Screenshot of the YouTube channel videos list, showing a number of videos like the ones described in this article.

[DiyOtaku] Gives Old Devices A New Life

May 2, 2024 by Arya Voronova 5 Comments

Sometimes we get sent a tip that isn’t just a single article or video, but an entire blog or YouTube channel. Today’s channel, [Diy Otaku], is absolutely worth a watch if you want someone see giving a second life to legendary handheld devices, and our creator has been going at it for a while. A common theme in most of the videos so far – taking an old phone or a weathered gaming console, and improving upon them in a meaningful way, whether it’s lovingly restoring them, turning them into a gaming console for your off days, upgrading the battery, or repairing a common fault.

The hacks here are as detailed as they are respectful to the technology they work on. The recent video about putting a laptop touchpad into a game controller, for instance, has the creator caringly replace the controller’s epoxy blob heart with a Pro Micro while preserving the original board for all its graphite-covered pads. The touchpad is the same used in an earlier video to restore a GPD Micro PC with a broken touchpad, a device that you can see our hacker use in a later video running FreeCAD, helping them design a 18650 battery shell for a PSP about to receive a 6000 mAh battery upgrade.

Continue reading “[DiyOtaku] Gives Old Devices A New Life” →

Nearly-Destroyed Commodore Gets New Life

April 26, 2024 by Bryan Cockfield 10 Comments

We all have our shiny, modern computers for interacting with the modern world, but at times they can seem a little monochromatic. Even the differences between something like macOS and Windows for the average user often boil down to which operating system loads an Internet browser. There are obviously more differences than that, but back in the 80s it was much more extreme with interoperability a pipe dream in most cases. What keeps drawing people to maintaining and using computers from that chaotic era is more tangible compared to modern machines, and that is meant quite literally; computers from this era can be saved from an extreme amount of degradation like this Commodore that was nearly completely destroyed before it was re-discovered.

The first step was to restore the case of this Commodore PC20-III, but the restoration of the computer’s internals took a bit more time. First, the entire board was de-soldered, with any rare chips being set aside for future use. Unfortunately the board itself was too corroded and otherwise damaged to be used, but since these were just two-layer boards it could be photographed and then re-created in CAD software to make a near-perfect duplicate of the original. The team at [The Cave] took the opportunity to add patch wires which would have been present in the original machine into the PCB, and made some other upgrades as well like adding sockets to various chips that would have been originally soldered to the board.

The passive components, especially capacitors, were brand new as well and some period-correct components such as a monitor and keyboard finish out the build. The computer boots on the first try, and is quickly put through its paces testing the hard disk drive, using the old floppy drive, and even playing a few video games from the era. The fact that retrocomputers like these are easy (by modern standards) to reverse engineer and restore surely leads to their continued popularity, and we’ve seen everything from C64s to this 128DCR get a similar full restoration.

Continue reading “Nearly-Destroyed Commodore Gets New Life” →

Royal Typewriter Gets A Second (or Third) Life

April 8, 2024 by Al Williams 13 Comments

Usually when we are restoring something with a keyboard, it is some kind of old computer or terminal. But [Make it Kozi] wanted an old-fashioned typewriter. The problem is, as he notes, they are nostalgically popular these days, so picking up a working model can be pricey. The answer? Buy a junker and restore it. You can watch the whole process in the video below, too, but nearly the only sound you’ll hear is the clacking of the keys. He doesn’t say a word until around the 14-minute mark. Just warning you if you have it playing in the background!

Of course, even if you can find a $10 typewriter, it probably won’t be the same kind, nor will it have the same problems. However, it is a good bet that any old mechanical typewriter will need many of the same steps.

Continue reading “Royal Typewriter Gets A Second (or Third) Life” →

If You Thought Sega Only Made Electronic Games, Think Again

March 1, 2024 by Jenny List 4 Comments

Most of us associate the name Sega with their iconic console gaming systems from the 1980s and 1990s, and those of us who maintain an interest in arcade games will be familiar with their many cabinet-based commercial offerings. But the company’s history in its various entities stretches back as far as the 1950s in the world of slot machines and eventually electromechanical arcade games. [Arcade Archive] is starting to tell the take of how one of those games is being restored, it’s a mid-1960s version of Gun Fight, at the Retro Collective museum in Stroud, UK.

The game is a table-style end-to-end machine, with the two players facing each other with a pair of diminutive cowboys over a game field composed of Wild West scenery. The whole thing is very dirty indeed, so a substantial part of the video is devoted to their carefully dismantling and cleaning the various parts.

This is the first video in what will become a series, but it still gives a significant look into the electromechanical underpinnings of the machine. It’s beautifully designed and made, with all parts carefully labelled and laid out with color-coded wiring for easy servicing. For those of us who grew up with electronic versions of Sega Gun Fight, it’s a fascinating glimpse of a previous generation of gaming, which we’re looking forward to seeing more of.

