Happy 35th #Lemmings anniversary! Who'd have thought, 35 years later we'd still be talking about these little guys. #Amiga #MSDOS #AtariST #Commodore #Atari #DMADesign #Psygnosis #RETROGAMING #Lemmings35th Read about it's making here lemmings.info/lemmings-gam...

Okay, really impressed with NetBSD on here. The nouveau problem I had with the GeForce 3 actually doesn't happen on the FX5200 Ultra! This thing is just screaming along. The capture card even works out of the box! Now if only TDE built on NetBSD, I'd be right at home in early 2000s *nix bliss.

Well, this didn't last long. I updated the kernel and now the Nouveau kernel module locks up the whole machine on boot unless I disable modesetting (which of course means no X11). Happens on any kernel from 6.12.68 onwards. Maybe I'll try NetBSD for giggles?

So cool to hear John Chowning just won a Technical Grammy for his invention of FM synthesis in 1967!

The PicoIDE Crowd Supply campaign is now live! Back the project to be among the first to get yours! PicoIDE is an open IDE/ATAPI drive emulator for retro systems. www.crowdsupply.com/polpotronics...

Unnecessary use of military terms in computer hardware in order to attract edgy gamers was already in vogue in 2003.

Guess I haven't posted anything in a while. I'll just say it's because I've been waiting for this to compile. /s Wanted to see how x86 Linux is holding up since almost every distro dropped it. It lives! But there's also a lot that isn't necessarily broken - but also kinda doesn't work.

Looks like Stewart Cheifet (most famously known as the host of Computer Chronicles) passed away on December 28, 2025: obits.goldsteinsfuneral.com/stewart-chei...

Since 2012, Arthur O'Dwyer has had an updating web page called The Search for LONG0751 about a lost version of Adventure that was playable on Compuserve. It has long been one of the top early "missing" games. It is now found and playable: quuxplusone.github.io/blog/2025/12...

Looks like UT2004 is gonna get the OldUnreal treatment - Epic-endorsed community patching and a free installer. The OldUnreal versions of Unreal Gold and UT99 are very good, so this is great news! old.reddit.com/r/unrealtour...

I have a knowledge gap. I have this 168-pin RAM. It's FPM, not SDRAM, so I thought it was 5V RAM for a Power Mac 7500/8500/9500. But the chips (MT 4LC16M4A7) are 3.3V. Tanzania Mac clones/4400s used 168-pin 3.3V but shipped with EDO, not FPM as far as I can tell. What do these go in?

Are you ready for #PicoIDE? It seems to be telling me it's ready. Coming soon: ATAPI optical disc emulation and IDE hard drive emulation. picoide.com

A tease of something amazingly exciting... Mac OS 8 for CHRP PowerPC systems! 😳 I'm working to get this CD archived properly... (along with it's friends) 💿 Super thankful to the amazing people who helped make this happen. ❤️ Learn about CHRP here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_... #CHRP

I finally looked this board over in more detail today. All I had to do was pull the old CMOS battery and it fired up. Lol.

Boy, this "waffles" controversy is sure making me feel insensitive due to my username and website being "Wafflenet" I'm with you, not them.

Went down a weird rabbit hole today. Was drawing out an OPL "family tree" for an expansion to the OPL Archive. Found this whole line of Yamaha "melody ICs" for alarms/clocks/chimes that use 2-op FM. I don't have hard evidence, but they sound like OPL derivatives to me. Neat! youtu.be/JSP0hTl42X0

This is also a fun way to test another cool VCFMW find. A boxed AV Famicom in excellent shape! It's a somewhat late one, too, manufactured in 1998 if I read the date codes correctly. Such a neat little console.

So the Vibra 16S doesn't seem to work at all... switched back to my CQM menace the 16C. It'll be fine, I mostly play later CD audio games with it. But the WinTV is awesome! I would've killed to have this as a kid. Excellent experience. You can even play games - no perceptible input lag to me!

That said, I'm reluctant to give up any cards to add that tuner. So of course I'm gonna pull stunts like pulling the bracket off the SATA card and sandwiching it in the "shared" PCI/ISA slot alongside the Vibra.

Upgrades for my uncomfortably maxed out childhood Gateway G6-450: a TV tuner and replacing the secondary DOS gaming sound card, a Vibra 16C, with the "one good Vibra" the Vibra 16S with real OPL3.

One of my top finds this year - a Power Computing PowerTower Pro 225. I don't like most "G2" Macs but I make an exception for clones cause they're unusual "stealth Macs". This is my first clone that isn't an underwhelming Tanzania based one. I have plenty of upgrades in mind!

Another free pile Pentium 4 board, and a considerably nicer one: a Soyo Dragon 2. theretroweb.com/motherboards... Sadly, it does not POST as-is. It appears to have already been recapped but I noticed at least one cold solder joint. I think it just needs a once-over and it'll work.

