Profile avatar
polpo.org
I created PicoGUS, an ISA card that can emulate sound cards like the Gravis Ultrasound, Sound Blaster, and MPU-401: https://picog.us I’m a retrocomputing generalist! Also on Fedi at https://bitbang.social/@polpo In Colorado, USA
605 posts 2,571 followers 644 following
Regular Contributor
Active Commenter
Posts 20 Comments 30

If you weren't at VCF East 2025 like me, you missed Ian Scott's presentation on his behemoth project PicoGUS sound card for old PCs with ISA slots. Here it is, his path, and the wonderful open source community around it. Also, plans for future revisions youtu.be/gTLAhIkmUl0...

submitted 21 hours ago • 2 comments

The video from my talk at VCF East 2025, "Making a Hardware Emulator for a Legendary PC Sound Card" is now on YouTube! www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTLA...

submitted 1 day ago • 5 comments

Oh man, can’t wait to listen to this one. I grew up in the area and was fascinated by all the abandoned streets and houses you could see from the interstate. And when they started incinerating all the soil we could see the incinerator stack from our high school.

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

I literally ran into Steve Wozniak after seeing his photo on the wall at Cicero's Pizza in San Jose. I said "I guess Steve Wozniak eats here" aloud, wheeled around and ran right into the man.

submitted 1 day ago • 2 comments

Same. I am getting *so* rescued!

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

I was traveling for a week and intended to work on CDROM support for #PicoGUS while on the road but forgot the charger for my Pocket386, whoops. Now I'm home. Back in the day I liked how the opening FMV in Return to Zork called back to the original text adventures while saying LOOK AT OUR CD POWER

submitted 3 days ago • 5 comments

Behold the power tilt mechanism on the Apple RGB monitor.

submitted 7 days ago • 2 comments

Dan’s VCF videos are unparalleled in their exhaustiveness. I’m not sure how he does it!

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

I have worked with Polar Filament to get color matched Classic Mac Platinum PLA filament made - only $21.99 per kilogram. WOO HOO! Order now, order plenty, and let them know you want them to print it forever! polarfilament.com/pr...

submitted 11 days ago • 21 comments

Want to add Wi-Fi to your DOS PC? BlueSCSI DayaPORT has you covered! RetroTechChris wrote a packet driver for the BlueSCSI in DOS, and has more plans for it, stay tuned! We'll update our DOS premade SCSI images soon! github.com/cml37/daynap...

submitted 13 days ago • 1 comment

I have finally entered the retro PC MIDI era! Both of these units needed some minor repair but nothing too tricky. (Just some bad joints on the connectors.) Paired with my PicoGUS (thanks @polpo.org) old DOS games sound awesome!

submitted 17 days ago • 21 comments

Heads up folks, the scammer Sean Lee Robinson, aka "Geek With Social Skills" is posting videos again This person scammed myself and others out of a considerable amount of money DO NOT engage with this person If you need more info, watch the video below, google them, etc

submitted 19 days ago • 2 comments

Anybody know what this is? A search for "Microsoft Windows Graphical Environment Working Model" doesn't yield any results. Won't be able to try the disks myself for a few days.

submitted 19 days ago • 3 comments

This weekend I’m polishing up CDROM emulation on PicoGUS and verified that it works in Windows 98. Once I figure out a nice way to switch disc images and make a utility for it I will release a new firmware version.

submitted 20 days ago • 4 comments

I wrote a program to lipsync the shipping forecast in a terminal window, and I have no regrets.

submitted 20 days ago • 8 comments

It brings me no pleasure to announce that the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation New Balances go exceptionally hard

submitted 20 days ago • 63 comments

Meet two of the five working prototypes of the release version of Sentinel 65X that exist. These things boot and run. We just need to shake out any last bugs.

submitted 22 days ago • 0 comments

SilverStone reveals the FLP02 late-80s style beige tower PC case at Computex 2025. Wow this is going to be awesome! Link: www.tomshardware.com/pc-component...

submitted 24 days ago • 11 comments

Made it to #RMRRF for a bit!

submitted 27 days ago • 0 comments

#PicoGUS can now emulate both a CDROM drive and Sound Blaster in parallel, smoothly playing both CD audio and SB sound effects simultaneously. Still a lot of polish to do before a new firmware release but I'm excited!! This is MechWarrior 2 with bin/cue stored on a USB stick plugged into the PicoGUS

submitted 27 days ago • 14 comments