Illustrated Kristina with an IBM Model M keyboard floating between her hands.

Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The 200% Typewriter

February 19, 2024 by Kristina Panos 3 Comments

You know, the really sad truth about cyberdecks and cyberdeck-adjacent builds is that many of them just end up on the shelf, collecting dust while waiting for the dystopian future. Well, not this one. No, [jefmer] says their Portable Pi sees daily use, and even comes along on the go.

Since [jefmer] is “temperamentally unsuited to 3D printing”, the Pi 4B and its accessories are nestled in a rugged, splash-proof case under some acrylic sheets. One of those accessories, the keyboard, is a KPrepublic BM40 with Gateron Yellows. In order to get used to the number and symbols layer, [jefmer] laid down some great-looking labels above the keyboard.

Although the build started with an SD card for storage, [jefmer] has since upgraded to a 120 GB SSD. This required a beefy battery pack, but the difference is that it gets around four hours of power versus five hours when using an SD card.

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Altoids Tin Keyboard Is A Breath Of Fresh Air

February 4, 2024 by Kristina Panos 35 Comments

Well, here’s a fresh idea! [flurpyflurples] is back from hiatus with the Mintboard, a 40% that fits inside of an Altoids tin. Who could ask for more than a rugged little Bluetooth keyboard with a built-in cover that fits in your pocket?

This build started with meticulously measuring the tin to figure out what kind of switches could be used. At first, this was going to be a 60% keyboard, but after a lot of design decisions and switch comparisons, [flurpyflurples] settled on a certain micro switch spaced at 7.3mm for a 40% layout. Then it was time to design a PCB.

Although [flurpyflurples] tends to use Arduino Pro Micros in their builds, they went with the Nice! Nano this time for the Bluetooth capabilities. This means that they had to program it with ZMK instead of QMK, but found that QMK knowledge transfers rather nicely.

Let’s talk about those lovely legends. The keycaps are 3D printed of course, and the legends were cut out on a Cricut machine. The best part is that sealant — [flurpyflurples] used a few drops of UV nail polish top coat and cured it with light.

We think this looks and sounds fantastic, and would really like to know how to get such clean cutouts. According to [flurpyflurples] and the end of the build/demo video you’ll find below the break, the action is a lot like a Blackberry keyboard.

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Altaid 8800 Puts A Front Panel In Your Pocket

May 8, 2022 by Tom Nardi 11 Comments

It’s safe to say that the Altair 8800 is one of the most iconic, and important, computers ever created. The kit-built machine is widely regarded as the first commercially successful personal computer, and as such, intact specimens are bona fide historical artifacts when and if they ever come up on the second-hand market. Accordingly there’s a cottage industry out there dedicated to making affordable replicas, which more often than not, leverage modern hardware to emulate the original hardware.

But that’s not what the Altaid 8800 is. For one thing, it looks nothing like the original Altair. More to the point however, it’s not using modern components to emulate an Intel 8080 computer…it actually is an Intel 8080 computer — complete with fully functional front panel for manually entering in programs. It just happens to be small enough to fit into an Altoids tin, hence the name.

Creator [Lee Hart] didn’t just stop at building a miniature 8080 machine, either. He’s also gone through the trouble of producing a sixteen page faux-vintage magazine to describe the project and its operation. Normally we’d call such a document a “manual”, but somehow in this case that seems to downplay the incredible effort and attention to detail that went into it.

Schematics and firmware are available should you wish to build your own version of the Altaid 8800, but we think the prices for the bare PCBs and complete kits that [Lee] is offering are more than fair for what you get. In fact, if you’ve always wanted to play around with front panel programming and the associated blinkenlights, this might be one of the most affordable options available. Though to be clear, you can also hook the Altaid up to your computer with a USB-to-serial cable if you’re not up to punching in programs on those tiny buttons.

You might think this is one of the most creative and unique retrocomputing projects we’ve ever seen, and you’d be right…if it wasn’t for [Lee]’s own Z80 Membership Card. In some ways the precursor to the Altaid 8800, this diminutive triumph also fits in an Altoids tin and features its own era appropriate magazine-style documentation. We’re detecting something of a theme with these projects…but we certainly aren’t complaining.

Tiny Vacuum Cleaner Sucks (In A Good Way)

September 19, 2019 by Al Williams 14 Comments

Sometimes something is remarkable not for its content, but for its size. A ball of yarn isn’t exciting for example, unless it’s a giant ball of yarn. At the other end of the scale writing your name is a quotidian event, but put it on a grain of rice and that’s ten bucks at the mall. [Toby Bateson] has been making vacuum cleaners since he was 8 years old — and he looks considerably older than that now. In of itself that’s not a big deal, but his machines are tiny. In fact, he has the Guinness Book of World Records entry for the smallest vacuum cleaner. His latest exploit? A vacuum in an Altoid’s tin!

Electronically, this is just a switch, a battery, and a motor. But if you are looking for a Dremel tool project, you are in luck. Check out the video of the diminutive device, below. Besides the Altoids tin, there is a metal pipe and some bits of a cut-up soda can.