This is a faithful restoration of an important Sega game, but it’s not the first time we’ve featured old Sega arcade hardware.

Continue reading “If You Thought Sega Only Made Electronic Games, Think Again” →

Bringing An IBM Butterfly Laptop Back From The Dead

January 28, 2024 by Jenny List 8 Comments

Among all the laptops produced over the last few decades, there is one which rises above the rest and which has retained an appeal long after its meager computing resources became obsolete. It’s the IBM 701c, the famous “Butterfly” laptop, whose fold-out keyboard still gives it star quality, and [John Graham-Cumming] has documented the restoration of one from the tattered remains of two scrap examples.

The two laptops in question were someone else’s never-started project, and were in a sorry state. The flexible cables were in poor condition, and the 1990s Ni-MH batteries had leaked and damaged both circuits and case. We were unaware that NiMH leakage could damage plastic, but the parts of these machines were significantly damaged.

One had a working mainboard, the other a working modem card. One keyboard was in pretty bad shape, the other was complete. Of the pair there was a double super twisted nematic (DSTN) display and a more contemporary thin film transistor (TFT) panel. Be thankful if you have never had to use a DSTN laptop, as they were truly awful. From this pile of parts a working machine could be made, and with a new CMOS battery, that cable repair, and a repaint, he was ready. Or at least, as he says, ready for 1995.

This isn’t the first 701c restoration we’ve seen, and within reason, it’s even possible to give them a retro processor upgrade.

Restoring A 45 Year Old Video Game

August 30, 2023 by Julian Scheffers 28 Comments

When we say vintage video game, some of you may think of the likes of Lemmings, Mario or maybe even Donkey Kong but the game that [Vintage Apparatus] restored is slightly older and much more minimalist, using an LED matrix and some 7-segment displays rather than this newfangled color CRT thing.

The front and back covers, buttons and screws of the game on the workbench. — The game is disassembled before cleaning.

[Vintage Apparatus] starts by removing the battery and cover from the 1977 Mattel electronics (American) football game, which uses rather uncommon 2mm triangular screws. To his and our surprise, the circuit board and its beautiful array of LEDs seem to be in excellent condition, so he moves on to cleaning the case itself.

The case, on the other hand, is a bit dirty on the outside, so [Vintage Apparatus] takes out the buttons and starts cleaning with the back cover a Q-tip. After a bit of scrubbing and some extra care to avoid removing any stickers, he moves on to the considerably dirtier and somewhat scratched front case. After some wrestling with the creases and speaker grill of the front cover, the outside of the front case looks nice and clean. Finally, he puts back the buttons and circuit board in the front cover before adding closing it all up with the back cover and screwing it back together.

The game, which immediately comes to life and was actually made by the Mattel calculator division, is a sort of evasion game where the player is a bright dot that can move forward, up or down. The player avoids the dimmer dots, the “tacklers”, in order to run as far as possible as fast as possible. When one of the tacklers tackles the player, the amount of downs is increased and the fifth down means game over. After either scoring or getting downed one too many times, the field is flipped and it’s now player 2’s turn.

Video after the break.
Continue reading “Restoring A 45 Year Old Video Game” →

Apple III Slows Down To Smell The Roses

August 3, 2023 by Bryan Cockfield 7 Comments

The most collectible items in the realm of vintage computers often weren’t the most popular of their era. Quite the opposite, in fact. Generally the more desireable systems were market failures when they first launched, and are now sought out because of a newly-appreciated quirk or simply because the fact that they weren’t widely accepted means there’s fewer of them. One of the retro computers falling into this category is the Apple III, which had fundamental hardware issues upon launch leading to a large recall and its overall commercial failure. [Ted] is trying to bring one of these devices back to life, though, by slowing its clock speed down to a crawl.

The CPU in these machines was a Synertek 6502 running at 1.8 MHz. With a machine that wouldn’t boot, though, [Ted] replaced it with his own MCL65+, a purpose-built accelerator card based on the 600 MHz Teensy 4.1 microcontroller in order to debug the motherboard. The first problem was found in a ROM chip which prevented the computer loading anything from memory, but his solution wouldn’t work at the system’s higher clock speeds. To solve that problem [Ted] disabled the higher clock speed in hardware, restricting the system to 1 MHz and allowing it to finally boot.

So far there haven’t been any issues running the computer at the slower speed, and it also helps keep the computer cooler and hopefully running longer as well, since the system won’t get as hot or unstable. This isn’t [Ted]’s first retrocomputing rodeo, either. His MCL chips have been featured in plenty of other computers like this Apple II which can run at a much faster rate than the original hardware thanks to the help of the modern microcontroller.