Retrocomputing

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Atari Introduces A New Old Console

September 11, 2023 by 29 Comments

Readers of a certain age no doubt remember the Atari 2600 — released in 1977, the 8-bit system helped establish the ground rules for gaming consoles as we know them today, all while sporting a swanky faux wood front panel designed to make the system look at home in contemporary living rooms.

Now, nearly 50 years later, the Atari 2600 is back. The new system, imaginatively named the 2600+, looks exactly like the original system, albeit at around 80% scale. It will also work the same way, as the system will actually be able to play original Atari 2600 and 7800 cartridges. This is something of a surprise when compared to the previously released retro consoles from the likes of Sony and Nintendo, as they were all limited to whatever games the company decided to pack into them. Of course, this probably has something to do with the fact that Atari has been selling newly manufactured 2600 games for some time now.

Although it will play original cartridges, it’s still an emulated console at heart. There aren’t a lot of technical details on the product page, but it does say the 2600+ is powered by a Rockchip 3128 SoC with 256 MB of DDR3 RAM and 256 MB eMMC flash. Some quick searching shows this to be a pretty common board for set-top gadgets, and wildly overpowered considering the meager requirements for emulating a game console from 1977. We wouldn’t be surprised to find it’s running some kind of minimal Linux install and using one of the existing open source emulators.

While the 2600+ sports the same 9-pin D-sub controller connectors as the original console, it thankfully embraces modern display technology and outputs over HDMI. Each console will come with a “10-in-1” cartridge that contains some of the console’s most popular titles, as well as a modernized version of the original single-button joystick. (Unlike the original, the 2600+ comes with only a single joystick — the other is sold separately.)

Atari won’t start shipping the 2600+ until this fall, but they’re currently taking preorders for the $130 system. We’re eager to see somebody pull it apart, as the earlier “mini” consoles ended up being ripe for hacking.

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An 8-bit ISA card with VGA, HDMI and composite video connectors

Upgraded Graphics Gremlin Adds HDMI Video To Vintage PCs

September 10, 2023 by 34 Comments

Although new VGA-equipped monitors can still be bought, the old standard is definitely on its way out by now, being replaced by high-speed digital interfaces like HDMI and DisplayPort. It therefore makes sense to prepare for a VGA-less future, as [Yeo Kheng Meng] is doing. He designed an 8-bit ISA display card with an HDMI output that enables even the very first generation of PCs to talk to a modern monitor.

The design is based on the Graphics Gremlin by [Tube Time], which is an 8-bit ISA display card that aims to be software compatible with the obsolete MDA and CGA display formats while outputting a clean VGA signal. [Yeo Kheng Meng] modified the board by adding a TFP410 HDMI bus driver and replacing the rarely-used 9-pin RGBI connector with an HDMI version. He also updated the HDL code for the Lattice FPGA, which forms the heart of the graphics card, to account for the new digital output. While he was at it, he also added a few features he was missing in the original product, such as the option to select the color displayed in MDA mode and the ability to output both HDMI and composite video at the same time.

The video below shows the updated card in action in an IBM 5155 Portable PC. The HDMI port connects to a modern monitor, while the composite video output is routed to the 5155’s internal CRT as well as a small color monitor on top. The IBM thereby joins a small list of retro computers that have received an HDMI upgrade — the Amiga 500 and PlayStation 2 being other examples. HDMI might be a lot more complex to work with than VGA, but luckily there are open-source implementations that do much of the work for you.

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A Pi Pico on a breakout board inside a Busch 2090 educational computer

Pi Pico Becomes SRAM For 1981 Educational Computer

September 10, 2023 by 18 Comments

Ever since the Raspberry Pi Pico was introduced in early 2021 we’ve seen the tiny Pi being used for an astonishing variety of applications. It has powered countless clocks, gadgets, games, and accessories for all kinds of computers old and new. [Michael Wessel] has recently added an interesting new application in the “old computer” category, by turning a Pico into a 2114 SRAM emulator for his Busch 2090, an educational computer system from 1981.

The pinout of the classic 2114 SRAM chip is quite simple: ten address lines, four data lines, Write Enable and Chip Select. Since the 3.3 V Pico is more or less 5V tolerant, you could directly connect these signals to its GPIO ports, but [Michael] considered it more reliable to use level shifters between the two voltage domains. He experimented with a few standard level shifter circuits, but quickly realized he had to take the 33 kΩ pulldown resistors on the Busch 2090’s address bus into account. By just adding a couple of resistors to the Pico’s ports he could make completely passive level shifters, which worked just fine since the system’s clock frequency is only 500 kHz.

[Michael] demonstrates his RAM replacement in the video below, with a neat set of blinkenlights showing the data being shuttled around in real time. He has plans to make a proper PCB for his project, as well as to enable all kinds of neat features by modifying the system’s RAM in real time. This is of course not limited to the Busch 2090: the 2114 chip was widely used in the 1980s, so the PicoRAM can probably be used in many other systems of the era. Code for the Pi is available on GitHub if you’re interested in trying this for yourself. If you’d like to find out what programming a Busch 2090 feels like, you can emulate one using an Arduino.

