I was hoping to demonstrate this last weekend at RetroFest 2026. A true 8-bit Pocket Computer running CP/M on an 8Mhz Z80. On board storage, USB-C or battery powered, internal module bay and full RC2014 expansion bus. It runs Microsoft BASIC and Zork. So it's called the Zorkulator. Please share.

Plenty of soon-to-be-lost personal histories of early computing in the "retro" scene. @retrobytes.bsky.social covers many interesting stories of how we got from a race to sell calculators to a computer in our pocket.

This Boing Boing article is annoying for this one quote Jesionkiewicz evaluates three things here that were genuinely "out of reach for an individual engineer at any reasonable cost:" This is just nonsense. boingboing.net/2026/05/28/z...

This is an important lesson - the economics of being a search engine make the original content a "cost" to be reduced. The same applies to the big AI companies - ultimately the pressure is to eat their users rather than hand over valuable work for them to benefit from.

First open water swim - only 800 meters, but that's enough. Felt like I was cheating a bit though. The water was 21 degrees. Easy. Very impressed with NOWCA who organise these things and keep us safe.

Delivery time for the hardware I want to show at RetroFest 2026 in Swindon... 2-4 days. Number of days until RetroFest in Swindon 2026... 3 days This post may - or may not - be sponsored by DHL, depending on the outcome.

I thought I'd let AI have a go at Z80. The result - horribly inefficient code, unnecessary resource usage, and it then lies about the performance (cycles). ..and this is for a small, very regularly reproduced code snippet.

Oh, BTW - it shouldn't come as a surprise that AI tends to be sycophantic. It's trained on the entire internet, which is dominated by people justifying the thing that they just did. This is normal human behaviour. That's why this line worked in the movie:

Right: Screens as learning tools are probably questionable as they encourage skim reading and not learning. Screens as social tools provide our kids with instant access to a permanent social circle which *on the whole* means support, play and friendship is more available than ever.

When you're £12 away from £16 worth of free shipping.. Anyone want anything from Digikey?

TLDR; Ad-tech scams everybody. The 'audience' *and* the people who pour billions into invading our daily existence with their advertising.

OK, I understand that the constraints solver in FreeCad is quadratic - doing exponentially more calculations with each additional constraint. Performance sucks. But... surely there's a way to partition constraints so that solving scales more linearly?

This is the sort of nonsense you get from a government that has lost any sense of direction, and is desperate to appease people who would never vote for them anyway.

Hmmm.. King Kurt They Might Be Giants B52s Kaiser Chiefs Pink Garbage Noah Kahan Depeche Mode Madness Blur (with Phil Daniels) Bonus Ten: R.E.M Bare Naked Ladies Badly Drawn Boy Eurythmics The Pursuit of Happiness Kylie Siouxsie and the Banshees Frank Turner The Sundays Paul Simon

1. SpaceX's accounts are as bad as you imagined 2. Their IPO is so over valued that index funds would be forced to invest (financial market shenanigans) 3. This would be big enough to screw up some big pension funds 4. This might be a reason to get your stocks (and pension) out of any NASDAQ-100 etc

Insert joke about vibe coding. Yes, we do have a VI editor for MicroBeast.

Short of actually holding up a sign saying "I do crimes", what does he have to do to get arrested?

Happy Wednesday. www.youtube.com/shorts/fUy6E...

So with a little bit of luck (and some bodge wires) it looks like I'll have a couple of VideoBeast dev boards available for the end of the month. MicroBeast or Spectrum compatible. The question is, who would be able to make the most use of one? Ideas? Suggestions? feersumbeasts.com/videobeast/d...

Just as a reminder, any time commentators and politicians steer the conversation towards "Big Issues" in the UK, they're actively trying to stop you thinking about smaller issues like... I don't know... whether their preferred candidate or party is competent or capable of independent thought.

I really need to update the Feersum Beasts website - not least to deprecate the default, non optional dark mode. There's a lot going on in the world of Beasts, from browser based terminals and Forth implementations, to emulators, new plug and go hardware, an evolving BIOS and... sshh.. secrets!

