microsoft

97 Articles

2025: As The Hardware World Turns

January 5, 2026 by 30 Comments

If you’re reading this, that means you’ve successfully made it through 2025! Allow us to be the first to congratulate you — that’s another twelve months of skills learned, projects started, and hacks….hacked. The average Hackaday reader has a thirst for knowledge and an insatiable appetite for new challenges, so we know you’re already eager to take on everything 2026 has to offer.

But before we step too far into the unknown, we’ve found that it helps to take a moment and reflect on where we’ve been. You know how the saying goes: those that don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. That whole impending doom bit obviously has a negative connotation, but we like to think the axiom applies for both the lows and highs in life. Sure you should avoid making the same mistake twice, but why not have another go at the stuff that worked? In fact, why not try to make it even better this time?

As such, it’s become a Hackaday tradition to rewind the clock and take a look at some of the most noteworthy stories and trends of the previous year, as seen from our rather unique viewpoint in the maker and hacker world. With a little luck, reviewing the lessons of 2025 can help us prosper in 2026 and beyond.

Continue reading “2025: As The Hardware World Turns” →

FPGA Dev Kit Unofficially Brings MSX Standard Back

January 3, 2026 by 15 Comments

In the 1980s there were an incredible number of personal computers of all shapes, sizes, and operating system types, and there was very little interoperability. Unlike today’s Windows-Mac duopoly, this era was much more of a free-for-all but that didn’t mean companies like Microsoft weren’t trying to clean up all of this mess. In 1983 they introduced the MSX standard for computers, hoping to coalesce users around a single design. Eventually it became very successful in Japan and saw some use in a few other places but is now relegated to the dustbin of history, but a new FPGA kit unofficially supports this standard.

The kit is called the OneChip Book and, unlike most FPGA kits, includes essentially everything needed to get it up and running including screen, keyboard, and I/O all in a pre-built laptop case. At its core it’s just that: and FPGA kit. But its original intent was to recreate this old 80s computer standard with modern hardware. The only problem is they never asked for permission, and their plans were quickly quashed. The development kit is still available, though, and [electricadventures] goes through the steps to get this computer set up to emulate this unofficially-supported retro spec. He’s also able to get original MSX cartridges running on it when everything is said and done.

Although MSX is relatively unknown in North America and Western Europe, it remains a fairly popular platform for retro computing enthusiasts in much of the rest of the world. We’ve seen a few similar projects related to this computer standard like this MSX-inspired cyberdeck design, but also others that bring new hardware to this old platform.

Continue reading “FPGA Dev Kit Unofficially Brings MSX Standard Back” →

Microsoft Open Sources Zork I, II And III

November 21, 2025 by 31 Comments

The history of the game Zork is a long and winding one, starting with MUDs and kin on university mainframes – where students entertained themselves in between their studies – and ending with the game being ported to home computers. These being pathetically undersized compared to even a PDP-10 meant that Zork got put to the axe, producing Zork I through III. Originally distributed by Infocom, eventually the process of Microsoft gobbling up game distributors and studios alike meant that Microsoft came to hold the license to these games. Games which are now open source as explained on the Microsoft Open Source blog.

Although the source had found its way onto the Internet previously, it’s now officially distributed under the MIT license, along with accompanying developer documentation. The source code for the three games can be found on GitHub, in separate repositories for Zork I, Zork II and Zork III.

We previously covered Zork’s journey from large systems to home computers, which was helped immensely by the Z-machine platform that the game’s code was ported to. Sadly the original games’s MDL code was a bit much for 8-bit home computers. Regardless of whether you prefer the original PDP-10 or the Z-machine version on a home computer system, both versions are now open sourced, which is a marvelous thing indeed.

Iconic Xbox Prototype Brought To Life

October 30, 2025 by 15 Comments

When Microsoft decided they wanted to get into the game console market, they were faced with a problem. Everyone knew them as a company that developed computer software, and there was a concern that consumers wouldn’t understand that their new Xbox console was a separate product from their software division. To make sure they got the message though, Microsoft decided to show off a prototype that nobody could mistake for a desktop computer.

The giant gleaming X that shared the stage with Bill Gates and Seamus Blackley at the 2000 Game Developers Conference became the stuff of legend. We now know the machine wasn’t actually a working Xbox, but at the time, it generated enormous buzz. But could it have been a functional console? That’s what [Tito] of Macho Nacho Productions wanted to find out — and the results are nothing short of spectacular.

