From A 6502 Breadboard Computer To Lode Runner And Beyond

January 17, 2023 by Dan Maloney 2 Comments

As disruptive and generally unpleasant as the pandemic lockdowns of 2020 were, they often ended up being a catalyst for significant personal growth. That was often literal growth, thanks to stress eating, but others, such as [Eric Badger], used the time to add skills to his repertoire and build a breadboard 6502 computer and so much more.

For those of you looking for a single endpoint to this story, we’re sorry to disappoint — this isn’t really one of those stories. Rather, it’s a tale of starting as a hardware newbie with a [Ben Eater] 6502 breadboard computer kit, and taking it much, much beyond. Once the breadboard computer kit was assembled, [Eric] was hooked, and found himself relentlessly expanding it. At some point, he decided to get the classic game Lode Runner going on his computer; this led to a couple of iterations of video cards, including a foray away from the breadboards and into PCB design. That led to a 6502 emulator build, and a side quest of a Raspberry Pi Pico Lode Runner appliance. This naturally led [Eric] to dip a toe into the world of 3D printing, because why not?

Honestly, we lost track of the number of new skills [Eric] managed to add to his toolkit in this video, and we’re sure this isn’t even a final accounting — there’s got to be something he missed. It’s great stuff, though, and quite inspirational — there’s no telling where you’ll end up when you start messing around with hardware hacking.

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Classic Video Chip Drives A Modern TFT

January 7, 2023 by Jenny List 11 Comments

A lot of us have a soft spot for retrocomputers, and there’s nothing quite like running original hardware. Unfortunately if you’re after the truly original touch then that means carrying along the family TV from 1982, and that’s where life becomes annoying. What if there were a way you could easily drive an LCD panel from a classic video controller? Help is at hand for owners of TI TMS9928A video chips, courtesy of [umaker], with a clever interface board that drives an SPI or parallel TFT.

At its heart is not the FPGA you might expect, but an STM32G4 microcontroller on an STM Nucleo board. This digitizes the R-Y and Y components from the TMS chip which would originally have been destined for an NSC or PAL encoder, does the color conversion through its algorithm, and transfers the result to the screen. This is a task which would back in the day when NTSC or PAL were king have been seen as extremely computationally intensive, so it’s a mark of just how capable an STM can be that a few dollar microcontroller can do it.

We can see this technique proving to be extremely useful across a lot of different retro color graphic applications. We’re not sure whether its lag would be too much for a light gun game, but it would be nice to think that it would result in handheld retro machines.

We encountered this project previously, when as part of its development he needed a sync separator.

VHS-Decode Project Could Help Archival Efforts

December 13, 2022 by Lewin Day 47 Comments

Archiving data from old storage media can be a highly complex process. It can be as simple as putting a disk in an old drive and reading out the contents. These days, though, the state of the art is more complex, with advanced techniques helping to recover the most data possible. The VHS-Decode project is an effort to improve the archiving of old analog video tapes.

The project is a fork of the LaserDisc-focused ld-decode, started by [Chad Page] back in 2013, which readers may recall was used for the Domesday Duplicator — a device aimed to recover data from the BBC’s ancient Domesday LaserDiscs. VHS-Decode is designed to capture the raw RF signals straight out of a tape head, which are the most direct representation of the signals on the physical media. From there, these signals can be processed in various ways to best recover the original audio and video tracks. It’s much the same technique as is used by floppy disk recovery tools like the FluxEngine.

Despite the VHS name, the code currently works with several tape formats. VHS, S-VHS and U-Matic are supported in PAL and NTSC formats, while Betamax, Video8 and High8 tape capture remains a work in progress. Using the code requires a video tape player with test points or traces that make signals from the head accessible. Capturing those signals is achieved via a Domesday Duplicator hardware device, or alternatively a Conexant CX2388x analog-to-digital converter, often found in many old PCI TV tuner cards. Various techniques can then be used to turn the captured signals into watchable video files.

We love a good archival project, and VHS-Decode is clearly a useful tool when it comes to salvaging old video tapes. Continue reading “VHS-Decode Project Could Help Archival Efforts” →

Start Your Engines: The FPV Contest Begins Now!

November 22, 2022 by Elliot Williams 15 Comments

There are places that you can go in person, but for everything else, there’s FPV. Whether you’re flying race quads, diving the depths in a yellow submarine, or simply roving the surface of the land, we want to see your builds. If it’s remote controlled, and you feel like you’re in the pilot’s seat, it’s FPV.

When you say “first person view” many of you will instinctively follow up with “flight” or “drone”. But given the ease of adding a camera and remote control to almost any vehicle, there’s no reason to only fly the FPV skies. (Of course, we want to see your crazy quadcopter builds too.)

