Retrocomputing

1582 Articles

Using Windows 11 On An LGA 775 PC With AGP Videocard

June 5, 2026 by 15 Comments

Although the thought of installing a modern operating system like Windows 11 on something as archaic as a Core 2 Quad Q6600 Intel CPU may seem ridiculous, it being the flagship CPU of the time means that it still chews up low-end Celeron systems that are on the supported hardware list like the N4020. Hence [Omores] commencing on this latest adventure, with the snag being that the chosen mainboard features an AGP bus that Windows 11 no longer supports.

A GPU box from the related HD 4670 PCIe card, not the used HD 4650 AGP card with 1 GB of DDR2. (Credit: Omores, YouTube)
A GPU box from the related HD 4670 PCIe card, not the used HD 4650 AGP card with 1 GB of DDR2.

This system is intended to multi-boot a range of Windows OSes starting with Windows 98, while also playing nice with DOS and even Windows 11. In addition to the quad-core, 2.4 GHz Q6600 there’s also an amazing 3 GB of DDR1 RAM in the system.

The mainboard is the 2003-era Asrock 865PE, with the GPU being the highest-end GPU that still came in AGP flavor: the Radeon HD 4650 from 2009. Since the sole reason that Windows 11 doesn’t support AGP any more is due to the supporting files not being included with Windows 11, hence you can track it down on a Windows 10 1507 release install – such as the Intel AGP440.sys driver here – and install them with some file editing.

Since Windows 11 still supports the WDDM driver model from Windows Vista and 7 you can then install the Catalyst drivers from 2012 and be up and running. You only get 1 GB of VRAM for this card, but you probably don’t need much more on this level of hardware.

One major stumbling block remains, however, as Windows 11 24H2 enforces SSE4.2 instructions which the CPU doesn’t support. Ergo 23H2 is the newest Windows 11 version that can run on this system, with only the Education and Enterprise still receiving security updates, making it a bit of a pyrrhic victory, especially as Windows 7 benchmarks a fair bit faster on the same hardware.

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The World’s First GPIB Speech Synthesizer, And It’s For A GRiD Compass

June 4, 2026 by 2 Comments

The GRiD Compass is a legendary portable computer — a taste of an early-80s future with bubble memory, tough enough for NASA to take them into space, and one of the machines which defined the beginnings of the form factor we know today as a laptop. They’re not easy to come by, but [Scott M. Baker] got his hands on one. As well as nursing it back to health, he’s made an unusual peripheral, a GPIB speech synthesizer.

The GRiD arrived in one piece despite sketchy packaging, and after a little confusion over its line voltage it ran as well as the day it was made. It was designed to use GPIB as its interface for large peripherals such as printers or disk drives, so it was that interface picked for the speech synthesizer. It emulates a GPIB printer, and bytes are sent to the synthesizer chip by printing to LPT1, making driving it an easy process.

The synth itself is a clever design that allows the use of all the various speech chips of the day. It achieves this using a GPIB carrier board holding the interfacing, and a set of plug-in modules, one for each different chip. It’s certainly an unusual peripheral.

You can see more details in the video below the break, meanwhile if you can’t get the real thing there’s a cyberdeck tribute you can make.

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Restoring Apple’s Terrible But Awesome IBook Laptop

June 1, 2026 by 17 Comments

Before the Apple MacBook there was the Apple iBook, fruity 1999 colors included. These PowerPC-based laptops targeted low-cost PC-compatible laptops much like the iMac did, albeit it the latter with more success. That said, these laptops are said to be a nightmare to repair, so when [This Does Not Compute] got his hands on a shiny first generation, 300 MHz PowerPC powered, tangerine-colored one, he somewhat dreaded trying to fix it.

Aside from some relatively minor cosmetic issues such as typical cracks in the plastic and a missing optical drive door it seemed in good condition. The first issue came on boot, when MacOS 9.0 would throw up an error message about an issue with cache memory. After booting into the OS this cache memory did indeed show up as missing. Next issue was the optical drive doing absolutely nothing and restarting leading to the system locking up and not starting until plugging in the power adapter.

Fortunately the optical drive started working after addressing a software issue, but the power and cache issues were concerning. Cue a long troubleshooting and repair session that involved purchasing a ‘parts unit’ from Japan to merge both into a single iBook with hopefully a working system at the end.

Along the way the reason why people dislike maintaining these systems, as to do something like getting to the hard drive requires removing the entire display. The cause for the first iBook’s problems also seemed to be due to a liquid spill of some type, as on boot there was no chime either, indicating a wider board-level issue. Unfortunately this was left further undiagnosed and the Japanese mainboard used instead. It’d be interesting to see the deeper cause, but most likely the mainboard will be used for components.

