C64 Hardware Simulator Isn’t (Just) For Playing Around

October 15, 2026 by Tyler August 10 Comments

If you want to play old Commodore games, there are C-64 emulators available for just about any platform– but most of them are so high level, they’re really meant for just that: playing games. [antirez] has a different goal with his c64-hw-sim project— it’s a lower-level emulation that simulates every chip and every connection on an ASSY 250407 motherboard, and all the chips on it, too. Ever wondered what happens when a specific chip is missing, or a random pin is shorted to ground or forced high? You can do all that in software, with no risk of harming antique hardware.

While that might be a fun bit of faffing about for a certain sort electronics sadist, the real utility is to learn about the hardware, both in the abstract and to help you troubleshoot a board you might have. It’s likely that many given failure modes reproduce the same effects– lots of things can knock out the display output, for example–but at least if you’ve reproduced a flaw in software you can try testing the hardware to see if that’s the cause of your problem. Assuming the simulation covers your hardware issue, anyway.

There’s cycle-accurate chip emulation for the processor, CIAs, SID and VIC-II via code by [Andre Weissflog], a.k.a. [flooh]. Meanwhile analog circuitry in the video, audio and power sections are not simulated so not everything fault will be replicable here. Still, it might be a neat tool– just don’t try and run any games on it, because even on high-end modern hardware it only runs at about one-third speed. That’s fast enough for diagnostics, but not so much for Maniac Mansion, never mind Elite.

Speaking of Elite, did you know the source– both of the port and the original– is available with comments? If you want an emulator you can play, you can get it on everything from microcontrollers like Teensy to your personal computer.

Thanks to [Salvatore] for the tip!

2026 Retrocomputing Challenge: USBSID-Pico Has Two SIDs, Many Inputs

October 13, 2026 by Tyler August 14 Comments

We’ll give you three guesses what the most important bits of silicon in [LouD]’s USBSID-Pico are, and two don’t count. Yes, there’s a Raspberry Pi Pico, and a pair of the unforgettable SID chips from MOS– the sound chip of the C64, the die that launched a thousand chiptunes. Well, unless you build it with a hardware SID replacement, but the goal of this device is to get SIDs hooked up to modern hardware.

To that end, USBSID-Pico can be controlled via USB– obviously– in the form of CDC/WebUSB/WebSerial but also MIDI, and even ASID, which is a specific protocol for streaming SID register data over MIDI. You might be wondering the point, since surely you can get cycle-accurate SID emulation on an RP2040, right? Well, not everyone agrees that cycle-accurate emulation is accurate enough; like the people who swear by the subtle distortions tube amplifiers introduce into the sound, some say the chip’s own inaccuracies give the sound out of the physical device a unique vibe emulators don’t match. That’s a fight for others to litigate; we just appreciate the work that went into getting these old sound chips talking to modern hardware, and getting the project certified as Open Source Hardware.

This combination of old sound and new microcontroller makes the USBSID-Pico a good entry for our ongoing retrocomputing contest, particularly the retro-modern category. Just be aware of PAL and NTSC differences with these old chips, or your beeps and boops might be out of tune. They haven’t made them in decades, but there are more than a few modern replacements for the MOS 6581.

Using A Waffle To Check The Health Of Your Wii U’s NAND Flash

October 13, 2026 by Maya Posch 14 Comments

Game consoles tend to have a weak spot or two that will take certain units out sooner than they would due to normal parts aging. In the case of the Wii U it’s the eMMC storage IC with the console’s firmware and any user data that likes to keel over, with the SK Hynix variant reportedly developing faulty cells much sooner than the Samsung and Toshiba chips. If you want to check the health of these eMMC ICs in your Wii U, you can do so easily now with the Wafel Installer project by [zer00p].

This doesn’t take much more than navigating to the wafel.xyz URL on the Wii U to launch the installer on any (unmodified) Wii U, or alternatively starting it from an SD card if you’re running a homebrew-enabled console. This can also install the Stroopwafel CFW, ISFSax and the Aroma homebrew environment, but the NAND testing option in the installer’s menu is what you want to select if you’re not into homebrew or have already cracked open the console for said sweet homebrew action.

