Reinvented Retro Contest

Good news, everyone! The results of the Reinvented Retro contest are in, and the creators of these three groovy projects have each won a $200 online shopping spree to Digi-Key. We asked you to gaze deeply into your stuff piles and come up with a way to modernize a cool, old piece of hardware, and we left it up to you to decide how cool and how old.

No matter your personal vintage, you have probably used or even built an educational computer like [Michael Wessel]’s next-generation Microtronic. This is a re-creation of an early 1980s West German 4-bit microprocessor trainer called the Busch 2090 Microtronic Computer System. You may have never heard of it, but [Michael] swears it’s one of the best ever made. Years ago, [Michael] made a talking Arduino-based Microtronic emulator and has grown the concept into a prize-winning system that uses an ATMega2560 Pro Mini and a Nokia 5110 display. As a bonus, it doubles as a cassette interface emulator that plugs into the 2090’s expansion port. Take some time to dive into the YouTube videos or go straight for the gerbers and make your own.

EBTKS – a tape drive replacement for HP Series80 computers

Resurrected MK-52 calculator now does things it could never have dreamed of

Retrocomputing fans will love EBTKS, a project that seeks to circumvent the disintegrating tape drives in HP85A and other early 1980s HP computers by emulating them and delivering 20,000 virtual tapes via SD card. The project began as a solid state replacement using a Teensy and an ESP32, but [Philip] and the team realized they could do a whole lot more than that. The full list of features includes 70 new keywords and both disk and tape drive emulation. Everything is explained in detail on the project’s main documentation site, where you’ll also find a handy user guide.

If you have a soft spot for old Soviet gear, check out [ptrav]’s MK-52 Resurrection. [ptrav] took an early 90s-vintage calculator with a busted vacuum fluorescent display and breathed new life into it with an ESP32 and a 320×240 TFT screen. The point isn’t to merely resurrect the MK-52, but rather to create a phoenix of programmable Soviet calculating power that rises from the ashes and realizes its hardware unleashed potential. As part of the software development path, [ptrav] also built a fully-functional simulator in C# which you can check out on GitHub.

A Most Honorable Mention

It’s always so difficult to pick winners from among all the amazing projects we see. For this contest, we’ve chosen [Michael Gardi]’s WDC-1 — aka the Paperclip Computer — for an honorable mention. And that means more than just a published pat on the back — [Michael] has won a $25 gift card for Tindie. Way to go, [Michael]!

This WDC-1 is a bit of an inverse take on the reinvented retro concept. Instead of new tech in an old box, [Michael] employed modern PCB fabrication and 3D printing to house the upgraded homebrew guts of this 50+ year-old computer design.

Congratulations to all the winners, and a big thank you to all 138 entrants for your faux nostalgia-inspiring builds. Take some time this weekend to check them out, and get your alternate reality on.

There are so many ways to make things look awesome by pulling inspiration from great retro hardware. And combining today’s futuristic functionality with yesterday’s lines, colors, and kitsch is the quick path to a winning combination. So why not give it a try and show us what you got? That’s the gist of Hackaday’s Reinvented Retro Contest which begins right now and runs through June.

This smart TV should help get you thinking in a retro-modern way. You’d never know it wasn’t stock… except when it starts streaming The Falcon and the Winter Soldier via the Roku hidden inside. Fit and finish on this one is spectacular and that woodgrain remote is a piece of artwork!

So what will it be? Keurig in a 1960’s Perculator? Desk lamp in a rotary telephone? GHz oscilloscope where a CRT used to live? Perhaps a Raspberry Pi laptop in a 1990’s form-factor? You get to decide what “Retro” means, just make sure you thoroughly show off the build!

Digi-Key is sponsoring this contest and there are $200 shopping sprees from their warehouse up for grabs for each of three top winners. Make a project page over on Hackaday.io and use the “Submit project to…” dropdown in the left side bar to enter it in the Reinventing Retro Contest.