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A Camera Viewfinder Makes A Great TV

May 31, 2026 by 2 Comments

When we think of CRT camera viewfinders, most of us probably imagine the tiny CRTs you’d find in a 1980s camcorder. They’re super cute and a load of fun to play with, but they’re very much a consumer device. Professional cameras of the type you’d find in a studio had their own viewfinders, which were a lot closer to a small TV. They’re about as high quality as it gets for a monochrome CRT, and [Evan Monsma] has done the conversion to a general-purpose monitor.

On one side, this is a very straightforward hack, simply a case of tracing wires to identify the power and video pins. Given a tool battery, the monitor fires up and gives a super-sharp picture. What we like about this is the wooden base he’s made for the thing, at the same time rough-and-ready, and professional-looking from the outside. It has a routed space for the cables, and once mounted flush with the monitor base and given a bit of wood stain, it looks almost as though it was manufactured that way.

It’s likely most of us won’t find a broadcast viewfinder in the trash, instead settling at best for a little Chinese portable TV. But it’s still interesting to see these unusual devices. Perhaps it might make a good cyberdeck.

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Modern Graphics Via DisplayLink For Your ISA-Era PC

May 31, 2026 by 13 Comments

The monitors used on older computers are now becoming difficult to find, as we doubt anything for MDA, CGA, Hercules, or EGA has been manufactured in decades. Even VGA, though there are plenty of surplus flat panels to be found, is not as ubiquitous as it once was. Where does that leave the retrocomputing enthusiast with an ISA PC and no screen? Perhaps [Ian Hanschen] has the answer with the PicoGraph, an ISA-to-USB-to-Displaylink adapter.

In hardware terms, it’s using a PicoMEM, a more general-purpose ISA card for emulating cards with a Pi Pico. The Pico hosts a USB DisplayLink adapter, which can connect to the screen of your choice. The software on the PicoMEM does the heavy lifting and provides MDA, Herc, EGA, and VGA support, as well as support for one of the 1990s Cirrus Logic SVGA chipsets. And yes, it appears to work with DOOM.

The practice of using 2020s microcontrollers to lend functionality to retrocomputers has revolutionised the art. We’ve seen many, with one of the more recent being a minimap add-on for an 8-bit Sinclair Spectrum.

Cheap Yellow Display With Boosted PSRAM Turned Snazzy Emulator Station

May 30, 2026 by 12 Comments

The ‘Cheap Yellow Display’, or CYD, is becoming a staple in these circles, and with good reason: just like the name says, it’s cheap, it has a display, and of course an ESP32 microcontroller to give it lots of brainpower. What it doesn’t come with is a lot of RAM, which was a problem for [DynaMite]’s project. What was there to do but solder on more PSRAM so the CYD could become a mini TV for retrogaming?

Depending what you want to play, you might not need the extra memory. In [DynaMite]’s case, he wanted to run Retro-Go, which opens up a lot more than just the standard NES emulator you can run on an unmodified CYD — including 16-bit systems like the SNES and Sega Genesis/MegaDrive or even DOOM. Adding the PSRAM is just a matter of getting the little chip onto an unpopulated footprint on the board, cutting some traces, and adding a bodge wire. It’s not nothing, but it’s not impossible.

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A Modern Web Browser For Classic Mac OS

May 29, 2026 by 7 Comments

When using older computers there comes a point at which modern software drops support, as for example is happening with builds for Windows XP. Every now and then though, along comes something that bucks the trend. Enter [mplsllc] with Macsurf, a port of the Netsurf browser for classic MacOS 9 on PowerPC. Bring your nineties beige box back online!

The first generation of PowerPC Macs occupy an odd position, being faster and more capable than their predecessors while not sharing the ability to run MacOS X like their G3 descendants. Macsurf has the promise of bringing them into the 2020s, but if you’re expecting the equivalent of Google Chrome you might be disappointed.

Netsurf is a browser that started life on RiscOS, the original ARM OS from the Acorn Archimedes. It’s lightweight and portable, it’s an active project, it has a good rendering engine that does up to date HTML and CSS, it offers native TLS, and it has JavaScript built in. It’s ideal for a 1990s PowerPC, but with the caveat that sites expecting the very latest browsers might struggle. Sadly we don’t have a ’90s Mac to hand so we can’t try this port, but we’re used to it on other lower-power machines so we thing it’ll be a great asset to the platform.

We last looked at Netsurf when we had a look at RiscOS, if you are interested.