Error: LP0 On ????

April 25, 2017 by 63 Comments

You don’t need fancy ICs and DACs to build a sound card for a PC. As [serdef]’s build over on hackaday.io shows, all you really need is a bunch of resistors. [serdef] built a clone of a sound card released for PC in the 80s, but with a few improvements. This mess of resistors features the best 8-bit sound you can get with a low-pass filter, volume divider, and a handy DB-25 connector.

The design of this LPT0 sound card is pretty much the same as when it was introduced to the world as the Covox Speech Thing. This ‘sound card’ was designed to clip onto the parallel port of a computer and send the 8-bit I/O of this port through a resistor ladder. Plug a pair of speakers into this thing, and you have a sound card that is completely made out of resistors. It was cheap, and in the demoscene it was popular.

There are a lot of amazing demos out there using this resistor DAC thing, and [serdef] has videos of his project playing a lot of them. You can check that out below.

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This Hacker Fit An Entire RetroPie In An Altoids Tin

April 23, 2017 by 29 Comments

A few months ago, [wermy] built the mintyPi, a Raspberry Pi-based gaming console that fits inside an Altoids tin. It’s amazing — there’s a composite LCD, an audio DAC, and a chopped up Nintendo controller all connected to a Raspberry Pi for vintage gaming goodness on the road. Now, there’s a new mintyPi. The mintyPi 2.0 vastly improves over the earlier generation of this groundbreaking mint-based gaming console with a better screen, better buttons, customized 3D printed bezels, and better audio. Truly, we live in a Golden Age.

Version two of mintyPi uses 3D printed parts and includes a real hinge to keep the display propped up when the Altoids tin is open. Instead of a DAC-based audio solution, [wermy] is using a USB sound card for clearer, crisper sound. This version also uses the new, wireless version of the Raspberry Pi Zero. The Raspberry Pi Zero W allows this Altoids tin to connect to the Internet or, alternatively, gives the user the ability to dump ROMs on this thing without having to connect it to a computer.

For the software, this retro Altoids video game machine is running RetroPie, a very popular way to get retro video games running under low-power Linux machines. Everything is in there, from the NES to Amstrad to the Sega Master system.

Right now, there aren’t a whole lot of details on how [wermy] created the mintyPi 2.0, but he promises a guide soon. Until then, we’ll just have to drool over the video embedded below.

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Build Your Own PC — Really

April 14, 2017 by 37 Comments

There was a time when building your own computer meant a lot of soldering or wire wrapping. At some point, though, building a PC has come to mean buying a motherboard, a power supply, and just plugging a few wires together. There’s nothing wrong with that, but [Scott Baker] wanted to really build a PC. He put together an Xi 8088, a design from [Sergey] who has many interesting projects on his site. [Scott] did a great build log plus a video, which you can see below.

As the name implies, this isn’t a modern i7 powerhouse. It is a classic 8088 PC with a 16-bit backplane. On the plus side, almost everything is conventional through-hole parts, excepting an optional compact flash socket and part of the VGA card. [Scott] acquired the boards from the Retrobrew forum’s inventory of boards where forum users make PCBs available for projects like this.

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The 35 Year Music Synthesizer That Spawned Chiptune

April 2, 2017 by 36 Comments

If you are a certain age, MOS6581 either means nothing to you, or it is a track from Carbon Based Lifeforms. However, if you were a Commodore computer fan 35 years ago, it was a MOS Technologies SID (Sound Interface Device). Think of it as a sound “card” for the computers of the day. Some would say that the chip — the power behind the Commodore 64’s sound system — was the sound card of its day. Compared to its contemporaries it had more in common with high-end electronic keyboards.

The Conversation has a great write up about how the chip was different, how it came to be, the bug in the silicon that allowed it to generate an extra voice, and how it spawned the chiptune genre of music. The post might not be as technical as we’d do here at Hackaday, but it does have oscilloscope videos (see below) and a good discussion of what it took to create music on the device.

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Shut Up And Say Something: Amateur Radio Digital Modes

March 24, 2017 by 66 Comments

In a recent article, I lamented my distaste for carrying on the classic amateur radio conversation — calling CQ, having someone from far away or around the block call back, exchange call signs and signal reports and perhaps a few pleasantries. I think the idle chit-chat is a big turn-off to a lot of folks who would otherwise be interested in the World’s Greatest Hobby™, but thankfully there are plenty of ways for the mic-shy to get on the air. So as a public service I’d like to go over some of the many digital modes amateur radio offers as a way to avoid talking while still communicating.

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Portable RetroPie Suitcase For Multiplayer On The Go!

March 5, 2017 by 11 Comments

Portable gaming — and gaming in general —  has come a long way since the days of the original Game Boy. With a mind towards portable multiplayer games, Redditor [dagcon] has assembled a RetroPie inside a suitcase — screen and all!

This portable console has almost everything you could need. Four controllers are nestled beside two speakers. Much of the power cabling is separated and contained by  foam inserts. The screen fits snugly into the lid with a sheet of rubber foam to protect it during transport.

Tucked behind the monitor rests the brains of this suitcase console: a Raspberry Pi and the associated boards. [Dagcon] resorted to using a dedicated sound card for the speakers, diverting the output from the HDMI port. An LCD screen controller was also necessary as the screen had been re-purposed from its previous life as a laptop screen. [Dagcon] offers some tips on how to go about accomplishing this yourself and a helpful Instructables link.

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Smartphone Bench Instrument Apps: Disappointment Or Delight?

November 17, 2016 by 24 Comments

If you are interested in electronics or engineering, you’ll have noticed a host of useful-sounding apps to help you in your design and build work. There are calculators, design aids, and somewhat intriguingly, apps that claim to offer an entire instrument on your phone. A few of them are produced to support external third-party USB instrument peripherals, but most of them claim to offer the functionality using just the hardware within the phone. Why buy an expensive oscilloscope, spectrum analyzer, or signal generator, when you can simply download one for free?

Those who celebrate Christmas somewhere with a British tradition are familiar with Christmas crackers and the oft-disappointing novelties they contain. Non-Brits are no doubt lost at this point… the crackers in question are a cardboard tube wrapped in shiny paper drawn tight over each end of it. The idea is that two people pull on the ends of the paper, and when it comes apart out drops a toy or novelty. It’s something like the prize in a Cracker Jack Box.

Engineering-oriented apps follow this cycle of hope and disappointment. But there are occasional exceptions. Let’s tour some of the good and the bad together, shall we?

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