Weβre at a fortunate moment: microcontrollers available at modest prices are edging into the capability level previously reserved for full-fat systems and can, through emulation, run software beyond classic 8-bit home computers, consoles, or old arcade games. A project weβve been watching for a while is tiny386, an emulator for ESP32 boards that provides a 386 PC with just enough 486 and 586 instructions enabled to run a modern Linux kernel. Now weβre pleased to note that this platform is making it to the RP2350, with ports for both the FRANK emulation platform and the Waveshare Pi Zero boards. You can now have a 32-bit PC with all the peripherals, including VGA and DVI/HDMI, for the cost of an inexpensive development board.
Having seen tiny386 run on its minimum-spec ESP32 platform, weβll concede that while itβs usable, itβs not the fastest experience, but the RP2350 port promises better performance. Itβs not for a modern full-fat Linux distro, but should work well for running older operating systems such as DOS, or Windows 3.1 and 95, or even a lean Linux setup. This has fascinating potential: while these systems are old, they still have an enormous software library. The idea of useful general-purpose computing, 1990s style, in the palm of the hand, is interesting.
You want Retro? We did, when we started our retrocomputing challenge. [Peter] decided that transistors werenβt retro enough, and sent us this lovely homebrew relay computer, complete with 16- bit CPU, which is rather more bits than one normally associates with clicky clacky contacts.
The architecture is very simpleβ it just uses an accumulator register, ACCU, and goes from there. All mathematics and save/load operations go through ACCU. There whole instruction set is only 19 commands, and heβs used that set to program such lovely things as calculating 3 digits of Piβ which only took 8 minutes of glorious clicking. Thereβs a demo video of that embedded below. [Peter] has even implemented a display by hooking his computer to a 32Γ32 LED matrix, but donβt expect it to relay updates really quickly.
If this computer looks familiar, itβs because its earlier incarnation was one of the more βextraβ entries in last yearβs one-hertz challenge, where it was used to blink an indicator lamp. Yes, even relay computers apparently get started with the βblinkyβ sketch.
If you want in on the fun, our retrocomputer challenge runs until October 27th, so thereβs lots of time left to turn back the clock.
Apple hardware has always been proprietary, sometimes to an extreme. But thatβs not to say that itβs impossible to make something that does the same job, which is what [DosFox1] appears to have done with the OSHintosh. Itβs an open source PCB that implements a Mac 512k. Is it a 68k Hackintosh? You decide.
While it boots into a classic Mac OS image, itβs not quite a Mac. For a start, there are no disks, and no SCSI. Instead it boots from a disk held in ROM, which we guess will be a lot faster than the floppy from back in the day. Theyβve even managed to do it on a 2-layer board, which means that despite its size, it shouldnβt be too expensive to have made.
Weβre not sure quite what the legality of dumping a Mac ROM image to the ROM on this board would be, but assume for a moment that you own a copy in a defunct original Mac. This board canβt yet replace the original due to the disk issue, but given that original Macs are now long in the tooth, a modern replacement for those who must have hardware rather than an emulator sounds like a good idea. Perhaps for some people it will join the FPGA Amiga.
Although hard disks werenβt a common feature yet in many home computers in the 1980s, they were becoming increasingly more affordable. For relative meanings of the word βaffordableβ, naturally. This is illustrated by the 12 MB HDD for the Radio Shack TRS-80 that [Clint] over atΒ LGR recently took a peek at.
Costing a cool $3,495 in 1983 β or $11,932 in 2026 USD β this 12 MB storage wonder used a Tandon TM-603 full-height 5.25β³ HDD inside. Lacking a working TRS-80 to try it out with, the video is limited to just a basic powering up and opening up of the unit, but [Clint] will be donating it to a computer museum who can hopefully put it to use again.
The connection to the TRS-80 computer is handled by a ribbon cable, while the HDD has its own built-in power supply, rated at 60 Watt.
On the main board for the external HDD controller there is a Signetics 8X300 microprocessor that forms the brains of what makes it into an external drive for the TRS-80. Despite its age, it still looks brand new inside, so despite the Rifa capacitors in the PSU, [Clint] decided to power it on. This resulted in an auditory experience thatβs probably best compared to a very rusty jet engine spinning up after languishing for a decade prior to spooling up for take-off.
Hopefully weβll find out whether this particular unit and its HDD are still working in 2026.
Physical media is having a bit of a revival at the moment, and vinyl is getting a lot of attention with claims about its supposed superiority over digital audio. Music CDs, on the other hand, have received a more muted revival.
If the name Packard Bell sends you back to beige desktop towers, chunky CRT monitors, floppy disks and dial-up modem screeches, Acer has a surprise for you.
What is quantum computing? How is a quantum computer different from a regular computer? What relevance does this have to Bitcoin?
