World’s First RP2040 QWERTY Computer

May 28, 2021 by Chris Lott 21 Comments

Independent hardware developer [bobricius] is at it again, making what he claims is the world’s first Pico RP2040 QWERTY + IPS development kit — the PICOmputer. This is a palm-sized computer of sorts. It integrates a keyboard made from tactile push button switches, a TFT IPS display, and a RP2040 Pico computer module. At 100 x 65 mm size, it is slightly bigger than your typical ISO-7810-ID-1-sized credit card, and slightly smaller than an A7 piece of paper.

One of [Bobricius]’s goals for this project was to minimize the number of external components, thus maximizing the use of the RP2040’s internal features. And if you peruse the schematic posted on his GitHub repository, you can agree he’s met this goal for sure. There’s a filter capacitor for the optional LoRa module, and two MOSFETs and three resistors to drive a speaker and the TFT backlight. Aside from connectors, the switches, and the submodules themselves, that’s all of the external circuitry.

The arrangement of two USB connectors, type C for power and micro-USB for data, is an interesting aspect of the connector / module placement. He plans to add an Ethernet module in the future, and issue some more revisions to fix small errors and to make the front panel fit more sizes of displays. We wonder if a battery module add-on is in the works, as well.

If you recognize [bobricius], that’s because his previous ARMACHAT handheld LoRa messenger project was among the Hackaday Prize Community Vote (Bootstrap) winners last year. We think tiny keyboards may be an obsession for him — indeed, he freely admits to being blinded by his own enthusiasm. Check out his mini (Pi)QWERTY USB keyboard from 2018, for example. Thanks to [Itay] for bringing this project to our attention via the Hackaday tip line.

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Boat Anchor Nixie Clock Plays The Cold Warrior Role Convincingly

April 27, 2021 by Dan Maloney 13 Comments

The early Cold War years may have been suffused with existential dread thanks to the never-ending threat of nuclear obliteration, but at least it did have a great look. Think cars with a ton of chrome, sheet steel toys with razor-sharp edges, and pretty much the entire look of the Fallout franchise. And now you can add in this boat anchor of an electromechanical Nixie clock, too.

If [Teti]’s project looks familiar, perhaps it’s because the build was meant as an homage to the test equipment of yore, particularly some of the sturdier offerings from Hewlett-Packard. But this isn’t some thrift store find that has been repurposed; rather, the entire thing, from the electronics to the enclosure, is scratch built. The clock circuit is based on 4000-series CMOS chips and the display uses six IN-1 Nixies. Instead of transistors to drive the tubes, [Teti] chose to use relays, which in the video below prove to be satisfyingly clicky and relaxing. Not relaxing in any way is the obnoxious alarm, which would be enough to rouse a mission control officer dozing in his bunker. [Teti] has a blog with more details on the build, the gem of which is information on how he had the front panel so beautifully made.

We can’t say enough about the fit and finish of this one, as well as the functionality. What’s even more impressive is that this was reportedly [Teti]’s first project like this. It really puts us in mind of some of the great 6502 retrocomputer builds we’ve been seeing lately.

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Gorgeous 6502 Celebrates Craftsmanship Of The Early Homebrewers

April 21, 2021 by Dan Maloney 36 Comments

The days when a computer had a front panel bristling with switches and LEDs are long gone, and on balance that’s probably for the better in terms of ease of use, raw power, and convenience. That’s not to say there aren’t those who long for the days of flipping switches to enter programs, of course, but it’s a somewhat limited market. So unless you can find an old IMSAI or Altair, chances are you’ll have to roll your own — and you could do a lot worse than this aluminum beauty of a 6502 machine.

The machine is named PERSEUS-8 by its creator, [Mitsuru Yamada]. It follows earlier machines bearing the PERSEUS badge, all of them completely homebrewed and equally gorgeous. The PERSEUS-8 would have been an impressive machine had it come along 45 years ago — the 2 MHz version of the 6502, a full 16-bit memory address space, and 16 kB of battery-backed RAM. But the mechanical and electrical construction methods and the care and craftsmanship taken are where this build really shines. The case is fabricated out of aluminum sheets and angles and looks like it could have come from a server rack. The front panel is to die for — [Mitsuru] carefully brushed the aluminum before drilling the dozens of holes needed for the toggle switches and LEDs. And the insides are equally lovely — socketed chips neatly arranged on perfboard with everything wired up using period-correct wirewrap methods. Even the labels, both on the front panel and even on the motherboard, are a joy to behold.

Builds like this are the ones that really inspire us to take the extra steps needed to make our projects not only work, but also to be beautiful. We’ve seen this kind of craftsmanship from [Mitsuru] before — recall this serial terminal that never was, or the machine that came before the PERSEUS-8.

The Beat Goes On With This ESP32 Page Turner

April 16, 2021 by Tom Nardi 3 Comments

Looking for a hands-free way to page through sheet music on an iPad, [The_Larch] came up with this simple Bluetooth input device based on the ESP32. The microcontroller just needed to have two switches wired into the GPIO pins, in this case the same heavy-duty plungers you’d find on a guitar pedal, and a USB bulkhead pass-through to provide power. Thanks to the excellent ESP32-BLE-Keyboard library, it only took a few lines of code to fire off the appropriate key strokes when the left or right button was pressed.

While undeniably a simple project from an electronics standpoint, the wooden enclosure [The_Larch] built is an interesting change of pace from the 3D printed fare we normally see around these parts. It started life as strips of oak reclaimed from an old kitchen table, which were laminated together to make a solid block. A large spade bit was then used to bore into the block to make a void for the electronics, and a second flat piece of oak was fashioned into a front panel.

