Old Barcode Scanner Motherboards Live Again
From time to time, hacking is just for the pleasure of diving into the insider secrets of outdated components. That was really significantly the circumstance when [glitch] and a friend begun hacking on some old Intel 8080 boards that experienced been dwelling in the junk pile for much too long.
The boards in question were being motherboards from Identicon barcode scanners, jogging the Intel 8080 CPU. Hacking on the 8080 is a small unique, with the historical CPU necessitating 3 different voltages to run. Nonetheless, with the electricity rails figured out and electrical power applied, it was achievable to get the aged boards up and operating.
The boards have been first operate with exam ROMs which confirmed the 8080 CPU to be functional. The ROMs hosted a straightforward system which obtained the 8080 to spit out the term “HELO” on to an HP HDSP-2416 ASCII character exhibit. From there, the barcode scanner boards were being installed in a chassis and hooked up to a even larger Siemens character exhibit, and the memory was mapped out.
The final result was that [glitch] and co have been in a position to mainly reverse engineer the Identicon components, finding out it was rather equivalent to the Intel MCS-80 reference design and style of the era. They were equipped to get code working on the system, entry the RAM, and suit a larger 8-character screen. Having said that, without having the unique barcode scanner attachment, the boards weren’t equipped to return to their primary obligation.
As far as hacks go, it’s quite old school. The boards really don’t converse to Twitter, nor run the lights or help with the dishes. Having said that, plenty of entertaining was experienced seeing if this outdated metallic could be produced to follow guidelines at the time a lot more. Hacking for the enjoyment of it is generally a very good detail by our reserve!