2020/04-05 Results!

First, I would like to appologize to everyone for taking so long to write up these results.  The world is in such a crazy state right now, I am have able to barely keep up with the things I need to do.  I hope you all understand, and I wish you all good health.

I encourage everyone to keep working on their projects when they have the time.  And, feel free to re-enter an existing project for a future retrochallenge... as long as there is new progress to be made.

Thanks everyone!  Stay safe.

Best Hardware

Just4Fun : https://hackaday.io/project/170924 : V20-MBC a computer that supports 8080 and 8088 code.  Very interesting and challenging project, with good documentation.  It looks like anyone can just download the files and build their own!


Best Software

Paul Robson : https://projecteris.blogspot.com/:  Homebrew microcomputer named Eris with graphics and a few games.  I'm putting this is the software category, because the computer existed prior to the retrochallenge... This retrochallenge was about programming it for graphics and games.


Weirdest

Decle : https://rotldrc.blogspot.com/ : Accessing the hidden debugger baked into a videogame cartridge.


Honorable mentions:

Matteo Trevisan : https://www.facebook.com/groups/219393786064645 : TINA chatbot. When I started this retrochallenge 'unofficially,' I put a theme up of time travel.  Matteo delivered on this, and created an Eliza-themed chatbot, with some custom hardware.  The chatbot is also emulatable in a web browser, and is embedded on archive.org.  https://archive.org/details/tina_20200531


Raphael Assenat : https://www.raphnet.net/divers/retro_challenge_2020_04/index_en.php : first time MSX user.  He does a good overview of the MSX computer, how to set it up, hardware pics.  Anyone who is considering getting into MSX, might want to read this page to familiarize themselves with the system.

Jim Gerrie : https://jimgerrie.blogspot.com/ : He is a very prolific author of MC-10 software, and delivers good documentation.


Biggest Tease:

Eric Smith (COSMAC ELF)
This project looked very promising, and had a good photo gallery, but despite a few emails by me, his website is not up and running.  I'm also interested in COSMAC computers myself, and one of my previous entries to the retrochallenge was the 'COSMAC ORC.'  I really wanted to see what was going on here.  I guess, with the photos, I did get to see what was going on, but I really wanted to read the details.  And that's why this project was a big tease.