Brand New Colecovision Console – On A Breadboard

March 1, 2023 by Jenny List 5 Comments

The Colecovision console from the early 1980s is probably not the most memorable platform of its era, but it retains a retrocomputing following to this day. The original hardware can be a bit pricey in 2023, so [nanochess] has built one of his own on a breadboard. It’s fully functional from original Colecovision cartridges, and we see it in the video below the break running Frogger.

Behind the mess of wires is a surprisingly simple circuit with only a few logic chips beyond the Z80 processor, the various memory and EPROM chips, and the video and sound chips. We’re told the complexity is considerably reduced by the use of a Texas Instruments TMS9118 video controller instead of a 9918.

Had we been building it we would probably have taken the less brave step of using color coded wires for the various signals, because we remember the fun and games associated with wiring old-style 8-bit computers by hand only too well. But we have to admit that it reminds us of a lost youth working out Z80 address decoder schematics, so it’s very pleasing to see one built today.

If you’re hungry for more Coleco goodness, this isn’t the first home made Colecovision we’ve brought you.

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Original Controller Ports In Custom Case Means Retro Gaming In Style

January 28, 2023 by Donald Papp 34 Comments

Some careful measuring and a little extra effort can be all that separates what looks like a hack job from a slick end product, and that is apparent in [Eric Sorensen]’s classy retrogaming rig, complete with ports for original console controllers.

Neatly housing these components in a case makes all the difference.

[Eric] likes his vintage gaming, and was terrifically pleased with MiSTer, an open-source project that recreates various classic computers, game consoles and arcade machines using modern FPGA-based hardware. Of course, what makes retro gaming even better is using a platform’s genuine original controllers, which just takes a little extra hardware and wiring.

But [Eric] found that all the required accessories and peripherals started to look awfully cluttered. He solved this issue by packing everything carefully into a specialty PC case called the Checkmate A1500 Plus, which gives off a strong 80s design vibe. As a bonus, the front panels are all removable and that’s where [Eric] decided to house the custom controller ports.

First [Eric] carefully measured each controller connector to create CAD models, then designed matching front panels to house the connectors and 3D printed them. Once that was done, post-processing the panels was a long process of apply Bondo, sand, paint, and repeat as needed. The results looks fantastic, and this project is a prime example of how aesthetics and finish can matter.

Find yourself in a similar situation? [Tom Nardi] has shown us all that 3D prints don’t have to look 3D-printed, and careful application of paint and primer can really put the ‘pro’ in prototyping.

Playdate Handheld Turned Typewriter

October 18, 2022 by Bryan Cockfield 6 Comments

The Playdate is an interesting gaming system. It’s a handheld, has a black and white screen, and superficially reminds us a little bit of the original Game Boy, right down to the button layout. But the fact that it has a second controller that pops out of the side, that this controller is a crank, and that the whole system was made by the same people that made Untitled Goose Game, makes us quite intrigued. Apparently it has made an impact on others, too, because this project turns the gaming system into a typewriter.

The Playdate doesn’t have native support for USB accessories unless it’s plugged into this custom 3D printed dock. Inside of the dock is a Teensy 4.1 which handles some translation between the keyboard and the console. Once the dock is taken care of the text editor needs to be side-loaded to the device as well. The word processor has the ability to move the cursor around, insert and delete text, and the project’s creator, [t0mg], plans to add more features in future versions like support for multiple files, changing the font, and a few other things as well.

For anyone interested in recreating this project, all of the printable files, the text editor, and the schematics are all available in the GitHub repo. It’s an impressive project for a less well-known console that we haven’t seen many other hacks for, unless you count this one-off Arduboy project which took some major inspiration from the Playdate’s crank controller.

The NES Gets Its Own OS

September 28, 2022 by Bryan Cockfield 20 Comments

Until recently, most video game systems didn’t need their own operating systems in order to play games. Especially in the cartridge era — the games themselves simply ran directly on the hardware and didn’t require the middleman of an operating system for any of the functionality of the consoles. There were exceptions for computers that doubled as home computers such as the Commodore, but systems like the NES never had their own dedicated OS. At least, until [Inkbox] designed and built the NES-OS.

