid device, and even though the last of them rolled off the assembly line back in 2012, there’s still a fairly active userbase for it. Modern improvements have added Bluetooth and solid-state drive upgrades for them have been available almost since they were first released.

2026 Retrocomputing Challenge: NEC 286 Laptop Rides Again

October 9, 2026 by Tyler August 6 Comments

The sad reality is that all consumer electronics are going to be e-waste eventually. [Cory Whitesell] was determined his old NEC ProSpeed 286 Laptop wouldn’t meet that fate until absolutely necessary, so when his attempts at repairs failed, his efforts pivoted to create a retro battlestation from the stylish old machine.

That screen looks too good to be stock, but otherwise you can’t tell from this angle.

Externally, it looks pretty well stock, and [Cory] has retained as much of the internals as possible. The original power supply remains intact, with power taken off the original HDD’s molex connector. Said power drives a Raspberry Pi, which is small enough to fit inside without any gutting. The original keyboard connects easily enough via a PS/2 to USB adapter, while the passive-matrix LCD has been replaced with a modern screen of the same dimensions. You’d have to be a pretty hard-core purist to mourn that last change.

With emulation on the Pi, he can still have the DOS experience you’d expect from this machine, but its also powerful enough to be useful in the modern day. While we place no bets on whether or not this mod will stay relevant for another 38 years, a more powerful single-board computer or slightly-squished cell phone can be placed in the drive bay instead once the Pi’s ARM processor inevitably starts to look as anemic as the 286 does now.

Not everyone loves this kind of restomod, but we’ve featured more than a few and have a special category for it in our ongoing retrocomputing contest for those who will do everything to keep classics out of the e-waste bin, including remaking them.