We went looking for a few less-traditional examples to whet your appetite, and we found a lot. There are super-cute FPV bots for indoors and more robust tanks for cruising around the neighborhood. In the summer, you’ll probably need an FPV lawnmower, and for the winter, naturally, an FPV snowblower or a budget-friendly FPV snow-boat. Or skip the outdoors entirely and terrorize the pool with an FPV sub.

This contest isn’t exclusively about the vehicles either. If you’re working on the tech that makes FPV possible, we want you to enter. For instance, this simple quad/drone tracker will help keep your video feed running and your mind on flying. This cockpit will make the immersion more complete. And nobody likes the jello-cam effect that excess vibration can cause, so we’d like to see camera hacks as well.

And of course, your quads. Is your FPV quad too fast, too light, or does it fly too far? Show us. The contest starts now and runs until Jan 3, 2023, and there are three $150 shopping sprees courtesy of Digi-Key on the line. Get hacking!

A CRT Monitor From An Obsolete Logic Analyzer

October 7, 2022 by Jenny List 15 Comments

The designers of older equipment that contained a CRT monitor rarely made the effort to design their own driver and deflection circuitry. Instead they were more likely to buy an off the shelf assembly from a monitor manufacturer, and simply supply it with their video. [TomV] has an old HP 16500A logic analyzer, and in it he found a Sony monitor chassis. With a quest for a microfiche service manual and a bit of reverse engineering, he was able to hook it up to a VGA port and use it as an extension monitor for his laptop.

The monitor chassis is a Sony CHM-9001-00, which sports their 10″ Trinitron tube. These were among the very best CRT tubes of the day, making it the type of module 1990s hacker would have been very pleased to get their hands on. Here in 2022 a look at the monitor’s 40-pin connector reveals a standard RGB interface which the service manual confirms is within the voltage range to be driven from a VGA output. A Thinkpad X220 is pressed into service, with a 576 by 360 pixel at 60 Hz video mode defined, and there we have it, a modern desktop on an obsolete piece of test equipment.

The intended destination for this monitor is a small arcade cabinet, so it needed to be independent of the HP chassis. The required 120 VDC supply comes from an inverter designed for solar battery charging, which balked at the inrush current from the monitor when fed with 12 V. Increasing the supply voltage on the low voltage side solved that, leading to a very serviceable monitor. We have no use for one, but we’d be lying if we said we didn’t want one.

Perhaps you may have wondered, what made Trinitrons so good?

Hackaday Prize 2022: A Spring-Driven Digital Movie Camera

September 1, 2022 by Lewin Day 14 Comments

These days, most of us are carrying capable smartphones with high-quality cameras. It makes shooting video so easy as to take all the fun out of it. [AIRPOCKET] decided to bring that back, by converting an old spring-driven 8mm film camera to shoot digital video.

The camera in question is a magazine-fed Bell & Howell Model 172 from the 1950s. In its original spring-driven form, it could shoot for approximately 35 seconds at a (jerky) frame rate 16 fps.

In this build, though, the film is replaced with a digital imaging system designed to fit in the same space as the original magazine. A Raspberry Pi Zero 2 was pressed into service, along with a rechargeable battery and Pi camera module. The camera is timed to synchronise with the shutter mechanism via a photosensor.

Since it uses the original optics and shutter speed, the resulting video is actually very reminiscent of the Super 8 cameras of the past. It’s an impressive way to get a retro film effect straight into a digital output format. The alternative is to just shoot on film and scan it afterwards, of course! Video after the break.

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This Simple Media Player Will Inspire Beginners And Invite Experimentation

August 16, 2022 by Dan Maloney 4 Comments

While it would have been considered science-fiction just a few decades ago, the ability to watch virtually any movie or TV show on a little slab that fits in your pocket is today no big deal. But for an electronics beginner, being able to put together a pocketable video player like this one would be quite exciting, and might even serve as a gateway into the larger world of electronics design.

For inspiration, [Alex] from Super Make Something on YouTube looked to the Rickrolling keychain media players we featured back in January. His player is quite a bit larger and more capable, with a PCB design that allows the player to be built in multiple configurations, from audio-only to full video and a LiPo battery. The guts of the player center around an ESP32 module, with an audio amp and speakers plus a 1.8″ LCD screen with SD card reader for storing media files. Add in a few controls and switches and a little code, and you’ll be playing back media files in a snap. Build info and demo in the video below.

It may be a simple design, but we feel like that’s the whole point. [Alex] has taken pains to make this as approachable a build as possible. All the parts are cheap and easily available, and the skills needed to put it together are minimal — with the possible exception of soldering down the ESP32 module, which lacks castellated edge terminals. For a beginner, getting a usable media player by mixing together just a few modules would be magical, and the fact that it’s still pretty hackable afterward is just icing on the cake.

Continue reading “This Simple Media Player Will Inspire Beginners And Invite Experimentation” →