An Atari Desktop On A Sega

August 22, 2026 by Jenny List 17 Comments

Over recent years there have been a range of classic 16-bit consoles coaxed into running familiar operating systems, with -nommu Linux being a favourite. But the 16-bit era had its own operating systems of note, and [1d4r3k] has brought one of them to a console that fit very much into a different 16-bit camp. It’s Atari’s TOS, on a Sega Mega CD.

We should in all fairness start by saying it’s not “real” TOS, but EmuTOS, an open-source drop-in replacement. So far it supports a serial keyboard device, a printer, and sound, and it mounts the CD or cartridge it booted from, a RAMdisk, internal backup RAM, and cartridge save RAM. We’re told in the tip email that there’s also been some work porting GEOS to the platform, and thus the GEOS software suite may be ported to it.

Sadly there are no images, so we can’t see it working, but trying it looks to be as straightforward as burning aan ISO or flashing a cartridge if you have the original hardware. We have no idea as to whether it would be any use given the specs of the Sega, but given that TOS ran on Ataris without a lot of RAM we suspect it might be. Meanwhile, here’s a Megadrive/Genesis running Linux.

Header: 軍事用懐中電灯, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Miniaturizing The Atari 2600 Console

August 20, 2026 by Bryan Cockfield 15 Comments

For as popular as Atari was in their heyday, it wasn’t until well after they were on their famous decline that they released their first handheld, the Atari Lynx. In retrospect, competing with the Game Boy was not going to be a recipe for success even without considering their other problems as a company, and as a result was their penultimate console before exiting the market completely. But [Nick]’s most recent project asks what the world would have been like with an Atari handheld from their golden era, and has been working on this miniaturized version of the 2600.

Unlike any modern emulators which can easily handle Atari 2600 games in almost any form factor today, this console is doing it all with as much original hardware as possible. It uses much smaller switches and buttons compared to the original, and omits some other unnecessary hardware for today’s world like the RF modulator. [Nick] has also designed a custom PCB that reduces the overall footprint considerably as well, and has relocated the cartridge port in preparation for its eventual handheld shape. The result is a console using original hardware that’s less than half the footprint of the original.

Although there were around 30 million Atari 2600 consoles sold and the system is unlikely to be a real collector’s item anytime soon, [Nick] makes sure to note that no real 2600 hardware was harmed in this build. And, as far as its handheld nature, this is a stepping stone on the path to that eventual goal. We’ll look forward to an eventual system that integrates a screen and controller as well as a port for the original cartridges. In the meantime, here’s another handheld 2600 that fits completely inside one of those cartridges.

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Meet The Raven: An Atari Clone Computer Based On The Motorola 68060

May 24, 2026 by Maya Posch 9 Comments

Some people who have a hankering to run GEM/TOS applications might just fire up an emulator, or maybe coax an old Motorola 68k-based Atari ST system back to life. Then there are people like [Anders Granlund], for whom hard mode is a way of life and making a custom mainboard around a genuine 68060 CPU and associated peripherals is a reasonable approach to pick. Thus quoth the Raven project.

The project commenced in 2024, when [Anders] started a thread on it over at the Exxos Forum which thus became pretty much the project log for the endeavor.

Both RAM and ROM ICs are on SIMM sticks, which seems like a pretty nifty idea compared to the typical socketed or soldered-in approach here, allowing for up to 48 MB of RAM and 16 MB of ROM.

On the custom ATX-compatible mainboard you get a total of 4 ISA slots, as well as everything from YM2149 audio, IDE HDD and legacy Atari peripheral support. All of which fits in a standard ATX case with an ATX power supply. If this tickles your fancy, you can find the design files for the current A1 board revision, though you will have to source your own ICs.

With all of it assembled you can run Atari’s TOS with its GEM UI, or the modern equivalent in the form of FreeMiNT.

Atari Brings The Computer Age Home

January 13, 2026 by John Elliot V 38 Comments

[The 8-Bit Guy] tells us how 8-bit Atari computers work.

The first Atari came out in 1977, it was originally called the Atari Video Computer System. It was followed two years later, in 1979, by the Atari 400 and Atari 800. The Atari 800 had a music synthesizer, bit-mapped graphics, and sprites which compared favorably to the capabilities of the other systems of the day, known as the Trinity of 1977, being the Apple II, Commodore PET, and TRS-80. [The 8-Bit Guy] says the only real competition in terms of features came from the TI-99/4 which was released around the same time.

