console

61 Articles

Vintage Console Becomes The Calculator It Appears To Be

August 25, 2019 by 9 Comments

What’s sitting on [Bob Alexander]’s desk in the video below did not start out life as the desktop calculator it appears to be. Turning it into a standalone calculator with features the original designers couldn’t imagine turned out to be an interesting project, and a trip down the retrocomputing rabbit hole.

A little explanation is in order. Sure, with its Nixie display, calculator keypad, and chunky mid-century design, the Wang 360 desktop console looks like a retro calculator. But it’s actually only a dumb terminal for a much, MUCH bigger box, called the Electronic Package, that would fit under a desk. The foot-warming part that was once connected to [Bob]’s console by a thick cable that had been unceremoniously lopped off by a previous owner. [Bob] decided to remedy the situation with modern electronics. The console turned out to have enough room for a custom PCB carrying a PIC32, some level-shifting components, power supply modules that include the high-voltage supply for the Nixies, and a GPS module because Nixies and clocks just go together. The interesting bit is the programming; [Bob] chose to emulate the original Wang methods of doing math, which include multiplication by logarithmic addition. Doing so replicates the original look and feel of the calculator down to the rapid progression of numbers across the Nixies as the logarithms are calculated using the display registers.

We normally frown on vintage gear being given modern guts, but in this case [Bob] hit just the right balance of new and old, And given that the Electronic Packages these consoles were connected to go for $1500 or more on eBay, it was a better choice than letting the console go to scrap. A similarly respectful approach was taken with this TRS80 Model 100 revival.

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Run Your Own Phone To Bring The Dreamcast Back Online

July 31, 2019 by 15 Comments

Playing a video game online is almost second nature now. So much so that almost all multiplayer video games have ditched their split-screen multiplayer modes because they assume you’d rather just be alone at your house than hanging out with your friends. This wasn’t always the case though. In the early days of online multiplayer, systems had to rely on dial-up internet before broadband was readily available (and still had split screen if you didn’t even have that). Almost no one uses dial up anymore though, so if you still like playing your old Dreamcast you’re going to have to do some work to get it online again.

Luckily for all of us there’s a Raspberry Pi image to do almost anything now. This project from [Kazade] uses one to mimic a dial-up connection for a Dreamcast so you can connect with other people still playing Quake 20 years later. It’s essentially a network bridge, but you will need some extra hardware because phone lines use a high voltage line that you’ll have to make (or buy) a solution for. Once all the hardware is set up and working, you’ll need to make a few software configuration changes, but it’s a very straightforward project.

Granted, there have been ways of playing Dreamcast games online before, but this new method really streamlines the process and makes it as simple as possible. The Dreamcast was a great system, and there’s an argument to be made that the only reason it wasn’t more popular was that it was just slightly too far ahead of its time.

Thanks to [Rusty] for the tip!

Dreamcast Gets A Plug-n-Play Hard Drive Mod

July 29, 2019 by 21 Comments

The Dreamcast was a proud moment for Sega, at least initially, being the first console to launch of a new generation. Unfortunately this didn’t translate into massive sales, and the plug was pulled far earlier than expected. The console retains a dedicated fanbase to this day however, who continue to tinker with the hardware. [DreamcastChannel] is one of them, and put together a nifty plug-and-play hard drive mod.

The mod is based on earlier work, which consisted of manually soldering the 44 lines of an IDE cable on to the main Dreamcast motherboard. This allowed an IDE hard drive to be neatly mounted inside the shell, but [DreamcastChannel] knew it was possible to do better.

Starting from scratch, the GDROM optical drive assembly is gutted, leaving just its metal case and PCB. The IDE cable for the hard disk is then soldered to the pads on the PCB. A 3D printed mount is used to fix the hard drive to the metal case. This allows the entire assembly to slot neatly into the Dreamcast, using the GDROM’s original connector.

It’s a hack that makes putting a hard drive into the Dreamcast neat and tidy. Combined with a hacked BIOS and Dreamshell, it makes playing backup games a breeze. We’ve seen plenty of Dreamcast hacks before, too – the VMU is often a key candidate for attention. Video after the break.

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The Raspberry Pi Portable Console You Wish You Had

May 16, 2019 by 35 Comments

A retro game console is a fun all-arounder project. You’ve got electronics, mechanical design, and software considerations. For this year’s Hackaday Prize, is going all in. The Portable Retro Game Console with 7.9-inch Display is a work of art, and everything that a retro console could be.

This build is based on the Raspberry Pi 3 A+ instead of the B model for space-saving considerations. The screen is a beautiful 7.9 inch IPS panel with 2048 x 1536 resolution. Stereo 3 W speakers pump out the tunes, and an 8000 mAh provides somewhere between 3 and 6 hours of play time.

