Author: Jenny List

3023 Articles

A Forgotten Consumer PC Becomes A Floating Point Powerhouse

February 17, 2025 by 24 Comments

[Michael Wessel] found some of his old DOS 3D graphics software and tried to run it on an 8088 PC. The tale of adding an 8087 co-processor to speed up the rendering was anything but straightforward, resulting in a useful little project.

There was a point around the end of the 1980s when the world of PCs had moved on to the 386, but the humble 8086 and 8088 hung around at the consumer end of the market. For Europeans that meant a variety of non-standard machines with brand names such as Amstrad and Schneider, and even surprisingly, later on Sinclair and Commodore too.

Of these the Schneider Euro PC was an all-in-one design reminiscent of an Amiga or Atari ST, packing a serviceable 8088 PC with a single 3.5″ floppy drive. A cheap machine like this was never thought to need an 8087, and lacked the usual socket on the motherboard, so he made a small PCB daughter board for the 8088 socket with space for both chips.

It’s a surprisingly simple circuit, as obviously the two chips were meant to exist together. It certainly had the desired effect on his frame rate, though we’re not sure how many other Euro PC users will need it. It does make us curious though, as to how quickly a modern microcontroller could emulate an 8087 for an even faster render time. Meanwhile if you’re curious about the 8087, of course [Ken Shirriff] has taken a look at it.

Probably The Most Esoteric Commodore 64 Magazine

February 17, 2025 by 10 Comments

The world of computer enthusiasts has over time generated many subcultures and fandoms, each of which has in turn spawned its own media. [Intric8] has shared the tale of his falling down a rabbit hole as he traced one of them, a particularly esoteric disk magazine for the Commodore 64. The disks are bright yellow, and come with intricate home-made jackets and labels. Sticking them into a 1541 drive does nothing, because these aren’t standard fare, instead they require GEOS and a particularly upgraded machine. They appear at times in Commodore swap meets, and since they formed a periodical there are several years’ worth to collect that extend into the 2000s, long after the heyday of the 64.

Picking up nuggets of information over time, he traces them to Oregon, and the Astoria Commodore User Group, and to [Lord Ronin], otherwise known as David Mohr. Sadly the magazine ended with his death in 2009, but until then he produced an esoteric selection of stories, adventure games, and other software for surely one of the most exclusive computer clubs in existence. It’s a fascinating look into computer culture from before the Internet, even though by 2009 the Internet had well and truly eclipsed it, when disks like these were treasured for the information they contained. So if you find any of these yellow Penny Farthing disks, make sure that they or at least their contents are preserved.

Surprisingly, this isn’t the only odd format disk magazine we’ve seen.

You Know This Font, But You Don’t Really Know It

February 15, 2025 by 18 Comments

Typography enthusiasts reach a point at which they can recognise a font after seeing only a few letters in the wild, and usually identify its close family if not the font itself. It’s unusual then for a font to leave them completely stumped, but that’s where [Marcin Wichary] found himself. He noticed a font which many of you will also have seen, on typewriter and older terminal keys. It has a few unusual features that run contrary to normal font design such as slightly odd-shaped letters and a constant width line, and once he started looking, it appeared everywhere. Finding its origin led back well over a century, and led him to places as diverse as New York street furniture and NASA elevators.

The font in question is called Gorton, and it came from the Gorton Machine Co, a Wisconsin manufacturer. It’s a font designed for a mechanical router, which is why it appears on so much custom signage and utilitarian components such as keyboard keys. Surprisingly its history leads back into the 19th century, predating many of the much more well-know sans serif fonts. So keep an eye out for it on your retro tech, and you’ll find that you’ve seen a lot more of it than you ever knew. If you are a fellow font-head, you might also know the Hershey Font, and we just ran a piece on the magnetic check fonts last week.

Thanks [Martina] for the tip!

