2026 Retrocomputing Challenge: Retro Terminal Bartop Arcade Topper

October 8, 2026 by 1 Comment

Retrocomputing is more than just hardware. It’s also a feel, a vibe, and [valkyrie0528]’s Retro Terminal Bartop Arcade Topper has it in spades.

The same unit, in bartop arcade machine mode.

Here’s how it happened. The gorgeous device you see in the image above in fact started out as a bartop arcade cabinet build. The front section — with arcade buttons and joystick — is a removable panel. While building it, the panel was uninstalled and [valkyrie0528] placed a keyboard in the empty recess to do some configuration. Sitting at the machine like that felt like being right back in the 80s, perched at an 8-bit home computer. Cue a visit from the Good Ideas Fairy.

Now, in addition to being an arcade cabinet, one can swap the arcade controls panel for a one that has a keyboard (clicky and mechanical, of course), touchpad, and small USB breakout. The result looks amazing either way. As an arcade machine it’s beautiful, and in retro terminal mode it’s simply gorgeous.

The icing on the cake is [valkyrie0528]’s use of cool-retro-term as the terminal emulator, and there’s even a widescreen wallpaper accompanying it that puts an image of two 5.25″ floppy drives to the side. If you like that idea, you can download the wallpaper file from the project page for your own use.

A widescreen wallpaper with two 5.25″ floppy drives is the perfect complement to a retro terminal emulator.

There’s still time to enter our 2026 Retrocomputing Challenge, so if you find yourself inspired and want to show off your own take of things, there’s no time to lose!

2026 Hackaday Retrocomputing Contest

Solve Your TTL Video Woes With An RP2350

October 7, 2026 by 1 Comment

Before HDMI and DVI there was VGA, and before that? TTL RGB, in which instead of analogue voltages, the connector carried TTL logic voltages. TTL monitors used to be ten a penny because nobody wanted them in the VGA era, but the decades have not been kind to the TTL video aficionado. Stuck with a TTL card and no compatible monitor? Never fear, for [Charlysan] has your back with a TTL-to-DVI converter using an RP2350. The PIOs are used to sample the TTL input to a framebuffer, and the rest of the 2350 does the DVI magic using PicoDVI.

It requires a bit of level shifting hardware, which at minimum can be a set of resistors, and it targets the Waveshare RP2350-PiZero which comes with a handy ready-made HDMI socket. There’s a USB serial terminal to manage the thing, for which there’s even a TK GUI script.

This is the type of project which may never be center stage, yet performs such a vital function that it becomes indispensable. It’s not the first such project we’ve seen, a previous one did the same for VGA.

Keep That Old Radio Alive With An ESP32

October 7, 2026 by 5 Comments

As the legacy AM broadcast bands fade away, what happens to the millions of devices built to receive them? Many of them will go into e-waste, but with a century of radios to choose from, some of them are collector’s items. Vintage tube radios like the ones [GarethDaviesLondon] has would go silent, so he’s made a small AM transmitter to keep them alive.

At its heart is an ESP32-S3, which takes an online radio stream and transmits it through RF generated with a pulse chain on a GPIO. Generating analogue signals from radio to video with a microcontroller is nothing new, but perhaps the more interesting part of this one comes in how he radiates enough from that pin. There’s a 3D printed box with stand-offs designed to take a widely spaced wire coil, which is enough for the vintage electronics to pick up. He makes the point that it may not be legal, but at that power we doubt anyone will notice.

The output on this one is 200kHz for the European long wave band, but we’re guessing a higher medium wave frequency could also be generated. Meanwhile if you are curious about AM, we’ve featured someone having a closer look at it.

Streaming Games Means The Nintendo DSi Will Never Be Obsolete

October 7, 2026 by 6 Comments

There comes a point where you have to acknowledge that your beloved console is out of date and– barring the odd homebrew title– won’t be playing new games ever again. You’d think that Nintendo’s 2008 DSi handheld would be in this category, but [gavff64] has a workaround. What if the odd homebrew title streamed games over the network?

At its core the RNDS-Stream is just decoding an MJPEG stream from a server on a Linux PC, giving you the content of an X11 or xWayland window with relatively low latency at around 15-20FPS. So while you won’t be entering any e-sports tournaments, you can enjoy more relaxed, casual games like Counterstrike. Well, at least there’s no audio streaming yet, so you won’t have to hear the other team’s trash talk. That ought to make it more relaxed.

Sound may come; the project is very much a work in progress, and also a showcase of RubyNDS, [gavff64]’s Ruby-based homebrew framework for the DSi. Why Ruby? Why the DSi? For no other reason than [gavff64] likes both of those things.You can observe it in action after 4:48 in the video embedded below– just be warned, it’s editing is tuned to a TikTok-using audience and won’t be to everyone’s taste. Don’t let videography get in the way, though, because the hack is the thing and it’s up on GitHub for all and sundry under an MIT license.