Continue reading “Iconic Xbox Prototype Brought To Life” →

Microsoft BASIC For 6502 Is Now Open Source

September 4, 2025 by 29 Comments

An overriding memory for those who used 8-bit machines back in the day was of using BASIC to program them. Without a disk-based operating system as we would know it today, these systems invariably booted into a BASIC interpreter. In the 1970s the foremost supplier of BASIC interpreters was Microsoft, whose BASIC could be found in Commodore and Apple products among many others. Now we can all legally join in the fun, because the software giant has made version 1.1 of Microsoft BASIC for the 6502 open source under an MIT licence.

This version comes from mid-1978, and supports the Commodore PET as well as the KIM-1 and early Apple models. It won’t be the same as the extended versions found in later home computers such as the Commodore 64, but it still provides plenty of opportunities for retrocomputer enthusiasts to experiment. It’s also not entirely new to the community, because it’s a version that has been doing the rounds unofficially for a long time, but now with any licensing worries cleared up. A neat touch can be found in the GitHub repository, with the dates on the files being 48 years ago.

We look forward to seeing what the community does with this new opportunity, and given that the 50-year-old 6502 is very much still with us we expect some real-hardware projects. Meanwhile this isn’t the first time Microsoft has surprised us with an old product.

Header image: Michael Holley, Public domain.

Rediscovering Microsoft’s Oddball Music Generator From The 1990s

August 14, 2025 by 8 Comments

There has been a huge proliferation in AI music creation tools of late, and a corresponding uptick in the number of AI artists appearing on streaming services. Well before the modern neural network revolution, though, there was an earlier tool in this same vein. [harke] tells us all about Microsoft Music Producer 1.0, a forgotten relic from the 1990s.

The software wasn’t ever marketed openly. Instead, it was a part of Microsoft Visual InterDev, a web development package from 1997. It allowed the user to select a style, a personality, and a band to play the song, along with details like key, tempo, and the “shape” of the composition. It would then go ahead and algorithmically generate the music using MIDI instruments and in-built synthesized sounds.

As [harke] demonstrates, there are a huge amounts of genres to choose from. Pick one, and you’ll most likely find it sounds nothing like the contemporary genre it’s supposed to be recreating. The more gamey genres, though, like “Adventure” or “Chase” actually sound pretty okay. The moods are hilariously specific, too — you can have a “noble” song, or a “striving” or “serious” one. [harke] also demonstrates building a full song with the “7AM Illusion” preset, exporting the MIDI, and then adding her own instruments and vocals in a DAW to fill it out. The result is what you’d expect from a composition relying on the Microsoft GS Wavetable synth.

Microsoft might not have cornered the generative music market in the 1990s, but generative AI is making huge waves in the industry today.

Continue reading “Rediscovering Microsoft’s Oddball Music Generator From The 1990s” →

Hackaday Links Column Banner

Hackaday Links: July 27, 2025

July 27, 2025 by 9 Comments

Sad breaking news late this Sunday afternoon of the passing of nerd icon Tom Lehrer at 97. Coming up through the culture, knowing at least a few of Tom’s ditties, preferably “The Elements” or “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park,” was as essential to proving one’s bona fides as committing most Monty Python bits to memory. Tom had a way with words that belied his background as a mathematician, spicing his sarcastic lyrics with unusual rhymes and topical references that captured the turbulence of the late 50s and early 60s, which is when he wrote most of his well-known stuff. First Ozzy, then Chuck Mangione, now Tom Lehrer — it’s been a rough week for musicians.

Here we go again. It looks like hams have another spectrum grab on their hands, but this time it’s the popular 70-cm band that’s in the crosshairs. Starlink wannabe AST SpaceMobile, which seeks to build a constellation of 248 ridiculously large communication satellites to offer direct-to-device service across the globe, seeks a substantial chunk of the 70-cm band, from 430 to 440 MHz, to control the satellites. This is smack in the middle of the 70-cm amateur radio band allocation here in the US, but covers the entire band for unlucky hams in Europe and the UK. The band is frequently used for repeaters, which newbie hams can easily access using a cheap hand-held radio to start learning the ropes.

Continue reading “Hackaday Links: July 27, 2025” →