Retro

Emulation and virtualization on iPad in 2025

On a personal level, the last 12 months have been a lot. I stopped posting weekly updates back in June 2024 and I’ve been posting on an ad hoc basis since then. This probably explains why I missed the news that in April 2024 Apple approved retro console emulators in the App store; a decision that it subsequently updated to include retro computer emulators. I also missed that in the same month AlStore PAL, an alternative app store, launched in the EU; and while there was initially a small annual fee, a grant from Epic Games means that it’s now free. This is game-changing for emulation and virtualization on iPads (and to a lesser extent on iPhones too).

The forgotten American 8-bit computer

Some time around 2010, my friend Bruno Florindo made contact with former Timex Computer boss Lout Galie. I provided the questions, Bruno conducted the interview and I wrote up the response for the original incarnation of Byte High, No Limit. Here is the unedited article:

Building a replica Hendrix guitar

If you work in IT, it can’t have escaped your notice that there are a lot of musicians around, including enough guitarists to fill a stairway. Indeed, one of my former managers was the bass player in a band that had a UK top ten hit and appeared on “Top of the Pops”. The nearest I got to that was having a hastily written 8-bit computer game included on a vinyl EP released by Plastic Raygun (although I’m told it was used for scratching in live sets by the likes of Fat Boy Slim). I mention this to tenuously tie in this week’s article into the general tech theme of the blog. But the truth is that after 116 weeks of putting out a blog every week, I need a break. But they say a change is as good as a rest, so expect more left-field content until I’m fully recharged.

Running Xilinx ISE on an M1 Mac

Back in March 2022, I did a write-up of how to run Xilinx Vivado on an M1 Mac to generate cores for the Artix-7 series of FPGAs (as used on the Mega 65). The easiest solution is to run the Intel binaries on ARM Windows under Parallels Desktop. But it’s also possible to use the Linux binaries with UTM.

Updating a 40-year-old computer design

In my last article, I wrote a lot about the development of the firmware for my hobbyist microcomputer project that became the Chloe 280SE. In this companion article, I’ll cover the hardware. I’m not sure how relevant any of this is going to be to modern development, but I think it’s worth telling the other half of the story. But to tell that story, first I need to tell the story of the time when Timex made computers.

Charting the evolution of the console and personal computer

The history of the evolution of consoles and computers is a tangled web. I’ve tried to untangle it a bit. This is a revision of an article I originally wrote for an older version of my website. The original had a cutoff of 2010. This version goes to January 2022.

Playing the greatest 4X game of all time on modern hardware

Having spent my free time over the past couple of weeks binge-watching all 12 seasons of Tony Bourdain’s award-winning CNN series Parts Unknown (because it’s leaving Netflix in June), I haven’t been doing much extracurricular development. I’m also sleep-deprived. So when I was looking through the article ideas list, I went for the lowest hanging fruit. This will be a more rambling article than usual, but it may accidentally include some information that’s of use to developers.

Creating API docs for assembly language projects

This week, I’m releasing what I hope will be the penultimate beta of SE Basic IV (an open source classic BASIC interpreter). The last beta should contain the missing sound and graphics functionality, and then it should go to a release candidate.

Choosing a mechanical keyboard switch

One of the things I do is design keyboard layouts and legend designs. My most popular design to date is the Commander X16 professional keyboard. I’ve also created a number of one-off designs for myself and friends. I get them made by WASDkeyboards.com. If you’re going for a one-off keyboard, it’s probably going to be mechanical, and that means expensive. So I often get asked for recommendations on which switch to order when purchasing a keyboard. As ever more options become available, it can seem even harder to choose. However, it’s really quite easy to work out which is the right switch for you.

Running Xilinx Vivado on an M1 Mac

I’ve written before about running non-Apple Intel binaries on an M1 Mac. The solutions I discussed work for most general purpose apps, but there was one app in particular that I’d previously been running on Windows 10, that I really wanted to get working on an M1 Mac: Xilinx Vivado.