New Bitcoiners have been inevitably bumping into these questions and having to confront the issues they dredge up regarding Bitcoinβs exposure to what is very much an existential threat to its existence if a viable quantum computer were to be developed.Β
The ability to own bitcoin rests on the foundational assumption that without directly leaking a copy of it, no one but the person who possesses a private key can sign to transact with coins secured by that key. Quantum computing calls that assumption into question.Β
Quantum computers are not just βcomputers, but faster.β They function in a very fundamentally different way from a classical computer, and as such they are much more efficient than classical computers at very specific kinds of computations. Now obviously, Iβm not going to actually explain how quantum computers work in minute detail within four pages, but I will give you the core intuition of how they are fundamentally different from a classical computer.Β
So letβs take a look at how both kinds of computers interact with things like large cryptographic keys.Β
Classical Computers
Everything stored in a classical computer (or just computer from here on out) is stored as a series of 1s and 0s. Each bit (1 or 0) is precisely a 1 or 0; there is no ambiguity. When a piece of data is stored, itβs 1s and 0s. When a piece of data is manipulated or modified, it is done bit by bit, step by step, on each 1 or 0.Β
That is how a computer works. It linearly, one step after the other, modifies the discrete unambiguous pieces of data that it is storing. It canβt skip ahead, or shortcut (in terms of the steps itβs taking, not more efficient ways to do things mathematically), it has to go through the steps of whatever computation it is doing one by one.Β
When you generate a private key using a computer, it acquires a random value (you inputting dice, general user input, randomness from device hardware, etc.) and stores that in memory as 1s and 0s. From there it has to multiply this value by the elliptic curveβs generator point to get a public key. This is accomplished with an algorithm, that boiled down to its most basic level, is literally instructions on what bits to take, how to modify them, what circuits to βpushβ them down on a physical level to accomplish that, and in the end put the new value that has been modified bit by bit back into memory.Β
There are other steps to arrive at an actual valid address, but for the purposes of this article those are not necessary to go into (but they are just like the above step, just step by step instructions on how to modify 1s and 0s in memory).Β
So what if someone wanted to use a computer to guess someone elseβs private key?Β
There are 2256 possible private keys. Thatβs 115,792,089,237,316,195,423,570,985,008,687,907,853,269,984,665,640,564,039,457,584,007,913,129,639,936 different possible keys.Β
A computer would have to try every single one of those possible private keys, one after the other (or however many at a time it can do in parallel), step by step following the exact instructions above for generating keys. The more of them you try to check in parallel, the more computing power you need, with no ability to find any shortcuts around that cost.Β
The less computing power you want to use, the more time it will take, the less time you want it to take, the more computing power you need.Β
This is an impossible task to accomplish with a computer. On one side you have a computation cost that every computer on Earth is not enough to pay, and on the other side you have a cost in time that is so high every star in the universe would die before you checked them all.Β
To actually accomplish your goal, you need another option besides checking one by one linearly or in parallel. Thatβs where quantum computing comes in.
Quantum Computers
Quantum computers donβt work with discrete states. Everything is precisely a 1 or a 0. The most basic piece of information in a quantum computer is a qubit (the quantum version of a bit). Unlike a bit, a qubit is in a superposition where it is both simultaneously a 1 and a 0. It only settles into one or the other discrete states when it is observed.Β
This is one of the key building blocks that allow a quantum computer to compute differently. The other is entanglement. Qubits arenβt just stored in isolation, the physical atoms representing them and collapsing to a discrete state when observed are entangled together. This means when entangled atoms are observed and collapse to a single state, the entangled atoms collapse to the same state, no matter how far apart they are.Β
Now hereβs where things get weird, and Iβm going to have to get a little hand-wavy; you should still walk away with an intuitive understanding of why quantum computers are fundamentally different from a classical computer. An algorithm on a classical computer is a set of instructions to take a specific set of bits, and step by step modify them according to the algorithmβs instructions, until finishing and outputting the finished set of new bits. So the algorithm step by step takes one discrete state and turns it into another.Β
Qubits donβt store discrete states until they are observed and collapse to one. They store probabilities. When you have a set of qubits entangled of any given size (like in this hypothetical case 2256), each given possible state that it collapse to has a certain probability of collapsing to that given state.Β
Quantum algorithms, rather than being step by step instructions to operate on discrete states, are a set of instructions on how to operate on those entangled qubits in a way that alters the probabilities of different outcomes. Constructive interference is used to increase the probability of a correct outcome, and destructive interference to decrease the probability of incorrect outcomes (note that this is NOT the noise or interference that makes it difficult for physical quantum computers to function accurately, that is a different concept).Β
So while a classical computer would have to check each individual private key one by one to find the one matching a specific public key, a quantum computer can simply run a few times using the right algorithm and arrive at the correct answer. It does not do this by βchecking all the possibilities at once.β It simply modifies the probabilities of what a superposition will collapse into.Β
This is why a quantum computer could break the assumptions underlying elliptic curve cryptography, and a classical computer could not (and it is also why quantum computers are only useful for certain types of computations with a massive possible space of answer candidates to check).Β
Donβt Panic
This fundamental difference between classical and quantum computation means, that yes, if a viable quantum computer is actually produced, that functions correctly, then the underlying assumption that secures all Bitcoinersβ individual bitcoin is broken. All of those funds are insecure.Β
Yes, this is a serious risk if such a device is actually manufactured, and it works, but we are not entirely unprepared. We understand the problem, we understand the exposure, and a good number of possible solutions to many different facets of the problem are coming together.Β
Breathe, and relax. Through the rest of this issue we are going to walk you through the whole problem.Β
This piece is featured in the latestΒ PrintΒ edition of Bitcoin Magazine, The Quantum Issue. Weβre sharing it here as an early look at the ideas explored throughout the full issue.
The early days of people having internet in their homes were pretty wild. Viruses were pretty much everywhere, and unlike now, many users had no clue what to do with them. I was a tween in the early '00s, but I remember intervening when my mom's PC had what felt like hundreds of them, with pop-ups and ads covering up the entire desktop, impossible to remove.
Login