Creating Bluetooth input devices with the ESP32 is so incredibly straightforward that we’re honestly a little surprised we don’t see the trick used more often. Especially when you consider all of the custom made keyboards that have graced these pages over the last couple of years. The tools are available for anyone who wants them, so you have to wonder if hackers just aren’t fond of using Bluetooth for something as important as a keyboard?

Smashed Amiga 2000 Gets New Lease On Life

April 2, 2021 by Tom Nardi 9 Comments

For most people, opening up a package and seeing that the Amiga 2000 you purchased on eBay had been smashed up by the delivery carrier would be a heartbreaking moment. But not [Drygol]. If you live and breathe vintage computer restorations like he does, finding your latest acquisition is in need of more repairs and upgrades than you originally anticipated is actually a bonus.

The first issue that needed sorting out was the broken case. This Amiga must have had one wild ride, as there were several nasty cracks in the front panel and whole chunks had been broken off. We’ve seen [Drygol] repair broken computer cases before, but it seems like each time he comes up with some new tricks to bring these massacred pieces of plastic back to like-new condition. In this case plastic welding is used to hold the parts together and fill in the gaps, and then brass mesh is added to the backside for strength. The joints are then sanded, filled in with polyester putty, and finally sprayed with custom color matched paint. While he was in the area, he also filled in a hole the previous owner had made for a toggle switch.

Before

After

Then [Drygol] moved onto the internals. Some of the traces on the PCB had been corroded by a popped battery, a socket needed to be replaced, and as you might expect for a machine of this vintage, all of the electrolytic capacitors were suspect and needed to go. Finally, as the system didn’t have a power supply, he wired in a picoPSU. That got the 34 year old computer back up and running, and at this point, the machine was almost like new again. So naturally, it was time to start with the upgrades and modifications.

[Drygol] added an IDE interface and connected a CompactFlash adapter as the computer’s primary drive. For the secondary, he installed a GoTek floppy drive emulator that lets you replace a mountain of physical disks with a USB flash drive full of images. Between the two, all of the computer’s storage needs are met with nary a moving part.

The emulator was given its own 3D printed front panel to fit with the Amiga’s visual style, and he also printed out a holder for the RGB4ALL S-Video/Composite adapter installed on the rear of the machine. To help keep all this new gear cool, he finished things off with a new case fan.

Some will no doubt complain about the addition of the extra gadgetry, but to those people, we suggest you just focus on the phenomenal case restoration work. While you might not agree with all of the modifications [Drygol] makes, there’s no question that you can learn something by going through his considerable body of work.

Hershey Fonts: Not Chocolate, The Origin Of Vector Lettering

March 30, 2021 by Chris Lott 57 Comments

Over the past few years, I kept bumping into something called Hershey fonts. After digging around, I found a 1967 government report by a fellow named Dr. Allen Vincent Hershey. Back in the 1960s, he worked as a physicist for the Naval Weapons Laboratory in Dahlgren, Virginia, studying the interaction between ship hulls and water. His research was aided by the Naval Ordnance Research Calculator (NORC), which was built by IBM and was one of the fastest computers in the world when it was first installed in 1954.

The NORC’s I/O facilities, such as punched cards, magnetic tape, and line printers, were typical of the era. But the NORC also had an ultra-high-speed optical printer. This device had originally been developed by the telecommunications firm Stromberg-Carlson for the Social Security Administration in order to quickly print massive amounts of data directly upon microfilm.

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This Stackable Pi Portable Is Ready To Rumble

February 17, 2021 by Tom Nardi 5 Comments

The proliferation of desktop 3D printing and powerful single-board computers like the Raspberry Pi has given rise to an absolute explosion of small bespoke computing devices. Whether or not you think these cobbled together devices are close enough to Gibson’s original vision to call them cyberdecks, it’s a remarkable shift from the norm that brings us closer to the “High Tech, Low Life” philosophy so prevalent in cyberpunk literature and films.

[Jay Doscher] has been on the front lines of this movement for some time now, producing several very popular designs. His latest creation leans hard into the more utilitarian aspects of the cyberpunk ethos, inspired more by the grit of The Expanse than the lusciously upholstered interiors of Star Trek’s Enterprise-D. The culmination of lessons learned over the last several years, the new Kuiper Deck is cheaper and easier to build than his previous designs, thanks at least in part to the fact that you no longer need to go out and get an expensive Pelican case.

Like his previous designs, the Kuiper Deck makes extensive use of 3D printed components. But this time around, [Jay] is using an array of smaller pieces that are bolted together on an acrylic front panel. This not only means the project is compatible with a wider array of machines, such as the Prusa Mini, but it’s also easier to print as larger parts have an annoying tendency to warp. The downside is that you’ll need some way to get the acrylic panel cut to shape, though you can buy one through him if you don’t have any way to get it made locally.

In place of the Pelican case his previous designs used as an enclosure, [Jay] has found a heavy-duty stackable plastic tote available from McMaster Carr for $12 USD. It’s not particularly nice looking, nor is it waterproof. But that’s also sort of the point. If you’re just trying to put together a small computer that you can toss around the shop and not have to worry about breaking, the Pelican case was always a bit overkill.

The electronics bill of materials is similarly sparse, comprising mainly of the Raspberry Pi 4, a cooling fan, and a 10 inch LCD from Pimoroni. Everything gets screwed to the rear of the panel and connected with pre-made cables, making assembly very simple. That said, there’s still plenty of room inside the case for custom hardware should you want to put something custom together such as a mobile software defined radio rig.

[Jay] created the original Raspberry Pi Field Unit in 2015, but it wasn’t until he unveiled the revised Raspberry Pi Recovery Kit in 2019 that the idea of sticking a Raspberry Pi into a Pelican case became something of hacker meme. It sounds like the Kuiper Deck is going to be his final word on the subject for now, but it’s a safe bet we’ll be seeing folks putting together similar builds for years to come.