Blog
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Recapping a Vintage Mainboard
2026-02-22
Recapping is one of those maintenance tasks that seems simple from a distance and unforgiving in practice. “Replace old capacitors” sounds straightforward until you are diagnosing intermittent instability on a thirty-year-old board with unknown service history, lifted pads, and undocumented revisions.
Done well, recapping is not a parts swap. It is a controlled restoration process with verification steps before, during, and after soldering. ... continue
Prototyping with Failure Budgets
2026-02-22
Most prototype plans assume success too early. Schedules are built around happy-path bring-up, and risk is represented as a vague buffer at the end. In practice, hardware projects move faster when failure is budgeted explicitly from the beginning.
A failure budget is not pessimism. It is resource planning for uncertainty: ... continue
Mode X in Turbo Pascal, Part 4: Tilemaps and Streaming
2026-02-22
A renderer becomes a game when it can show world-scale structure, not just local effects. That means tilemaps, camera movement, and disciplined data loading. In Mode X-era development, these systems were not optional polish. They were the only way to present rich scenes inside strict memory budgets.
This final Mode X article focuses on operational structure: how to build scenes that scroll smoothly, load predictably, and remain debuggable. ... continue
Mode X in Turbo Pascal, Part 3: Sprites and Palette Cycling
2026-02-22
Sprites are where a renderer starts to feel like a game engine. In Mode X, the challenge is not just drawing images quickly. The challenge is managing transparency, overlap order, and visual dynamism while staying within the strict memory and bandwidth constraints of VGA-era hardware.
If your primitives and clipping are not stable yet, go back to Part 2. Sprite bugs are hard enough without foundational uncertainty. ... continue
Mode X in Turbo Pascal, Part 2: Primitives and Clipping
2026-02-22
After the planar memory model clicks, the next trap is pretending linear drawing code can be “ported” to Mode X by changing one helper. That works for demos and fails for games. Robust Mode X rendering starts with primitives that are aware of planes, clipping, and page targets from day one.
If you missed the foundation, begin with Part 1: Planar Memory and Pages. This article assumes you already have working pixel output and page flipping. ... continue