All of this is covered in this video by [FunkyScott47], whose Wii U’s Samsung-branded eMMC is fortunately still all fine, but it shows off the variety of tests available. Unless the eMMC is already quite cooked this should take only a minute or two, so it’s pretty good for ease of mind.

With the heavily waffle, syrup and stroopwafel-coded naming scheme for these tools we can not be held responsible for a sudden case of the munchies, of course.

Continue reading “Using A Waffle To Check The Health Of Your Wii U’s NAND Flash” →

Emulating A Floppy Drive By Emulating The Drive Itself

October 12, 2026 by Jenny List 3 Comments

The Commodore 1541 is famously the floppy drive for the Commodore 64 series of 8-bit computers, and can be found with relative ease. Not so well known is its 1551 sibling — the drive made for the Commodore 16 and Plus/4 machines.

They’re particularly rare in 2026, so [Maciej Witkowiak] has made an emulator. But it’s not just modern silicon emulating the whole thing. Instead it’s the same 6510 and ROM you might have found on the original, talking to a Pi Pico emulating the drive hardware. It’s a gloriously over the top solution to the problem of emulating a disk drive, the reason being that it started life as a daughter board plugged into an original drive mainboard.

Complementing the Pico is a CPLD for glue logic, and an OLED for selecting disk images. The Pico even generates the clock and IRQ timing for the venerable 8-bit part. The ROM is 64k in size, room enough for both the original firmware and enhanced community versions. The whole thing can be found in a GitHub repository, should you wish to have a go yourself.

Long time Hackaday readers will know [Bil Herd] as one of our contributors. If you’re interested in the back story to the series of computers that included the Commodore 16, his book makes for interesting reading.

DECing Out The Homelab With An AlphaServer 2100

October 11, 2026 by Tyler August 7 Comments

Retrocomputer enthusiasts have a bad rap as nerds who just want to play old video games. There’s some truth in this, but the reality is that we’re nerds who want to do all sorts of things with old hardware — everything from consoles to servers. Servers like the DEC AlphaServer 2100 [derelictelectronics] picked up at Vintage Computer Festival Midwest this year. He was kind enough to record a tour for those of us who missed seeing these early Alpha machines in their heyday.

DEC did sell these units with multiple-CPU reports from the get-go, but the [derelictronics] particular model has a single CPU board carrying a 64-bit Alpha RISC processor. This machine from 1994 dates to near the height of the RISC wars when it seemed everyone needed to have their own high-end architecture, all of them RISC. While the machine could host up to 2GB of RAM, the example [derelictelectronics] found only has 256 MB, which was still not a small number for 1994!

Continue reading “DECing Out The Homelab With An AlphaServer 2100” →

2026 Retrocomputing Challenge: NEC 286 Laptop Rides Again

October 9, 2026 by Tyler August 6 Comments

The sad reality is that all consumer electronics are going to be e-waste eventually. [Cory Whitesell] was determined his old NEC ProSpeed 286 Laptop wouldn’t meet that fate until absolutely necessary, so when his attempts at repairs failed, his efforts pivoted to create a retro battlestation from the stylish old machine.

That screen looks too good to be stock, but otherwise you can’t tell from this angle.

Externally, it looks pretty well stock, and [Cory] has retained as much of the internals as possible. The original power supply remains intact, with power taken off the original HDD’s molex connector. Said power drives a Raspberry Pi, which is small enough to fit inside without any gutting. The original keyboard connects easily enough via a PS/2 to USB adapter, while the passive-matrix LCD has been replaced with a modern screen of the same dimensions. You’d have to be a pretty hard-core purist to mourn that last change.

With emulation on the Pi, he can still have the DOS experience you’d expect from this machine, but its also powerful enough to be useful in the modern day. While we place no bets on whether or not this mod will stay relevant for another 38 years, a more powerful single-board computer or slightly-squished cell phone can be placed in the drive bay instead once the Pi’s ARM processor inevitably starts to look as anemic as the 286 does now.

Not everyone loves this kind of restomod, but we’ve featured more than a few and have a special category for it in our ongoing retrocomputing contest for those who will do everything to keep classics out of the e-waste bin, including remaking them.

2026 Retrocomputing Challenge: Retro Terminal Bartop Arcade Topper

October 8, 2026 by Donald Papp 9 Comments

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!