RetroTick – run classic Windows & DOS programs in a browser

Qishuai Liu hosts retrotick.com where you can run classic Windows and DOS executables directly in your browser. No installation required. Just drag, drop, and watch programs come alive in a web page.

RetroTick is an x86 virtual machine and Windows/DOS API compatibility layer built from scratch in TypeScript. It parses PE (Win32), NE (Win16), and MZ (DOS) binaries, executes x86 machine code instruction by instruction, and reimplements a subset of the Win32, Win16, and DOS API surface, enough to boot several .exe files from the classic Windows era and render their GUIs in the browser.

What’s Under the Hood

• x86 CPU emulator — x87 FPU, lazy flag evaluation, 32-bit protected mode (flat model) and 16-bit real mode with segment:offset addressing, IVT, and PSP
• PE/NE/MZ binary loader — Parses headers, maps sections, resolves imports, extracts resources
• Win32 API compatibility layer — kernel32, user32, gdi32, advapi32, comctl32, comdlg32, shell32, msvcrt, opengl32, glu32, ddraw, ole32, oleaut32, winmm, winspool, ws2_32, version, psapi, shlwapi, iphlpapi, msacm32, and more
• Win16 API compatibility layer — KERNEL, USER, GDI, SHELL, COMMDLG, MMSYSTEM, KEYBOARD, DDEML, WIN87EM
• DOS interrupt emulation — INT 21h services for MZ executables
• OpenGL 1.x → WebGL2 translation — Full immediate-mode pipeline mapped to WebGL2, powering 3D screen savers
• Window manager — Multiple windows, z-order, focus, taskbar, message dispatch, common dialogs
• GDI rendering engine — Bitmaps, brushes, pens, regions, text, DIB-to-Canvas mapping
• Virtual filesystem — IndexedDB-backed persistent storage for uploaded files

Check out the site at retrotick.com and also on GitHub. The project is released under CC0 1.0 Universal license.

 

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Robert Tinney: ‘Byte’ Magazine and Beyond

70s Sci-Fi Art writes about Robert Tinney, a big name in retro tech, showing a collection of lesser-known facts and art from the famed Byte magazine cover artist.

Robert Tinney passed away on February 1st, 2026.

If you were into computers in the ’80s, you may not know his name, but you definitely know his work: He was the artist behind the beautiful hand-painted covers of the influential computer hobbyist magazine Byte from the December 1975 issue until the early ’90s.

His style was frequently surreal, serving up a visual pun illustrating that issue’s cover story – like floppy disk Vikings for a story about software piracy, or his “Pascal’s Triangle,” an August 1978 Byte cover that depicted an inverted Bermuda triangle to eulogize the Pascal programming language.

There’s no denying that Robert Tinney and Byte magazine are perfect mirrors for Silicon Valley history. RIP.

Read and see more here.

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80386 Protected Mode deep dive

nand2mario on the Small Things Retro blog is building an 80386-compatible core in SystemVerilog and blogging the process.

The 80286 introduced “Protected Mode” in 1982. It was not popular. The mode was difficult to use, lacked paging, and offered no way to return to real mode without a hardware reset. The 80386, arriving three years later, made protection usable — adding paging, a flat 32-bit address space, per-page User/Supervisor control, and Virtual 8086 mode so that DOS programs could run inside a protected multitasking system. These features made possible Windows 3.0, OS/2, and early Linux.

The x86 protection model is notoriously complex, with four privilege rings, segmentation, paging, call gates, task switches, and virtual 8086 mode. What’s interesting from a hardware perspective is how the 386 manages this complexity on a 275,000-transistor budget. The 386 employs a variety of techniques to implement protection: a dedicated PLA for protection checking, a hardware state machine for page table walks, segment and paging caches, and microcode for everything else.

Check out the details in the post here.

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Watch This Backpack Automatically Deploy an Umbrella in the Rain

In Seattle if you carry an umbrella you get some dirty looks. I wonder how soggy Seattleites would respond to Current Concepts wearable self-deploying backpack umbrella? When rain is detected via a resistive rain sensor the umbrella pops open. It all runs off and ESP32 microcontroller. Fun video full of punchy quips.

Write up from Nik Bild on Hackster.io watch the full video below:

Closing the umbrella was far more difficult than opening it. Automatic umbrellas rely on powerful springs, and compressing one requires significant force — far beyond what small hobby motors can handle. The solution was a high-torque motor paired with a worm gearbox, which provides massive mechanical advantage and prevents back-driving. A length of quarter-inch Dyneema rope, rated to hold over a thousand pounds, reels the canopy downward. When fully closed, a limit switch cuts the motor, resetting the system.

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Keyboard Sale Week Starts Today!

 

Welcome to week 2 of our first ever sales month, featuring KEYBOARDS! Get clickity-clacking on keyboard items at 30-50% off Click here to see all the keyboard things on sale!

Items available while supplies last. No discount code needed, sale prices are listed directly on the product page. We cannot retroactively apply the discount to orders for full priced items.

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An Espressif ESP32-P4 teardown and die shots

The electronupdate blog takes an Espressif ESP32-P4 module and does a teardown inside the shield and into the chips for die shots.

I recently purchased a “Guition” JC-ESP32P4-M3 which combines the P4 with the C6.

The P4 is Espressif’s the fastest offering with a 360 MHz RISC-V processor core.  To enable WiFi and Bluetooth, a ESP-C6 is on the same assembly.

Removing the metal shield reveals the 3 major bits of silicon:

– ESP32-P4:  star of this show… actually two bits of silicon the PSRAM is glued to the top of the P4
– ESP32-C6: providing Bluetooth and WIFI
– Boya 25Q128 SPI NOR Flash for program storage

You can catch some amazing photos on the site here and the video below.

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HTX Studio Built a Typewriter Inspired by the MingKwai

HTX Studio created an electronic version of Lin Yutang‘s MingKwai, which is currently at Stanford.

Learn how to make faux typewriter souds in the Adafruit Learning System and check out more Adafruit keyboard goodness here.

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