THEA1200 receives official Amiga branding ahead of December release

Official licensing brings Retro Games' THEA1200 into the sanctioned Amiga ecosystem ahead of its December launch.

Hackaday Opens 2026 Retrocomputing Challenge with Deliberately Open Rules

A two-month-long contest from Hackaday and DigiKey divides retro hardware and software projects into four distinct tracks, using deliberately loose rules to spark community debate about what actually qualifies as vintage.

The 1-Bit CPU That Ran Factories

A look at the Motorola MC14500B, a 1-bit CPU highlighted at Hackaday Europe 2026, which found its niche replacing costly relay racks in early industrial automation.

Record crowds fill Vintage Computer Festival as retro collecting grows in AI era

More than 3,500 people attended the 2026 Vintage Computer Festival, a record turnout that featured a panel with Apple's original co-founders amid a broader resurgence of interest in hands-on, tangible computing history.

Vintage Computer Festival West 2026 drew thousands to Mountain View for retro computing celebration

The 2026 Vintage Computer Festival West drew thousands of enthusiasts to the Computer History Museum for a weekend of hands-on retro computing, featuring 73 exhibits and confirmed as 'a great success' by organizers.

The EverDrive-64 Pro Brings a Cyclone 10 Chip and Native 64DD Support to Retro N64 Flash Carts

A new $169 flash cartridge upgrades the 64's processing foundation and adds native 64DD support with in-game disk swapping.

Vintage computer collecting surges as enthusiasts push back against AI-era technology

A growing community of collectors is restoring classic machines from the 1970s-1990s as a deliberate counter-response to modern computing's locked-down, AI-driven direction.

The Quiet Collapse Of The Debt-Collection Economy: How Fintech Bad Debt Moves Through The Secondary Market (And Why It Matters For Borrowers)

Debt collection agencies have lost billions because they cannot easily buy or sell debt. The recent sale of Fintech loans has exposed how this market works, where 60% of a $14,000 medical loan sells for less than $4,000 when it reaches the secondary market. That steep discount is what gives lenders an incentive to write off bad debt quickly.

The 1.44MB Game Development Contest Is Forcing Creators Back To Floppy Disk Constraints

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.

A codebook-based FMV decoder brings Command & Conquer cutscenes to the Atari ST

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.

The forensic electronics work required to keep 1980s computers operational

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-engineers and powers up a 1948 IBM 604 vacuum tube flip-flop module

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.

Compressing a Modern Language Model Into 1970s Silicon

A modern language model successfully runs text generation on 1970s hardware by using ternary quantization and Mamba architecture to bypass memory constraints.

ModRetro M64 Brings an FPGA-Based Nintendo 64 to Market on July 28

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 Uncovered 97 Unknown NES Mario Cartridges

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 Spends Its First Birthday Back on New Games for the C64 Ultimate

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.

Commodore C64C Ultimate Enters Production Using Rediscovered 1986 Injection Molds

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.

Kingston University's Retro Computing Exhibition Returns with Expanded Collection and Permanent Showcase Plans

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.

Vintage Computer Festival West 2026 Opens at the Computer History Museum This Weekend

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.

Vintage Computer Festival West Brings 1960s-1990s Hardware to Mountain View

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.

UWM's One-of-a-Kind Retro Computer Lab Faces an Uncertain Future

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.

Maker Revives Apollo-Era Magnetic Core Memory for USB Drive Amid DRAM Price Surge

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.

The Computer History Museum Gets $14.2 Million to Document the Rise of Digital Graphics

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 Launches Retro Computing Archive and Permanent Showcase

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.

The Last MPEG-4 Video Patent Expires, Freeing DivX and Xvid Worldwide

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.

PDP-11 as a Service: Legacy Minicomputers Move to the Cloud

Emulators like Charon-PDP now let enterprises run RSX-11, RSTS, and RT-11 workloads from decommissioned PDP-11 hardware on modern cloud infrastructure.

Inside a Museum's Effort to Boot a PDP-11/40 Back to Life

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.