Retrocomputing

1649 Articles

One Man’s Perfect Retro-Style Monitor Takes All Inputs

August 17, 2026 by 16 Comments

Perfection is an inherently subjective measure, in that one must choose the criteria against which to measure. A perfect circle is an absolutely rubbish octagon, for example. So when you see that [RetroBuiltGames] declares that he has built “the perfect multi-input display for retro gaming and vintage computing” — dubbed the “PixelVision AV1000 MKII”— keep in mind that he means the perfect display for his use case. That’s who he’s building it for, after all! The degree to which you find his product perfect is going to depend by-and-large how similar his use case is to yours. In that sense detailed explanations in the design/build video embedded below may be more valuable than the STEP files and PCBs in the GitHub link above– that way if your use case isn’t identical, you can perhaps learn something on the journey to build your own perfect monitor.

For [RetroBuiltGames] the aesthetic was obviously a big part of it– he’s inspired by the Amiga 1000’s monitor, and a tiny tilting Sony CRT TV.  He was obviously looking for many inputs, as given by the title, and he has an unusually high interest in pixel density for a retro enthusiast. Hence a 9.7″ 2K iPad display forms the basis of the project. The multi-input aspect is provided by a retrotink clone whose PCB lives in a bulge on the back of the unit that could easily house an SBC if you wanted an all-in-one emulation station– it already has a couple of decent speakers mounted in the sides.

Another big piece of the puzzle we don’t see enough of in such projects is Design For Manufacturing– the manufacturing method of choice being FDM 3D printing. The whole assembly was designed in chunks that can be easily printed  with the most visible surface flat on the bed – and if assembly proved difficult, than the parts were redesigned. His explanations aren’t a full DFM course by any means, but it’s good to see these things considered. If you need more detail on that front, we’ve featured plenty of such guides before.

We’re particularly taken by the conceit of creating his own packaging for the unit, and going to the effort of filming an unboxing video for a product he made himself. It’s just a bit of silly fun. We’ve seen boxes before, but generally speaking that sort of thing is saved for when a project becomes a product.

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Toy Computer Restored

August 17, 2026 by 10 Comments

In the 1960s, the home computer was barely a twinkle in anyone’s eye. This was the decade in which computers were used by a handful of companies and organizations and took up entire rooms. It was the decade that saw the birth of the first integrated-circuit computer, the Apollo Guidance Computer, and, rather strangely, one of the first home computers of sorts: the Digi-Comp 1.

In 1963, E.S.R. introduced this little programmable educational toy computer. It relies on simple mechanical logic gates, programmed by positioning tubes on sliders. Their original intention was to create actual computers, but one thing led to the next, and E.S.R. became the premier educational computer toy company of the 1960s. The Digi-comp is a rather simple device. A program is entered by soda-straw-like tubes placed on sliding rails. These tubes interact with spring-loaded levers which move in accordance with the “clock” switch. The result is a simple binary computer you can program.

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Mauchly And Eckert’s Other Computers

August 14, 2026 by 5 Comments

If you ask a random person who [John Mauchly] or [J. Presper Eckert] were, you’d probably get a blank stare. Ask a Hackaday reader, and you have a better shot. People who know will tell you that the two were behind the famous ENIAC, which may or may not have been the first computer, but was certainly influential in kicking off the modern computer era. They worked at Penn, and now [Holly Mengel] of Penn’s Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books, and Manuscripts wants to introduce us to the other computers they worked on after ENIAC.

We will admit that we knew about EDVAC and UNIVAC. But we’ll also confess we didn’t know about BINAC or Skeduflo, a computer in a rather large suitcase. BINAC can claim to be the first digital computer that was commercialized, although you could argue that since it was fairly limited and, reportedly, never worked after it was delivered. Supposedly, the customer disassembled it, shipped it to a secure facility, and hired a freshly graduated engineer to rebuild it, which didn’t go very well.

We couldn’t find much about Skeduflo, other than that it was a 75-pound analog computer made for critical path method (CPM) analysis. You set up the problem with a patchboard and potentiometers, and the result came out on an analog plotter. Those details are from a PMI interview with [Morgan Walker] and [Jim Kelley].

It makes sense that these inventors didn’t just finish off ENIAC and retire to a tropical island. While UNIVAC had a good bit of success and EDVAC was very influential, the others are arguably fairly obscure. UNIVAC even has a Disney connection.

Rare IBM PC Brought Back To Life

August 13, 2026 by 24 Comments

[Epictronics] happens to have a rather special machine in his possession. It’s a rare IBM PC prototype or concept machine from the late 1980s known as the IBM 7496 Executive Workstation. It’s a striking thing, with a rather enticing case design that has the monitor permanently attached on a nifty swivel mount. Only… the machine wasn’t working, so some repairs were in order!