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A Curiously Strong Z80 In Your Pocket

September 17, 2019 by Tom Nardi 42 Comments

Like many hackers, [Tom Szolyga] has soft spot for the venerable Z80. The number of instructions and registers made it relatively easy to program in ASM, and he still has fond memories of the refreshingly straightforward CP/M operating system he used to run on them back in the day. In fact, he loves Z80 computers so much he decided to build one that he could carry around in his pocket.

The result is the Minty Z80, so-called because it lives inside a tin formerly inhabited by every hacker’s favorite curiously strong mint. But the goal of this build wasn’t just to make it small, but also make it convenient to work with. [Tom] is using a ATmega32A to help interface the Z84C0008 microprocessor with the modern world, which allows for niceties such as support for a micro SD card. There’s no onboard USB-to-serial capability, but with an external adapter connected to the Minty’s header, it’s easy to use log into this microcosm of classic computing with a terminal emulator running on a computer or mobile device.

[Tom] has provided the schematics and Bill of Materials for the Minty Z80 on the project’s Hackaday.io page, but as of the latest update, he’s holding off on releasing the board files until he’s sure that all the bugs have been worked out. There’s no word yet if he found any show stoppers in the first iteration of the board design, but he’s posted a picture of the fully assembled miniature retrocomputer in all its glory which seems like a good sign.

The design of the Minty Z80 is similar to that of the Z80-MBC2 by [Just4Fun], but on an even smaller scale. It’s encouraging to see several projects leveraging modern design and components to prevent classic computing from becoming little more than a distant memory.

Chiptunes In An Altoids Tin

October 27, 2018 by Brian Benchoff 8 Comments

For [Dejan]’s entry to the Musical Instrument Challenge in this year’s Hackaday Prize, he’s tapping into some of the great work that has been done over the years to bring bleeps and bloops to the masses. He’s building a drum machine, a bass synth, and an arpeggiator that fits in your pocket, in a handy form factor that fits in an Altoids tin. It’s the FATCAT Altoids Tin Mod Tracker.

This is a simple build meant to fit in an Altoids tin, so you’re not getting a whole lot of hardware here. There’s a battery, there’s a boost circuit, and there’s a single chip, an ATtiny84. This tiny little microcontroller is the heart of the box, able to provide a drum track with a kick, snare, and a closed and open high hat. There’s a bass with a simple square wave and portamento, and an arp track that can be used as a lead or arpeggiated chords. All of this is programmed in C and uploaded straight to the chip.

The ATtiny series of microcontrollers are fairly popular for various means and methods of creating square wave bleeps and bloops. We’ve seen them become a MIDI synth that fits inside a MIDI jack, and we’ve seen how much chiptune goodness you can fit in thirty two bytes of RAM. Cornell even had a spat of rickroll vandalism with a coin cell throwie built on an ATtiny85. Anything that puts more ATtiny chiptunes into the hands of more people is great in our books, and this Altoids tin synth is just the thing.

You can check out a demo of the FATCAT below.

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World’s Smallest Wii Is Also World’s Worst

October 8, 2018 by Tom Nardi 14 Comments

As far as game consoles go, the Nintendo Wii was relatively small. Probably owing at least somewhat to the fact that it wasn’t a whole lot more than a slightly improved GameCube in a new case, but that’s another story entirely. So it’s not much of a surprise that people have modded Nintendo’s infamous money printing machine into handheld versions. But this…this is just something else.

We’re going to go out on a limb and say that this absolutely preposterous build by [Shank] which puts a fully functional Nintendo Wii into an Altoids tin wins the title of “World’s Smallest Wii”. We’re also going to put money on the fact that this record doesn’t get beaten because…well, come on. There’s a reason he’s named his diminutive creation the “Kill Mii”.

You’re probably wondering how this is possible. That’s an excellent question. As it turns out, hackers have discovered that you can cut off the majority of the Wii’s motherboard and still have a functioning system, albeit missing non-essential functions like the GameCube controller ports and SD card slot. From there, you just need to install a new firmware on the now heavily trimmed down Wii that tells it to ignore the fact it has no disc drive and load games as ISOs from an attached USB flash drive. That’s the high level summary anyway, the reality is that this a mod of crushing difficulty and should only be attempted by true masochists.

As for this particular build, [Shank] went all in and even relocated the Wii’s NAND chip to make everything fit inside the tin. There’s also custom PCBs which interface the Wii’s motherboard with the Nintendo 3DS sliders he’s using for control sticks. Underneath everything there’s a battery that can run the whole device for a grand total of about 10 minutes, but given the general shape of the “Kill Mii” and the fact that most of the buttons are tactile switches, that’s probably about as long as you’d want to play the thing anyway.

Yes, this is the worst Wii ever made. But that was also the point. In the words of the creator himself “This portable is not logical, comfortable, or practical. But it must be done… for the memes.” Truly an inspiration to us all.

Incidentally, this isn’t the first “trimmed” Wii portable we’ve seen; though that one was considerably more forgiving internally, and just a bit more practical.

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