The PC OS That Would Have Blown Your Mind Back In 1984

August 11, 2026 by 9 Comments

As far as desktop microcomputers for mere mortals went in the first half of the 1980s, there was a sharp distinction between home computers such as the many 8-bit machines we regularly see here, and what you might call professional computers such as a CP/M word-processor or the earliest IBM PCs. These were conservative machines, boring even, with command line interfaces and mostly text-mode software.

When the middle of the decade saw the arrival of mass-market machines such as the Macintosh or the Amiga with their beautiful GUIs, a PC with DOS couldn’t yet compete. [Jggonz] then is over four decades late with the beautiful os8088, a fully-functional OS for 8088 IBM PCs and clones, with a very slick Mac-style GUI.

os8088 is a single-floppy OS that provides preemptive multitasking and fully loadable software alongside that GUI, unlike other similar projects we’ve seen it’s not an all-in-one compiled application that just looks like an OS. There’s a second floppy with a suite of software that would have been seriously impressive back in the day, with games, graphics, and demos. It’s a shame that this thing appeared in 2026 when there is little need of it.

You can try it for yourself either on real hardware, your own emulator, or even in an in-browser emulator. Sadly it’s not OS enough to fulfill the requirements for a Daily Drivers test drive, but it’s definitely fun to play with. Bonus, if you run it on a Book8088.

PC-1: The 1954 Computer With No Tubes, Relays, Or Transistors

August 11, 2026 by 3 Comments

However you make a digital computer, you need something to represent a binary digit. Usually this is some form of switch: a relay, a tube, or a transistor, although there have been other ways to represent state. In 1954, [Eiichi Goto] of Japan invented the parametron, a resonant circuit using a ferrite core and a capacitor that could be moved between two phases.

According to [Goto’s] 1959 paper, the device is effectively a parametric oscillator, similar to some used at UHF frequencies by hams. The idea is that a tuned circuit is set to some frequency and driven with twice that frequency.

A What?

A parametron is essentially a resonant circuit made with inductors or capacitors whose reactance is varied at twice its resonant frequency. That “pumping” causes the circuit to oscillate at half the pump frequency. The neat trick is that there are two equally stable oscillation states at half the pump frequency, separated from each other by 180° of phase. Those two phases become binary 0 and 1. Depending on the incoming signals, one phase will win over the others.

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Running DOOM On A Cheap 104-in-One Handheld

August 11, 2026 by 4 Comments

Taking a break from putting DOOM on devices that absolutely were never conceived for use as gaming devices, [Aaron Christophel] recently got enticed by some cheapo handheld gaming systems at his local Action budget store. One is a controller-shaped ‘mini game console’ with 104 games from the 1980s and 1990s, while the other is simply a Pac-Man handheld in a more typical rectangular form factor. Although this brings to mind basic blob chips and limited hacking potential, as it turns out they’re actually quite nice inside.

As also covered in the demonstration video, rather than said nasty blob chip, both handhelds turned out to use the same unmarked MCU in QFN48 packaging. Some prodding and poking confirmed that it’s a typical ARM core, specifically a Cortex-M33 compatible STAR-MC1 ARMv8-M from an unknown manufacturer. Without a datasheet to go by, its limitations had to be discovered experimentally.

Of those, the biggest were a clock speed of 62 MHz – instead of the typical 194 MHz – as well as a lack of sound. This latter issue might be fixable with a better understanding of what appears to be a quirky DMA-fed DAC. Beyond this you’re also dealing with limited memory and of course just 4 MB of flash, though the chip for this might be upgradable if the MCU can map more. You do get a 320×240 display and a lot of buttons, which is admittedly nice.

As for the price difference of around $8/€7 for the Pac-Man version, this appears to be due to it running an officially licensed Bandai Namco arcade emulator as firmware, while the 104-in-one unit runs FlyThings/ZKSWE with a NES emulator.

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The Code The British Government Doesn’t Want You To See (Any More)

August 11, 2026 by 13 Comments

Governments like to do things which at least sound open and honest. It makes them look like Thoroughly Good Eggs, when maybe the truth might be a little murkier. They also like to quietly roll back those things when it suits them, and so it is that [Jonty], of Electromagnetic Field fame, has assembled a list of code repositories quietly disappeared by the UK Government. Naturally, being thorough about such things, he’s also kept copies.

Now we’re always happy to reach for a mildly sensational title, but paging through the archive it’s more a collection of flotsam and jetsam than a trove of state secrets, after all these were all public GitHub repositories. There’s a lot of web stuff, some data analytics in R for those interminable government reports, odd bits of server code, and a whole load more. The Met Office Informatics Lab in particular has a fair bit of climate related code and data.

