Sam Battle

The Biological Frontier: When Human Neurons Play DOOM There is a specific kind of madness that settles into the hardware community when people have too much time and access to a petri dish. We have seen DOOM running on pregnancy tests, tractors, and even industrial cake machines, but Cortical Labs just pushed the boundary into the biological. They have successfully taught a culture of **human neurons** to play the seminal 1993 shooter. This isn't a simulation of a brain; it is actual biological tissue mounted onto a silicon chip. They call it the CL1, and it represents a "biological computer" where 200,000 lab-grown neurons process information in a multi-electrode array. The setup maps on-screen data to electrical stimuli, which the neurons respond to with their own signals to control Doomguy. While they play like a total beginner right now, the sheer **plasticity** of biological networks means they can actually learn. It raises some heavy ethical questions—whose DNA is in that chip, and at what point does a processing array deserve rights? For now, I’ll stick to silicon that doesn't need a nutrient bath to function. Project Helix: Microsoft’s High-Stakes Xbox Pivot Microsoft is in a strange spot with the Xbox brand. After record-breaking acquisitions like Activision Blizzard, the hardware side of the house is seeing massive revenue drops. Enter the new CEO of Xbox, Asher Sharma. With an AI background, Sharma’s appointment raised eyebrows, but the latest word is Project Helix—a next-generation console that supposedly bridges the gap between console gaming and the PC. Project Helix is rumored to play both Xbox and native PC games, which sounds like a dream for those of us who hate the closed-off nature of modern consoles. However, the logic is fuzzy. If it’s just a PC in a box, why bother with the proprietary Xbox branding? The industry is shifting toward a hybrid model, similar to the Steam Deck, but Microsoft needs to prove that Project Helix isn't just a glorified Windows machine with a "Game Pass" sticker slapped on the front. We are expecting more details at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. The AA Battery Challenge: Powering a Desktop the Hard Way A creator by the name of Scuffed Bits decided to tackle one of those "what if" questions that keeps every hardware tinkerer up at night: Can you run a modern ATX desktop on standard AA batteries? The answer is yes, but only if you enjoy a PC that dies faster than a smartphone in a blizzard. Using 56 alkaline batteries, capacitors for power buffering, and some clever wiring to handle the initial voltage spikes, the system actually booted into Windows 10. The limitation isn't just the voltage; it's the current draw. Even with over fifty batteries, the system lasted less than five minutes while playing Minesweeper. It’s a beautiful piece of useless engineering that reminds us why lithium-ion changed the world. If you can’t finish a round of the world’s most basic puzzle game before your power plant gives up the ghost, you might want to stick to the wall outlet. Retro Hardware Solutions: The Pico Revolution The Raspberry Pi Pico is currently the darling of the retro DIY scene. We’ve seen it power the PicoIDE, which just cleared a massive crowdfunding goal on Crowd Supply. The demand for affordable, open-source hardware that emulates old storage standards is through the roof. But it doesn't stop at storage. Peter Bridger and Mark Angus are using the Pico for the HDD Synth, an ISA expansion card that recreates the soul of a vintage PC: the sound of the hard drive. Modern SSD and CompactFlash adapters are silent, which feels wrong when you're using a 486. The HDD Synth uses actual samples of mechanical drives, detecting bus activity to play back the clicks, whirs, and spin-down sounds that defined the 90s. It is the ultimate pragmatic solution for the enthusiast who wants the reliability of modern flash with the sensory feedback of the original iron. The Death of Myrient and the Cost of AI Not all news in the hardware world is about clever builds. The retro gaming preservation site Myrient is officially closing its doors, and the reason is a gut-punch to the community. The site hosted 390 terabytes of data, but the skyrocketing costs of RAM and storage—driven by the massive demand from **AI data centers**—made it unsustainable. When AI giants start hoovering up every available stick of RAM and every high-capacity drive, the prices for small-scale preservationists go through the roof. Combined with "leeches" who used specialized download managers to bypass donation requests, the site was costing its founder, Alexi, roughly $6,000 a month out of pocket. It’s a sobering reminder that the "cloud" isn't free, and the hardware we love is currently caught in a price war with Silicon Valley's latest obsession. Conclusion From the high-tech weirdness of biological neural processors to the gritty reality of powering a PC with AA batteries, the hardware community continues to push into territory that manufacturers never intended. Whether it’s reclaiming the sounds of our childhood with the HDD Synth or mourning the loss of a massive digital archive, the lesson is clear: hardware is never just about specs. It's about how we use it, how we save it, and the sheer audacity of trying to make it do something it wasn't built for. Go out and build something today—even if it only runs for five minutes.