Retrogaming and retrocomputing resources

Because doing things like in the old days, or at least learning how it used to be, is good for the soul. Places to find like-minded people:

Hardware

Like any enthusiast, I accumulated a bunch of old computers over time, most of them hand-me-downs. A Spectrum clone, buried at the bottom of a wardrobe; an 8086 in a dark corner; a 486, perched behind some boxes. All useless now even if I could set them up anywhere. Cool, in a living-museum sort of way. Kept them for the longest time hoping they could be brought back to life one day, only to be forced to throw them all out in the autumn of 2021. That hurt.

As of 2019, the most retro machine I've been able to revive and make usable is an Asus Eee PC 701, which is happily running Haiku. But hey, it's something!

I also own a couple of vintage devices:

Both are confirmed to work fine as of 15 November 2021.

But to me it all started with a...

ZX Spectrum

Four vertical stripes of color slanted left, in shades of red / yellow / green / blue.

Looking back, I only had a Spectrum clone for a few short years, but it felt like an entire childhood. Of course the hardware is long gone, so something else has to take its place.

(I did make a few games for the machine; two of them were even published on tape by Bumfun Gaming. But those were cross-compiled and tested in emulators.)

Emulators for less common platforms

There is no shortage of emulators for those using Windows or Android. But what about the rest of us?

Development tools

Yes, people still make games and stuff for the good old Speccy. There’s a variety of options for that, both on-board and for cross-development. I've used a couple myself:

As of March 2022, I haven't fired up either in years, which is too bad.

Spectrum links

DOS

I acquired a hand-me-down PC running DOS in 1996. Learned a surprising amount of stuff, too, not least how to use Turbo Pascal. Didn't have much luck returning to good old DOS since, but it's still on my mind.

Developing on DOS isn't much harder:

Prominent developers:

See also DOS haven: 21st century DOS games (and other resources).

Other retrocomputing

A couple of pages I made a while ago with the intention to keep updating:

Screenshot of a web-based IDE with three panes, showing a tall column of colorized source code next to an output window and a console, all with few buttons.
QBJS
Screenshot of a black&white app window with chunky retro fonts, showing a dithered art piece with two buttons and a link in the description.
Decker

That didn't work out, but they're still current enough.

In the news

The Forgotten Ritual of Editing DOS Files Just to Play a Game (29 July 2026) I don't miss those days, but it did teach me things.

808 lines of BBC BASIC and a dream: Arm architecture turns 40 (29 April 2025) We thought it was a really obvious way to build a processor and everybody would be doing it

Dragon’s Lair’s "Impossible" Game Boy Color Port (17 December 2024) "We were really proud of how much we pushed the hardware, but it really didn't sell that well"

Firaxis preserves the 33-year-old, $10,000 386 PC Sid Meier used to develop Civilization – and it still works (21 August 2024) Complete with 16MB of memory

50 years ago, CP/M started the microcomputer revolution (2 August 2024) In 1974, Gary Kildall got the first version working and changed the world of operating systems

ZX Spectrum at 40: a look back (18 February 2022) How the Sinclair computer became such a pivotal part of the UK games industry

The Jupiter Ace: 40 years on (21 September 2012) Two Spectrum stars go Forth

Retro-futuristic computing

I sometimes have fun imagining hardware, software and file formats that never were, but could have been.

This is more than an idle exercise. The Apollo Guidance Computer had a 16-bit CPU running at 2MHz, with 4K of RAM and 72K of ROM. Nowadays many of us carry millions of times more computing power literally in our back pockets, yet we seem hard-pressed to find worthy uses for it. We could do so much more with so much less, if only we'd care about what we do with computers, instead of treating them like toys to be fooled around with then thrown away. We'd be helping save the planet, too, by cutting down on the waste.

So here it goes. Allow yourself to dream.

ZX Nevermore

The perfect machine for your retro-futuristic computing needs. A computer that never was, but could have been.

C16M

The main competitor to the ZX Nevermore.