The DSi is no stranger to hackers, having gotten its first flash cart the year of its release. In spite of that, we’ve seen surprisingly little homebrew for the dual-screen device, this augmented reality app being an exception.

Continue reading “Streaming Games Means The Nintendo DSi Will Never Be Obsolete” →

Handheld Atari 2600 Packs A CRT

October 7, 2026 by 22 Comments

We covered [Nick Bild]’s mini Atari console using original devices not so long ago, and today he’s back with the same console wrapped up with a CRT as a handheld. It would have cost a fortune in D cells to own back in the day, but we know we’d have lusted after one of these in 1979.

He’s called it the µTari Go, pronounced “Microtari”, and it’s a 3D printed affair with the buttons roughly where you’d expect them if you’re used to the Game Boy, and a cartridge socket at the top above the screen.The PCB is the circuit of the original packed into a smaller space, so his claim of using original hardware is valid. The CRT is one of those Sony flattened modules that can still be found in the usual online bazaars, and it packs a small speaker. He’s not been foolhardy enough to equip it with those D cells, so the power is an external 12 V jack.

You can’t not like this project, especially after seeing it in action in the video below. Unlike in the ’70s a USB-C power pack could run this thing with reasonable playing time, so it could even be fully portable if you wanted. You can see our write-up of the board itself here.

Continue reading “Handheld Atari 2600 Packs A CRT” →

Repairing A Couple Of Very Expensive Registered DDR5 RAM Sticks

October 7, 2026 by 26 Comments

It’s definitely a sign of the times when repair shops get handed sticks of registered ECC DDR5 RAM by businesses to try and fix, rather than just tossing the defective ones and slotting in a fresh bunch. This is how [northwestrepair] ended up with two of these ECC RDIMMs, with a current market valuation of a rather nice budget car.

The 128 GB stick was first on the bench, with the fault being that it would fail DDR5 training on boot. This suggests that one or more of the DRAM BGA packages had developed a cracked solder joint, which is something that you could conceivably fix with more diagnosing and testing for a single IC reballing.

In this case doing a reflow cycle was enough to bring the RAM back to life, with the DDR5 training now passing without issues in a test system.

For the 256 GB stick things wouldn’t be so easy, as it seemed completely dead. This suggested a dead PMIC, as this is the component on DDR5 RAM responsible for ensuring that the DRAM ICs even power on. The SPD ROM was another option, so that got swapped first, which does require reprogramming the RDIMM. For this the earlier SPD dump image was reflashed, but swapping this chip made no difference.

After some additional reflowing of a few suspect ICs, still nothing happened. Following this a lot of reballing and other troubleshooting steps followed, only for the problem to be one shorted MLCC and a broken PMIC, potentially caused by whoever dropped said RDIMM onto the server room floor.

Cracked MLCCs do appear to be a very common cause of failures, as they’re often used as filter capacitors, same as for this RDIMM. Checking for shorts across a number of such MLCCs can be a good way to shorten a diagnostic cycle. Since this RDIMM was dropped, reballing every IC probably was still a good move as this may have cracked some solder balls.

Continue reading “Repairing A Couple Of Very Expensive Registered DDR5 RAM Sticks” →

2026 Retrocomputing Challenge: Dungeons Of Daggorath, But Without Quite So Much Typing

October 7, 2026 by 4 Comments

People mod games all the time, but it’s not every day someone mods Dungeons of Daggorath for the TRS-80. [Nick Bild] did exactly that, adding joystick support and a couple DOOM-inspired monsters for good measure. And while he was at it, optional unlimited player health and power because why not?

A pretty good representation, in our opinion.

Dungeons of Daggorath was pretty unusual for its time. It portrayed a dungeon and its contents from a first-person perspective, and events progressed in real time.

Gameplay-wise, most commands entered by the player revolved around moving around and attacking monsters, and that was done with text commands like ATTACK RIGHT which could mercifully be shortened to A R. Still, not the most efficient control scheme.

[Nick] downloaded the original source code and made several modifications. A joystick moves the player much more efficiently, with the button acting as a shortcut to attacking with whatever is in the player’s right hand. He also replaced the spider and viper enemies with creatures inspired by DOOM‘s imp and cacodemon monsters, as well as the aforementioned optional limitless health and power.

[Nick] dubbed the modified game Dungeons of Doom and while the terms of the original don’t allow redistribution of modified code, his changes are simple enough to follow. Especially so for those from the generation that remembers typing programs in by hand from a magazine page.

2026 Hackaday Retrocomputing Contest