Hackaday Podcast Episode 308: The Worst 1 Ever, Google’s Find My Opened, And SAR On A Drone

February 14, 2025 by 6 Comments

It’s Valentine’s Day today, and what better way to capture your beloved’s heart than by settling down together and listening to the Hackaday Podcast! Elliot Williams is joined by Jenny List for this week’s roundup of what’s cool in the world of hardware. We start by reminding listeners that Hackaday Europe is but a month away, and that a weekend immersed in both hardware hacking and the unique culture offered by the city of Berlin can be yours.

The stand-out hack of the week is introduced by Elliot, Henrik Forstén’s synthetic aperture radar system mounted on a cheap quadcopter, pushing the limits of construction, design, and computation to create landscape imagery of astounding detail. Most of us will never create our own SAR system, but we can all learn a lot about this field from his work. Meanwhile Jenny brings us Sylvain Munaut’s software defined radio made using different projects that are part of Tiny Tapeout ASICs. The SDR isn’t the best one ever, but for us it represents a major milestone in which Tiny Tapeout makes the jump from proof of concept to component. We look forward to more of this at more reasonable prices in the future. Beyond that we looked at the porting of Google Find My to the ESP32, how to repair broken zippers, and tuning in to ultrasonic sounds. Have fun listening, and come back next week for episode 309! Continue reading “Hackaday Podcast Episode 308: The Worst 1 Ever, Google’s Find My Opened, And SAR On A Drone” →

A 3D Printed Camera You Can Now Download, Shutter And All

February 13, 2025 by 16 Comments

A couple of years ago we were excited to read news of an entirely 3D printed camera, right down to the shutter. We wrote it up back then but sadly the required STL files were not yet available. Now after time away with his family, its creator [Mark Hiltz] is back. The medium-format Pioneer Camera can now be downloaded for printing in its entirety under a Creative Commons licence.

Looking at the design, it appears to be a relatively straightforward build. The shutter is extremely simple, as far as we can see, relying on magnets to ensure that the open part of its rotation is at an unstable repulsing point between stable magnetic poles. The images aren’t perfect because he’s using a very simple lens, but this is part of the charm of a camera like this one. We hope that people will take it and produce refinements to the design making for a cheap and good entry to medium format photography.

While you’re printing your own Pioneer, take a look at our original coverage.

Push Your Toy Train No More, With This Locomotive!

February 11, 2025 by 8 Comments

One of the most popular evergreen toys is also one of the simplest, wooden track with push-along trains. We all know the brand name, and savvy parents know to pick up the much cheaper knock-off because the kid won’t know the difference. But a really cool kid shouldn’t have to push their train around by hand, and thus [Lauri] has given the wooden track a real, powered, locomotive.

In the 3D printed chassis goes a small geared motor driving one axle, with an ESP32 and a motor driver taking care of the smarts. Power comes from an 18650 cell, which almost looks like the right scale for a fake steam boiler. The surprise with this train comes in the front axle, this machine has steering. We’re curious, because isn’t the whole point of a train that the track directs it where it needs to go? Or perhaps a little help is required in the absence of a child’s guidance when it comes to points. Either way, with remote control we guess there would be few kids who wouldn’t want one. We certainly do.

A Tiny Computer With A 3D Printed QWERTY Keyboard

February 11, 2025 by 10 Comments

The ESP32 family are the microcontrollers which just keep on giving, as new versions keep them up-to-date and plenty of hackers come up with new things for them. A popular device is a general purpose computer with a QWERTY keypad, and the latest of many we’ve seen comes from [StabbyJack]. It’s a credit card sized machine whose special trick is that its keyboard is integrated in the 3D printing of its case. We’ve seen rubber membranes and push in keys, but this one has flexible print-in-place keys that line up on the switches on its PCB.

It’s not complete yet but the hardware appears to be pretty much there, and aside from that keyboard it has an ESP32-S3 and a 1.9″ SPI LCD. When finished it aims for an ambitious specification, with thermal camera and time-of-flight range finder hardware, along with an OS and software to suit. We like it a lot, though we suspect it might be a little small for our fingers.

If you like this project you may appreciate another similar one, and perhaps your version will need an OS.