The operating system does not have any command line, instead going directly for a graphical user interface. There are two programs that make up the operating system. The first is a settings application which allows the user to make various changes to the appearance and behavior of the OS, and the second is a word processor with support for the Japanese “Family Keyboard” accessory. The memory on the NES is limited, and since the OS loads entirely into RAM there’s only enough leftover space for eight total files. Those files themselves are limited to 832 bytes, which is one screen’s worth of text without scrolling.

While it might seem limited to those of us living in the modern era, the OS makes nearly complete use of the available processing power and memory of this 1980s system that was best known for Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt. It’s an impressive build for such a small package, and really dives into a lot of the hardware and limitations when building software for these systems. If you need more functionality than that, we’d recommend installing Linux on the NES Classic instead.

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Building A GameCube Mini Because Nintendo Never Did

August 24, 2022 by Lewin Day 9 Comments

Nintendo never made a GameCube Mini, with the console’s form factor remaining the same until the eventual launch of the Wii in 2006. [Bringus Studios] decided to build one of his own instead.

The build began with a Revision C GameCube motherboard, which comes without the digital video port and the second serial port. It also comes with an integrated power supply on the motherboard which makes it much easier to slim down into a smaller form factor. The main space saving, though, came from removing the rarely-used ports on the bottom of the console and the DVD drive. The latter was replaced with PicoBoot, which allows ISOs to be loaded from an SD card.

Once trimmed down and fitted with a replacement cooling fan, the console then got a custom half-height 3D-printed case. It’s tidy and functional, but we’d love to see a more finished resin-printed version more accurately aping the traditional GameCube aesthetic.

If you want something even more portable, consider building a pocket-sized Wii. Video after the break.

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Restore Your Formerly Useless Ouya Console

August 3, 2022 by Bryan Cockfield 18 Comments

Plenty of electronics end up in the junk drawer or even landfill after their useful life ends, but in the modern world of planned obsolescence a lot more devices are thrown out simply because of lack of support. Sometimes it’s even worse than that as some products are designed to “phone home” and will lack critical functionality if the original producer of that product gets purchased by someone else, wants to sell its customers more products, or goes out of business. The latter is essentially what happened to the Ouya console, but if you still have one of these around you might be able to get it running again.

The Ouya was a commercial failure but an ambitious take on a new kind of gaming console. With little more processing power than a smart phone, the idea was to produce a console for the casual gamer that also could play retro games and other games available for Android. It had a low price point but eventually couldn’t sell enough units to stay in business. These devices needed to see a specific server to gain full functionality, and [Christian] has created essentially a spoofed server that allows users to sign in to their consoles and install games again. All that is needed is to modify a few config files on the Ouya to point to a different address and the Ouya boots up just like it’s 2012 again.

This project goes a long way to show that there are plenty of serviceable electronics out there that have just been needlessly borked, and with a little elbow grease it’s sometimes possible to get them working. The state of this machine is a little surprising given that the original machine promised to be hacker and developer friendly.

Thanks to [Josiah] for the tip!

ESP32 Gets A Nifty Serial Console Library

July 22, 2022 by Lewin Day 8 Comments

Sometimes you need to get a project to talk to you, so you can see what’s going on inside. The ESP32 console Arduino library from [jbtronics] promises just that.

The library adds a simple serial console to the ESP32, and is compatible with the Arduino ecosystem to boot. It’s set up to allow the easy addition of custom commands so you can tweak the console to suit your own projects. It’s remarkably complete with nifty features, too. There’s autocomplete as well as a navigable command history – the sorts of features you only expect from a modern OS terminal. A bunch of system commands are built-in, too, for checking the status of things like the memory, network interface, and so on.

The tool is available via the Arduino library manager or the PlatformIO registry. You’ll want to use it with a VT-100 compatible terminal like PuTTY or similar, which lets you use all the fancy features including color output. [jbtronics] hopes to port it to the ESP8266 soon, too!

We’ve seen some other great serial tools of late, too. If you’re brewing up your own nifty console hacks, be sure to drop us a line!