The main way to load software into the early Atari 400 and 800 computers was to plug in cartridges. The Atari 400 supported one cartridge and the Atari 800 supported two. The built-in keyboards were pretty terrible by today’s standards, but as [The 8-Bit Guy] points out there wasn’t really any expectations around keyboards back in the late 1970s because everything was new and not many precedents had been set.

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Running DOOM On An Atari ST

May 22, 2025 by Heidi Ulrich 28 Comments

If you grew up with a beige Atari ST on your desk and a faint feeling of being left out once Doom dropped in 1993, brace yourself — the ST strikes back. Thanks to [indyjonas]’s incredible hack, the world now has a working port of DOOM for the Atari STe, and yes — it runs. It’s called STDOOM, and even though it needs a bit of acceleration or emulation to perform, it’s still an astonishing feat of retro-software necromancy.

[indyjonas] did more than just recompile and run: he stripped out chunks of PC-centric code, bent GCC to his will (cheers to Thorsten Otto’s port), and shoehorned Doom into a machine never meant to handle it. That brings us a version that runs on a stock machine with 4MB RAM, in native ST graphics modes, including a dithered 16-colour mode that looks way cooler than it should. The emotional punch? This is a love letter to the 13-year-old Jonas who watched Doom from the sidelines while his ST chugged along faithfully. A lot of us were that kid.

Sound is still missing, and original 8MHz hardware won’t give you fluid gameplay just yet — but hey, it’s a start. Want to dive in deeper? Read [indyjonas]’ thread on X.

Pi Pico Turns Atari 2600 Into A Lo-fi Photo Frame

March 27, 2025 by Jenny List 7 Comments

The cartridge based game consoles of decades ago had a relatively simple modus operandi — they would run a program stored in a ROM in the cartridge, and on the screen would be the game for the enjoyment of the owner. This made them simple in hardware terms, but for hackers in the 2020s, somewhat inflexible. The Atari 2600 is particularly troublesome in this respect, with its clever use of limited hardware making it not the easiest to program at the best of times. This makes [Nick Bild]’s Atari 2600 photo frame project particularly impressive.

The 2600 has such limited graphics hardware that there’s no handy frame buffer to place image data into, instead there are some clever tricks evolved over years by the community to build up bitmap images using sprites. Only 64 by 84 pixels are possible, but for mid-70s consumer hardware this is quite the achievement.

In the case of this cartridge the ROM is replaced by a Raspberry Pi Pico, which does the job of both supplying the small Atari 2600 program to display the images, and feeding the image data in a form pre-processed for the Atari.

The result is very 8-bit in its aesthetic and barely what you might refer to as photos at all, but on the other hand making the Atari do this at all is something of a feat. Everything can be found in a GitHub repository.

If new hardware making an old console perform unexpected tricks is your bag, we definitely have more for you.

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Hackaday Links: March 23, 2025

March 23, 2025 by Dan Maloney 9 Comments

What a long, strange trip it’s been for NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Bruce Wilmore, who finally completed their eight-day jaunt to space after 289 days. The duo returned to Earth from the ISS on Tuesday along with two other returning astronauts in a picture-perfect splashdown, complete with a dolphin-welcoming committee. For the benefit of those living under rocks these past nine months, Williams and Wilmore slipped the surly bonds way back in June on the first crewed test flight of the Boeing Starliner, bound for a short stay on the ISS before a planned return in the same spacecraft. Alas, all did not go to plan as their ride developed some mechanical difficulties on the way upstairs, and so rather than risk their lives on a return in a questionable capsule, NASA had them cool their heels for a couple of months while Starliner headed home without them.

There’s been a lot of talk about how Butch and Suni were “stranded,” but that doesn’t seem fair to us. Sure, their stay on the ISS was unplanned, or at least it wasn’t Plan A; we’re sure this is always a contingency NASA allows for when planning missions. Also unfortunate is the fact that they didn’t get paid overtime for the stay, not that you’d expect they would. But on the other hand, if you’re going to get stuck on a work trip, it might as well be at the world’s most exclusive and expensive resort.

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