From the free pile: ECS P4S5A/DX+. Uh oh... It's actually a PC Chips board! theretroweb.com/motherboards... Among other sins, it has no P4 power connector and a SiS chipset. But it does have AMIBIOS 7, so that's kinda uncommon. Also, I forgot they made Northwood P4s below 2GHz 😂

Finally feeling recovered enough to dig into testing VCFMW finds, so I'll be posting about them. First off, an adapter to use my C64 power supply to power up this cable-less Plus/4 I've had for months. It works! Now just gotta figure out what to do with it.

Another successful #vcfmw for the books. Great finds, great discussions, and lots of learning. But I'm totally beat - time to go into sleep mode...

Last chance to buy my PCjr at #vcfmw! You know you want it!

Ready to go at #vcfmw

This is a super long shot, but does anyone need the remote and receiver for that weird, rare Gateway Destination home theater PC? Cleaning stuff out, and I have no idea where I got this. I want to sell it to someone who needs it. Can bring to #vcfmw

Jumping on the bandwagon: I'll be at #VCFMW on 9/13-9/14. The OPL Archive is back again! -A playlist of great OPL2/OPL3 music! -Live demo of my Mac 68k OPL3 hacking -Free OPL logo stickers! -Random crap for sale! Come out there and make some noise with us! ('til they tell us to turn it down)

Yeah, it's #Sharptember. And the one I have looks as... Sharp... as ever.

Until this week, it's been impossible to play the games of the 1993 Pioneer LaserActive without one of the vanishingly rare, disintegrating consoles. Here's the story of the guy who's been trying to fix that for years -- and all the hardware and software he had to build to make it possible.

Not to sound like a hippie but the vast majority of the decay of the internet comes from monetizing interactions that used to be done purely out of the love of the game.

Finally wrote up a proper article about the Pro Audio Spectrum 16 NuBus, its unused OPL3 chip, and my quest to make use of it. wafflenet.com/pas16nubus.h...

"I asked chatgpt" "I asked grok" well I asked Achenar from the best-selling point&click adventure game Myst and he told me to bring him the blue pages and NOT to touch the red ones

How to know Paprium has been emulated and people can finally play it: The Paprium guide on my site goes from ~230 views a month to 4,303 and counting just for July so far. (Btw, I'm updating bits of it since now I can capture actual screenshots instead of stealing people's analog captures!)

Smile If You Love Lemmings 💜

I recently did some thrifting, which I haven't done in a long time. I was really surprised to find a lot of old shareware CDs - some even still sealed. Even though they're demos, I find them interesting. Some of these aren't on archive.org yet so I will image, scan, and upload them on there soon!

"Lego Island" has a web port now! isle.pizza

PicoGUS CD emulation verdict after testing it: MegaRace works perfectly, so I'm satisfied

#PicoGUS is now an ODE! I've just released firmware v3.0.0, which adds Panasonic CD-ROM drive emulation. Put some ISOs or BIN/CUE files on a USB stick, plug it into your PicoGUS, and you've got a virtual CD-ROM drive that works in DOS and Windows 9x and supports CD audio. github.com/polpo/picogu...

Thanks to a chance encounter on Reddit I was able to pick up this ABSOLUTELY FREAKING MASSIVE case locally! What kind of retro build is worthy of this behemoth?

"NVIDIA Borp"

Cuuuurse you, Chemicon KZGs!

Attention #MARCHintosh shoppers. If you have a Pro Audio Spectrum 16 NuBus, I have put up my "proof of concept" OPL3 VGM player on #GlobalTalk with source code. Wafflenet -> Reiko -> Goodies -> Stuff I Made -> Programs -> LazyVGM It is super scuffed, but it does (mostly) work! (READ THE README!!)

I ripped some code out of VGMSlap and made a quick and dirty VGM player for my continued PAS16 NuBus work. No timer yet, so the speed isn't consistent. Need to learn what the best approach is on classic Mac OS. Gotta say, it's pretty weird hearing chiptunes coming out of a Quadra. #MARCHintosh

I picked up an entire PCjr lot yesterday just because the guy had this unrelated item as part of the bundle. No card in the box unfortunately, but I guarantee it's a lot easier to find a loose card than track down the box, manuals, and disks like this. I feel pretty fortunate to have found it!

The more ways to make music for OPL chips, the better!

Wow! I set up the ImageWriter, go out of town for the weekend, and come back to 17 feet of mail! Thank you to all! (Cat for scale) #MARCHintosh

Now awaiting your love letters. Great job on the LocalTalk card clone, @polpo.org (Wafflenet -> Wafflenet ImageScribbler) #MARCHintosh #GlobalTalk

Ladies and gentlemen... We got 'em. For the first time in over 30 years, the "unused" OPL3 on the Pro Audio Spectrum 16 NuBus has played a note. More useful software to come but I have to learn how to write GUI apps first, so it might be a while :) #MARCHintosh