New Bus. I’ve finally finished adding my new bus interface to my wire-wrap PikaPC prototype. ALTALTIt is … a mess. A made a point to run my wires more direct this time, rather than trying to keep them...

Tools Exist for Good ReasonALTI don’t know why I haven’t tried this before. Wire-wrap socket id tags are a thing that exist. They slip around the pins on the under side of the board and number the...

Farewell ViRGE, We’ll Meet Again Soon ALTALTI’ve removed the ViRGE graphics chip and its video memory from my PikaPC prototype. There’s just a large bare spot on the board left in its place. My new...

PikaPC Phase 2 I’m moving forward into the second phase of my PowerPC homebrew computer project, PikaPC — spinning up PCBs to replace the wire-wrap prototype. I’ve spent the past week dividing up the....

New Bus? I believe I may have run into a hard limit of using wire-wrap construction. After weeks of trying to debug video memory access with the S3 ViRGE, it’s looking like the failures are in the...

On Stubborn Problems I am … stuck. I have been stuck on the same problem for weeks now and I’ve just about run out of ideas. I am stuck like have never been stuck before. I’ve been working on trying.....

DFW Retrocomputing Winter 2026 MeetupALTALTALTALTALTALTALTALTALTALTALTALTALTALTALTALTALTALTALTALTFun old tech on display or for sale at the Winter 2026 Dallas/Fort Worth area Retrocomputing Meeup on.....

techav 2025 Recap: I had quite a year! I worked on some great projects and accomplished far more than I ever could have imagined. Blog Stats• 50 original posts & 6 reblogged posts • 18 photo dump...

Slow GoingI needed to rework my peripheral data bus to be able to steer the most significant 8 bits of the PPC403 data bus to any of the four bytes of the VL Bus to properly read back data registers.....

Just Read the Datasheet It was staring me right in the face. ALTI had run into a roadblock and had no idea where to look next. After sleeping on it, I came back with fresh eyes to look over some logic...

ViRGE TroubleshootingA big fear of mine when making major additions to a project, such as the work I just completed for wiring video to my PikaPC project, is that the additions will break what I’ve...

So Many Tiny Wires ALTI’ve just finished the wiring to add an S3 ViRGE video chip to PikaPC, my PowerPC homebrew computer project. It required hundreds of 30 gauge wires wrapped around hundreds of...

ALTNeed Input I’m working on adding peripherals to PikaPC, my homebrew PowerPC computer project. I have plans for adding support for video, SD card, and keyboard & mouse. I’m still waiting for some...

It seems like just yesterday we were wrapping up our amazing 2025 show. This year, our attendance grew 50% to over 1,800 visitors, plus over 100 exhibitors. On behalf of the organizing team, a huge TH...

PikaPC Project Goals I’m planning on taking a different approach to my PikaPC project. For Wrap030, my 68030 homebrew computer, my end goal was always to build something capable of running a proper...

ALTPikaPC Runs First CodeI’ve finished wiring the essentials on my PikaPC homebrew computer project. As it sits currently, it has the PowerPC 403GA CPU clocked at 24MHz, 512kB of flash ROM on an 8-bit...