While using a Raspberry Pi 3 for retro gaming is fun, there’s a world of oppurtunity for emulating bigger and badder consoles thanks to more powerful single board computers. The Nvidia Jetson Nano is far more powerful than the Raspberry Pi 3, and could conceivably emulate N64 and PlayStation games. The Atomic Pi, the fantastic computer that totally isn’t industrial surplus repackaged as an educational computer, already is proven to emulate N64 games. Imagine taking a portable console out of your backpack and playing Conker’s Bad Fur Day on the bus. Oh, that’s cheeky, but it is possible thanks to the amazing work of hardware creators.

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A Retro Handheld Console As They Used To Be Made

April 28, 2019 by 4 Comments

Before there were Nintendo Switches, there were Game Boys. And before that there were all the successive generations of Game Boys and other consoles right back to the Game and Watch, and then those handheld Simon and Space Invaders games of the late 1970s. These devices typically packed a 4-bit microcontroller and an array of discrete LEDs, and movements in-game were simply created by alternate LEDs on the game field being flashed.

The TeleBall from [sv2002] is a handheld game in the vein of those early handheld games, in that it features a matrix of LEDs as a screen on which it can display simple games. So far it plays Breakout, and Tennis for Two, which might seem odd were it not for its built-in radio for two-person play with two consoles.

Inside the TeleBall is an Arduino Nano, a Maxim display driver for the LED matrix, and the familiar Nordic Semiconductor RF module. Control is via a potentiometer, and everything sits in a smart 3D-printed case. Everything is open-source, so should you wish to have your own you can head over to the project’s web site and grab all the files. You can watch it in action playing tennis with two consoles in the video below the break.

The original Tennis for Two created in 1958 was an oscilloscope game using an analogue computer, and is credited as the first video game created purely for entertainment purposes. If you’d like to see a recreation of it, we covered one over a decade ago.

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A Z80 Homebrew Console, With A Bit Of Modern Help

March 24, 2019 by 4 Comments

We see a lot of retrocomputing projects here at Hackaday that take devices from the 8-bit era and re-create them in the 21st century. Sometimes they remain period-accurate and stick to all contemporary devices, but in other cases they take full advantage of four decades of advancing technology. [Pkiller]’s Z80 console is one of this later category, creating peripherals for the classic CPU using microcontrollers in the place of the banks of 74 logic or ULA chips that might have graced a 1980s machine.

The video generation hardware produces a PAL signal using an interesting technique involving two RAM buffers. An ATmega644 microcontroller composites a single frame into one of the buffers while another ATmega644 is generating the previous frame of video from the other buffer. On each change of frame the buffers are switched between the two microcontrollers, requiring some extra 74 logic chips. Another AtMega chip provides the Z80 with I/O interfacing, and the sound comes via another dual-buffer microcontroller setup and a quick return to classic hardware with a YM3438 FM synthesis chip. The result can be seen in the video below, and would have not looked out of place in a late-’80s or even early-’90s living room.

Some people might ask why so much trouble should be gone to in the pursuit of a project like this one, but to do so is to miss the point. Sure, a Sega Master System can be had from the usual sources, but in creating  project such as this one the builder has to truly understand the technologies such as PAL generation or the internals of a Z80 in great detail. The result while it is undeniably impressive is almost secondary to the process of reaching it.

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GBA On The Big Screen: FPGA Delivers HDMI And Every Feature Imaginable

December 2, 2018 by 17 Comments

The concept of creating a gaming portable out of a home console has been around for some time, but it’s hardly seen the other way around. There have been a few devices that dared to straddle the line (i.e., Sega Nomad, Nintendo Switch, etc.), but the two worlds typically remain separate. [Stephen] looked to explore that space by attempting to turn the Game Boy Advance into a “big boy” console. The FPGA-based mod kit he created does just that, and comes complete with controller support and digital video output in 720p over a mini HDMI cable.

The kit itself was designed specifically for the original model GBAs containing the 40-pin LCD ribbon cable. These original models were the early run of non-backlit screens that are also denoted by a motherboard designation that can be seen by peering into the battery compartment. RGB signals are read directly from the GBA LCD socket by removing the handheld’s screen in favor of a fresh flat flex ribbon cable. This method enables a noise-free digital-to-digital solution as opposed to the digital-to-analog output of Nintendo’s own Game Boy Player add-on for the GameCube.

At an astonishing 240×160 native resolution, GBA video is scaled by the FPGA up to 5x within a 720p frame. Of course some of the image is cutoff in the process, so options for 4x and 4.5x scales were included. As a wise man once said, “Leave no pixel behind”. Since Nintendo designed the GBA clock to run at 59.7276 Hz, [Stephen] removed the oscillator crystal in order to sync the refresh rate to a more HDMI friendly 60 Hz. This means that the mod kit overclocks GBA games ever so slightly, though [Stephen] included a GBA cycle accurate mode as an option if your display can handle it.

The video below is [Stephen]’s initial test using a SNES controller. Tests must have gone well, because he decided to incorporate a SNES controller port in the final design. Now all those Super Nintendo ports on the GBA are back home once again thanks to this “consolizer” kit.

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