The video is essentially teardown that gives a wonderful look at the internals of this oddball machine, which differs rather a bit from more mainstream IBM product of the era. The video is also about repairs and upgrades, too. The real work begins with pulling out the 720K double-density floppy drive, which has a number of faults preventing it from working reliably. Running a machine off floppies alone is as frustrating today as it was back then, so [Epictronics] goes further by adding in an XT-IDE card to allow the machine to interface with a hard drive. An AdLib clone soundcard completes the upgrades to make this unique unit as capable as you’d want it to be given those industrially good looks. The machine has the obscure, shortlived MCGA graphics subsystem, which really fits its oddball nature, but it will nevertheless play a fair few games of its era if such is demanded of it.

If you’re a fan of the early days of the IBM PC, or you just like watching retro computers pulled apart and delicately put back together, this is a great video to watch over lunch or dinner. If your tastes are more Commoderian, we’ve got some content more to your tastes as well. Video after the break.

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3 KB Solitaire Fits In QR-Code, Runs In DOS

August 12, 2026 by 18 Comments

In these days of hundred-gigabyte-and-more monster games, it can be nice to stop and remember what a human can do with assembly language and very, very little storage space. In this case, only 3 KB — yes, three kilobytes — to play TinySol, a tiny solitaire game for DOS that’s compatible with the common CGA/EGA/VGA graphics modes. [ClassicBits] even fits the 640×400 AT&T 6300 mode that was used for some GRiD computers in that 3 KB.

The “full” version is actually 3.5 KB. That extra half kilobyte gets you the ability to load and save games, plus mouse support. The 3 KB version you must play through to the end using only the keyboard, but if you’re hitting this on the minimal-supported-hardware target of the IBM 5150, you probably don’t have a mouse. The smaller build can still score the game, auto-finish, congratulate you on a win, and even automatically detect the correct graphics mode for you. It can also be launched from a QR code, which [LGR] demonstrates in a video embedded below. Check it out for a play demo, but it’s Klondike Solitaire. If you don’t know what to expect by this point, you must not have used a PC in the last 30 years.

Even smaller versions of TinySol are available if you know you’re only going to need, say CGA, but even with 360 KB floppies we’re not sure we’d feel the need to save a kilobyte. If it doesn’t fit on the floppy, just print it onto the sleeve as a QR code, like [ClassicBits] did with the floppies he was giving away at Vintage Computer Festival Southwest 2026. Well, technically that’s the “Tiny” version on the QR code, but we have faith there’s some visual code that could hold the 3 KB “medium” game.

[ClassicBits] takes care to point out that his game is 100% human-written, which is something you cannot guarantee even for retro assembly-language products. We’ve already seen that Claude can code for the Z80, which means the 8088 won’t escape it either. Of course these old machines have a lot to recommend them if you want to escape modernity and learn to code without the help.

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The PC OS That Would Have Blown Your Mind Back In 1984

August 11, 2026 by 59 Comments

As far as desktop microcomputers for mere mortals went in the first half of the 1980s, there was a sharp distinction between home computers such as the many 8-bit machines we regularly see here, and what you might call professional computers such as a CP/M word-processor or the earliest IBM PCs. These were conservative machines, boring even, with command line interfaces and mostly text-mode software.

When the middle of the decade saw the arrival of mass-market machines such as the Macintosh or the Amiga with their beautiful GUIs, a PC with DOS couldn’t yet compete. [Jggonz] then is over four decades late with the beautiful os8088, a fully-functional OS for 8088 IBM PCs and clones, with a very slick Mac-style GUI.

os8088 is a single-floppy OS that provides preemptive multitasking and fully loadable software alongside that GUI, unlike other similar projects we’ve seen it’s not an all-in-one compiled application that just looks like an OS. There’s a second floppy with a suite of software that would have been seriously impressive back in the day, with games, graphics, and demos. It’s a shame that this thing appeared in 2026 when there is little need of it.

You can try it for yourself either on real hardware, your own emulator, or even in an in-browser emulator. Sadly it’s not OS enough to fulfill the requirements for a Daily Drivers test drive, but it’s definitely fun to play with. Bonus, if you run it on a Book8088.

PC-1: The 1954 Computer With No Tubes, Relays, Or Transistors

August 11, 2026 by 34 Comments

However you make a digital computer, you need something to represent a binary digit. Usually this is some form of switch: a relay, a tube, or a transistor, although there have been other ways to represent state. In 1954, [Eiichi Goto] of Japan invented the parametron, a resonant circuit using a ferrite core and a capacitor that could be moved between two phases.

According to [Goto’s] 1959 paper, the device is effectively a parametric oscillator, similar to some used at UHF frequencies by hams. The idea is that a tuned circuit is set to some frequency and driven with twice that frequency.

A What?

A parametron is essentially a resonant circuit made with inductors or capacitors whose reactance is varied at twice its resonant frequency. That “pumping” causes the circuit to oscillate at half the pump frequency. The neat trick is that there are two equally stable oscillation states at half the pump frequency, separated from each other by 180° of phase. Those two phases become binary 0 and 1. Depending on the incoming signals, one phase will win over the others.

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