Sprites mods - VapourDeck - Intro
SpritesMods.comVapourDeck - Intro
Welcome<br>Hardware stuffCP/M on an AVR<br>Connecting an LCD to a non-video-capable Linux device<br>AVR-based FM-transmitter<br>En Garde, a classifying capacitive touch sensor<br>GameBoy Advance as a MIDI synthesizer<br>Quizshow buttons on the cheap<br>Wall-lighting with RGB-leds<br>Extreme Vectrex multicart<br>Dekatron as Internet speed indicator<br>Wav-playing doorbell<br>FT2232H NAND flash reader<br>Using a tiny HC32L110 ARM chip<br>Macintosh SE/arm<br>USB Minecraft portal<br>A tiny Pinball Fantasies table<br>Scanner CCD touchscreen conversion<br>Tiny PDP11<br>Linux-based clock radio<br>Raspberry Pi micro arcade machine<br>VapourDeck<br>Virtual Wii Sensor-bar<br>Black Widow in an FPGA<br>A Christmas tree bauble that plays Doom<br>Wifi E-ink display<br>Miniature Macintosh Plus<br>E-ink digit clock<br>Standalone JTAG programmer<br>A WiFi color Eink picture frame<br>WS2812 LEDs controlled by an iMX233<br>Duplicating the SRI magnet micro-robots<br>Adding SATA and PCIE to a HP T5325 thin client<br>Thermochromic paint clock<br>3d Jello printer<br>Solari ledboard controller<br>Restoring a VFD<br>Real HID for Xbox-controller<br>Electronic Stamp<br>Stealth DDR-mat<br>Mechanical webpage hitcounter<br>Run an uC from an AA-battery<br>Temperature led for Weller WTCPs<br>Automatic baudrate converter<br>NoveMini<br>Toilet terror alert<br>96x48 LED-board<br>Controllable bristlebot<br>Knock to open<br>Electronic minimalism<br>RGB ledlamp<br>Online whiteboard<br>Clock using a fan and a LED<br>Electronic beer tallier<br>Rocket acceleration logger<br>Simple VFD-controller<br>CM: Yamaha Renewed
Hacks<br>Console hacking<br>Security<br>Software<br>About Spritesmods
Page 1<br>IntroPage 2<br>DesignPage 3<br>HardwarePage 4<br>Firmware and gatewarePage 5<br>VapourDeck (+ discussion / remarks)
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Intro
I've always been interested in computers. My first PC, bought as a kid from money saved<br>from a part-time job was a second-hand PC-XT clone with a nice green monitor, and I<br>had loads of fun messing with that. Later, one of my uncles found out about my interests,<br>and whenever he came over, he would bring some hardware that he didn't have a need<br>for anymore: hard disks, main boards, processors. The stuff he brought over was mostly<br>486-based and I have fond memories of me messing around with those chips and boards:<br>overclocking the CPU using a crystal transplant, exchanging memory and ISA cards<br>and tweaking BIOS variables. I stayed on the 486 platform for a fairly long time,<br>only moving on when I got a part-time job building computers and could afford the<br>components for a brand-new Pentium 2 machine.
When I owned that 486 machine, I didn't really<br>have much technical knowledge about the exact hardware. At some point I did figure out<br>how the ISA bus worked, because I remember hacking together a flash programmer from<br>an old ISA riser card, some address decoding chips and a socket for an AM29F512. However, I<br>always viewed the mainboards that I had in my hands as Deeper Magic: So many traces!<br>Such large ICs! So many obscure components!
It's 30 years later now. I still have fond memories of those times, and I play the games<br>in DOSBox every now and then. However, I could also play them on actual hardware. Maybe<br>it's time for me to try and build my own PC again. In order to do that, I made the<br>VapourDeck, which is a retro Steam Deck type handheld which can play all your old<br>DOS games. And there's no emulation, there's actually a custom 486-powered system<br>in this thing:
Read on if you want to know how I made this.
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