Hackaday Links: April 29, 2012

More old computers on FPGAs!

[Andy] loves his Memotech MTX computer. It’s an oldie with a Z80 running at 4MHz; the perfect target for an FPGA port. The ReMemotech has everything the old one has – cassette interface and all – and can run up to six times faster than the original.

Also found in 10-forward

If you’re going to build a jukebox, why not go all out? Here’s a touch screen jukeboxwith an LCARS skin. Yep, the same interface found on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

New desktop wallpaper for you

[McMonster] found a great pair of blog posts (1, 2) showing what ancient ICs look like without their casing. Since these were CERDIP packages (two ceramic plates glued together) they were exceptionally easy to take apart leaving the entire chip intact. Pages are in Polish, but there’s a Google Translate button on the sidebar

Cheap and easy Arduino wi-fi

Quick quiz: what’s the easiest way to get data onto an Arduino wirelessly? XBees? GSM modules? Nope, just get a wireless router and an Ethernet shield. The Ethernet module only cost [Doss] $20, and we’re sure Hackaday readers have a spare wireless router around somewhere.

Chiptunes! Chiptunes I say!

[mdmoose29] has been working on making a custom SNES cartridge for a dubstep artist (tell us more, [moose]…). In his search for programming tools, he found theSNES Game Maker. We tried it out for a bit and it’s still a very unrefined beta. Still, making SNES programming easier is awesome.

You people are awesome. Here’s six things for a links post.

[Valentin] made a night vision monocular from an old VHS camcorder, a small spy camera, and a handful of infrared LEDs. Here’s a video of [Valentin]‘s build in action.

RFID jukebox for the kids

[Dominik] built a fun musical toy for his daughter [Anna]. It’s a jukebox that lets her play her favorite tunes using RFID tags to select between them.

The project is simple, yet robust. The enclosure is a wooden craft box that you can pick up for a couple of bucks. Inside there’s an Arduino with a Wave Shield which handles the audio playback. An RFID reader takes input from the set of card-tags he procured. An internal Lithium battery powers the device, with a USB port for charging.

Sure, those guts have some cost involved in them. But there’s no LCD which can be broken, and we thing the boards will hold up well to abuse if mounted correctly. Plus there’s a lot of future potential here. When we saw the cards we thought of those toys which make the animal sounds (“what does the cow say… mooo”). This could be used for that with really young children. Then repurposed into this jukebox as they get a bit older. If you put the guts in a new enclosure it will appear to be a brand-new toy, right?

See a demo of the project in the clip after the break.

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