Join Hackaday Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Staff Writer Dan Maloney as they review the top hacks for the week. It was a real retro-fest this time, with a C64 built from (mostly) new parts, an Altoids Altair, and learning FPGAs via classic video games. We also looked at LCD sniffing to capture data from old devices, reimagined the resistor color code, revisited the magic of Polaroid instant cameras, and took a trip down television’s memory lane. But it wasn’t all old stuff — there’s flat-packing a sphere with math, spraying a fine finish on 3D printed parts, a DRM-free label printer, and a look at what’s inside that smartphone in your pocket — including some really weird optics.

Check out the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments below!

That Polaroid article is from 2010 ? Or do you have a visual transcript of something new in the current podcast, for the hearing impaired?

The 2010 article is just further reference for last weeks article right above it.

Dan Maloney’s allergy to FPGAs on the C64 was interesting. I understand where he’s coming from. Because you cannot see the physical logical connectivity whereas old design syou can easily relate this to a schematic he feels more comfortable. For me coming from the PCB design land for real world items where i laid out large logic TTL and CMOS designs (late 1980s’) this was becoming more and more painful. When we came to re-spin or revise for new products and add features or fix things a new PCB layout was required, tested and verified. We also had all of the associated signal integrity problems large logic interconnects (Ground bounce, overshoot, undershoot, terminations) all requiring ever more work. The PCB was also larger than we would like as products were trying to get smaller and old TTL and CMOS is just plain power hungry!

When i moved to designing Network cards (1990’s) from standard logic all of the logic IC’s got mopped up into multiple FPGA devices and eventually one single FPGA. That was the real beauty of FPGAs. Mop up all the logic you can at the time and leave the physical analog interface. Now even some the analog interfaces can be mopped up. Any consequential revisions or fixes were mostly on the FPGA as long as we got the surrounding analog support part correct. Yes there are still signal interconnect problems but they are better understood. The PCB’s then got ever smaller area and less power hungry.

I think you will find all retro devices in the future will have to be in some FPGA or be emulated in Microprocessor just from lack of old silicon and general production economics.

Maybe one day we will see someone say i have emulated my android phone on the latest ARM/Intel silicon chip and inside that i am playing space invaders on a C64 emulator. I will be allergic then…

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