Should Brits with an interest in government openness be concerned here? In terms of the data and code deleted, probably not, but in terms of that which they might delete without notice in the future, it’s a slippery slope. We’re glad people like [Jonty] are there to make these things a little less easy to disappear.

A Keyboard With No Keys

August 10, 2026 by 8 Comments

For as capable as smartphone hardware is, the software running on them can be especially restrictive and cumbersome. Unlike a single-board computer with GPIO running a standard Linux operating system and some intuitive programming language like Python, smartphones are generally walled gardens where programming major overhead, and if a custom program can be run on them at all the user still has to figure out how to interface hardware with a USB-C port. To skip past all of this, [nicolas.ma] built an audio modem that can send keyboard input to a computer with nothing more than a browser.

The “keyboard” starts off in a browser running on a standard smartphone. A user can input text into the browser, which then gets converted into a series of audible audio pulses that can be sent to the keyboard. The keyboard itself listens to those pulses, decodes them, and then sends the text through to the computer as a standard USB device thanks to an Arduino Micro at the center. Arduino Micros are excellent choices for keyboard controllers because they have a built-in USB chip.

The protocol used here is designed and built by [nicolas.ma] as well. The words allow for variable length, with the device determining message length, and a word-ending scheme that automatically sends the message to memory when it’s detected that the message is finished. There’s also integrity checking and the ability to check on the link’s state. From hardware to software it’s an impressive build, and for anyone wondering what this might be used for [nicolas.ma] has already built a password manager from it.  Continue reading “A Keyboard With No Keys” →

The PiShot Is Ready For Your Snaps

August 10, 2026 by 4 Comments

The formula for a Raspberry Pi camera is by now a straightforward one: take a Pi and camera module, add a display, buttons, and battery, and you’re done. This doesn’t mean that there’s no scope for more though, and [Irtaza2009] has one in the PiShot. It’s a few months old now but the repository is still being updated.

The 3D printed case follows a compact camera form factor with the screen on the rear, and a cold shoe on top. Inside is a Pi Zero 2 W and a Camera Module 3, with an 18650 cell and battery management/power supply board. The buttons are tactile switches hooked up to GPIOs, and the screen is an ST7789 SPI display.

For software there’s a Python script, which should do the job. We’ve not tested this one, but our experience is that slowness is the Achilles’ heel of Python based Pi cameras. We hope this one has managed to eke out some performance.

An interesting upgrade to this device would be to use an HQ camera module, for a mirror-less compact. It wouldn’t be the first such camera we’ve seen.

The countertop in its natrual habitat: a van.

Cotton-Fiberglass Composite Makes Lightweight RV Countertops

August 10, 2026 by 13 Comments

You’ve seen fiber-reinforced-plastic before, no doubt, but perhaps never quite like in this video by [Whitburn Studio]: it’s still got the usual resin, but instead of glass or carbon fibers, he’s using printed Japanese cotton to create strong, lightweight and good looking parts for the interior of his RV– specifically the countertops.

The technique is very similar to the sort of moldless composite work Burt Rutan pioneered in aircraft use. The fiber-reinforced plastic is formed around a positive ‘buck’ that remains inside the final part, adding stiffness and some backing. Unlike Rutan’s designs, which used pure Styrofoam inside, [Whitburn] is using a sandwhich of two layers of thin ply (3.6 mm) with XPS foam in between. Adding plywood means you don’t need many layers of fiber– again, that’s a decorative cotton, here– to get a surface that won’t dent into the styrofoam when you drop a coffee cup on it.

Indeed, with the plywood providing much of the strength, he’s only using a single layer of cotton and a second of fiberglass– though the glass fibers are really there to protect the pretty print from oopsies while sanding, rather than for their mechanical properties, by the sounds of it. Everything is held together with clear epoxy resin, which also fills the weave of the fabrics. Multiple coats of that are required to get the smooth, shiny surface he shows off at the end, but all that sanding and buffing really pays off. That’s also where you have to be really careful to avoid oopsies– go through the cotton and you have to start over.

Aside from the aesthetics, since this is going in a vehicle the weight is an important consideration– the bigger of the two counters he makes, pictured here, weighs in at only 2.4 kg or 5.2 lb including the cutout covering the sink. That’s pretty good all things considered– a lot lighter than a cement countertop, or even one made of DIY resin tiles.

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