Successful weekend moving things on. VideoBeast features a full SPI interface under control of the host CPU, with DMA allowing up to 3Mb/s to video RAM. Essentially, you could just stream Bad Apple straight off the SD Card.

About 60% of VideoBeast development at the moment is making sure the MicroBeast BIOS doesn't screw over user apps. It's hard to debug features when your test programs get attacked by the operating system. 😂😂 #whowrotethis #itwasme

OK, enough of this existential nonsense. Let's Get Smart. www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVyJ...

"What's wrong with the UK media?" (No. #753) Note the passive voice here... The Guardian not even willing to say out loud that homophobia cannot be tolerated. Instead, apparently he has been "criticised". Tsk. What a lad eh?

"What's wrong with the UK media?" (No. #324) "They think that Streeting is a logical next choice." "Holy cow..."

Support your local indie..

"And this means you, Jeff"

China could do the funniest thing right now...

The people who (wrongly) pushed Starmer as PM are now pushing Streeting. I'm beginning to suspect they don't have our best interests at heart. #politics

A lot of smoke and mirrors here, but... yeah. www.youtube.com/watch?v=956F...

I really like Lotus cars - they appeal to the engineer in me - but it's notable that every single one of their big launches has been synchronised with a global financial crisis. I'm not saying stock up on tinned foods, but...

Hmmm... someone's used AI to write a CP/M full screen hex editor.. OK. But.. it's 18Kb. On systems that might have barely 20Kb, that's rather big. And I'm fairly sure (not certain without writing one myself) it's probably three times the size it needs to be.

They Really Could Be Giants

Anyone suggesting these are the "adults in the room" needs to take a good look at themselves - and God forbid we end up with Streeting as a "it's not Starmer really" replacement. The quality of UK politicians is in the toilet.

The MicroBeast kit is still going strong, with BIOS updates, a new Forth and improved BASIC, a great emulator and lots of work going on in the background on the video upgrade, VideoBeast. You can order one from my website, and join the 8-bit fun : feersumbeasts.com

If Sir David Attenborough teaches us one thing, it's that as you get older, you should get off the ****ing internet and get out into the real world. It makes you a better human being. The ones arguing endlessly on social media and falling in love with AI should take note.

The feedback effect of Index Funds on the stock market sucks money out of the economy and into a handful of dominant tech stocks. Over the last decade, about a third of our 'growth' has been transferred into stocks and away from investment in wider business and research - trillions of dollars.

#politics It will be studiously ignored that the majority of the gains in this election are from the two main parties shedding support. Like the Labour GE 'win', this is less about what people are voting for, and more about abandoning parties that have lost their identity and principles.

Hot take: yet another variation on the "We can emulate a Spectrum with a bunch of the same built-in games" doesn't really bring much new to the table, but will sell to people who don't really know what to buy their old Dad for Christmas.

Oh look, a post about AI gets no fewer than five responses from what looks to be an AI bot. Guys, you're not making yourselves look good. Or clever.

Avoiding direct encouragement to go vote today in the UK, here's a useful site to see what your local council is likely to look like should you want to in any way partake in democracy. www.pollcheck.co.uk/locals-2026

It's a Beast in a Box... you don't have to keep your Beast in the box it comes in if you don't want to. And look at that lovely display!

We get proof, regular as clockwork, that Andreessen is a moron - yet still he exists.

Today's win: One universal binary LED display, VideoBeast display, LCD display or headless. MicroBeast or NanoBeast. Keyboard or terminal. USB powered, barrel jack or battery. I don't know why Microsoft make it all look so difficult...

Got to get the joke in... May the Forth be with you.

Ohhh... @samcoupe.com has put together a handy backplane for the MicroBeast! Isn't that cool?!

My enthusiasm for "retro" systems, and the reason I make kits is to have those opportunities for "Mel moments" where you make something work by *completely* understanding what the machine is doing. There's a joy in finding the way to make each component fit perfectly together.

Industry that is suddenly commanding trillion dollar investments overhypes the effectiveness of it's tools... We live in dangerous times.

I shouldn't watch 3D printer & laser cutter review videos. I spend half the video thinking "I want one of them" and the other half of the video thinking, "there's a neat trick they could do to make it work better... I wonder if I could make one?"