Vintage computers and games, and the people preserving and reviving them.
A new Korean competition requires developers to build a complete game that fits on a 1.44MB floppy disk, reviving classic code golf constraints with a modern prize pool and a hard October 2026 deadline.
Jonas Eschenburg engineers a codebook-based FMV codec enabling the vintage Atari ST to decompress and play Command & Conquer cutscenes in real-time by splitting frames into addressable blocks, leveraging an 8MHz Motorola 68000 without exceeding 16-colour planar graphics limits.
Preserving 1980s-era hardware demands component-level restorations where custom silicon deficits and degraded components force builders to bypass failed pathways entirely through modern FPGA emulation and forensic electronics analysis.
Ken Shirriff reverse-engineered the TR-3 trigger module from the 1948 IBM 604 Electronic Calculator and successfully demonstrated the flip-flop circuit toggling between states with glowing neon indicators.
A modern language model successfully runs text generation on 1970s hardware by using ternary quantization and Mamba architecture to bypass memory constraints.
The ModRetro M64 FPGA console launches July 28, 2026, at $229 with 4K output and a MiSTer-derived core, aiming to play original Nintendo 64 cartridges without emulation compromises.
A Wisconsin retro store discovery uncovered 97 genuine, previously undocumented NES Super Mario Bros. / Duck Hunt cartridges, including five that received PSA 10 grades.
Commodore is using the first anniversary of its reboot to launch Made For U(ltimate), an initiative to fund and label new games built specifically for the FPGA-based C64 Ultimate's modern capabilities.
A new C64C hardware run is officially entering production using originally recovered 1986 injection molds, bringing decades-old manufacturing tolerances back to a modern factory floor.
The annual Archive of Retro Computing exhibition opens in August 2026 with more than 40 years of hardware history on display, from the Fairchild Channel F to the PlayStation and Xbox, ahead of a planned permanent launch.
Hands-on demos of an Apple I, Atari systems, and Commodore 64s are coming to the Computer History Museum for the 2026 edition of the Vintage Computer Festival West.
A two-day event at the Computer History Museum merges hands-on hardware demonstrations with seminars and historical programming, treating preserved machines as active workstations rather than static artifacts.
The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Retrolab, one of only four retro computer labs in the US and the only one in a history department, may not survive its founder's retirement.
A maker responds to the DRAM price surge by building a functional USB drive from Soviet-era salvage, wiring 64 bits of hand-threaded magnetic core memory into an acrylic enclosure with an ESP32 interface and silicone oil immersion.
A $14.2 million donation from Mad Scientists Anonymous will fund renovation of a computer graphics gallery within the Revolution exhibit and open John W. Walker's archival papers via the OpenCHM portal.
Kingston University is opening a free 'Archive of Retro Computing' exhibition running August 5–11 with more than 60 machine from the 1970s onward, and immediately following it will open a permanent retro computing showcase in room SB3033 of the Sopwith Building on its Penrhyn Road campus.
After more than two decades of patent encumbrance, the final MPEG-4 Part 2 patent — held by Siemens AG in Brazil — expired on July 19, 2026, making the codec that powered DivX and Xvid free to use anywhere in the world.
Emulators like Charon-PDP now let enterprises run RSX-11, RSTS, and RT-11 workloads from decommissioned PDP-11 hardware on modern cloud infrastructure.
Volunteers at the Rhode Island Computer Museum are restoring a PDP-11/40, coaxing decades-old software back to life one boot medium at a time.