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The motherboard of a Mattel Aquarius, with a small daughterboard mounted on top

Adding Composite Video To The Mattel Aquarius

September 8, 2023 by 14 Comments

In the home computer market of the 1980s, there were several winners that are still household names four decades later: the Commodore 64, the Apple II and the Sinclair Spectrum, to name a few. But where there are winners, there are bound to be losers as well – the Mattel Aquarius being a good example. A price war between the bigger players, combined with a rather poor hardware design, meant that the Aquarius was discontinued just a few months after its introduction in 1983. However, this makes it exactly the type of obscure machine that [Leaded Solder] likes to tinker with, so he was happy to finally get his hands on a neat specimen listed on eBay. He wrote an interesting blog post detailing his efforts to connect this old beast to a modern TV.

The main issue with the Aquarius is that it only has an RF video output, which results in a rather poor rendition of its already very limited graphics capabilities. Luckily, there is a fix available in the form of a composite A/V adapter that’s an almost plug-and-play upgrade. The only thing you need to do, as [Leaded Solder] illustrates in his blog post, is open up the computer, desolder the RF modulator and solder the A/V adapter in its place. Getting to that point was a bit tricky due to heavy EMI shields that were fixed in place with lots of solder, requiring liberal use of a desoldering iron. Continue reading “Adding Composite Video To The Mattel Aquarius” →

The Computer That Controlled Chernobyl

September 6, 2023 by 8 Comments

When you think of Chernobyl (or Chornobyl, now), you think of the nuclear accident, of course. But have you ever considered that where there is a nuclear reactor, there is a computer control system? What computers were in control of the infamous reactor? [Chornobyl Family] has the answer in a fascinating video documentary you can see below.

The video shows a bit of the history of Soviet-era control computers. The reactor’s V-30M computer descended from some of these earlier computers. With 20K of core memory, we won’t be impressed today, but that was respectable for the day. The SKALA system will look familiar if you are used to looking at 1970s-era computers.

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A Heathkit H8 in which hides an 8008 instead of the normal 8080

Downgrade Your Heathkit H8 To The World’s First 8-bit Microprocessor

September 6, 2023 by 10 Comments

Typically when you’re replacing parts in an old computer it’s either for repairs or an upgrade. Upgrades like adding a more capable processor to an old computer are the most common, and can help bring an old computer a bit closer to the modern era. [Dr. Scott M. Baker] had a different idea, when he downgraded a Heathkit H8 from an 8080 to an 8008.

Despite the very similar numbers, the 8080 runs at four to nearly sixteen times the speed of its predecessor. In addition to this, the 8008 is far less capable on multiple fronts like address space, I/O ports, the stack and even interrupts. The 8008 does have one thing going for it though: the 8008 is widely known as the world’s first 8-bit microprocessor.

A green circuit board with an 8008 and supporting electronics.
The custom 8008 CPU board for the Heathkit H8.

In the video after the break, [Scott] goes into great detail about the challenges presented in replacing the 8080 with the 8008, starting with the clock. The clock is two-phase, so that what would otherwise be a single oscillator now also has a clock divider and two NAND gates.

Boring clock stuff aside, he does some great hacking using the I/O ports including expanding the I/O port count from 32 to the full 256, bit-banging serial, implementing an interrupt controller and even memory mapping 64 KiB into 16 KiB of address space! With that and a few more special adapter circuits, we think [Scott] has done a great job of downgrading his H8 and the resulting CPU board looks fabulous.

Maybe you’re wondering what happens if you upgrade the computer instead of the CPU? What you get is this credit-card sized 6502 computer.

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Will An 8088 Run DOOM? Now, Yes It Will!

September 2, 2023 by 12 Comments

The question on everyone’s lips when a new piece of hardware comes out is this: Will it run DOOM? Many pieces of modern hardware have been coaxed into playing id Software’s 1993 classic, but there have always been some older machines that just didn’t have the power to do it. One of them has now been conquered though, and it’s a doozy. [Frenkel]’s Doom8088, as its name suggests, is a port of the game for the original PC and AT.

As can be seen in this gameplay video, it’s not always the slickest of gaming experiences. But it works, so the question is, how on earth can a machine that was below the spec of the original, run this game? The answer comes in it being a port of GBADoom for the Game Boy Advance, a platform with less memory than a DOS PC. It still relies on extensive hard disk access for every frame though, which leaves it snail-like.

We set out to install it ourselves on one of the web based PC emulators, but fell over on the size of the required Watcom installation. If any of you have the real thing lying around though, we’d love to hear about how the game performed in the comments.

We’ve shown you so many ports of DOOM over the years to have lost count. One of our favourite recent ones uses an extremely unconventional but very retro display.