Electoral maths: Farage won in Clacton with 21,225 votes. 32,014 people did not actually vote at all. 24,884 people voted not for Farage. So 56,900 votes are 'out there' for Count Binface. If Clacton really thinks it's British, it has no choice.

It might not look much, but that's programmable line (raster) interrupts working on VideoBeast. I *think* that means we're now feature complete for the base hardware.

Because I keep getting bitten on the *** with it, I've added a new utility that prints the build version of both BeastOS and VideoBeast firmware. I've got half a dozen machines in various states of development and always end up having to double check what each of them is running when bugs show up.

Wow. Over eleven hours on one charge. That's significantly better than my laptop. Z80 rules.

Five o'clock and we're down to 1% Seven and a half hours. Maybe if I turned off that LED it'd last a little bit longer...? I should have run a sweepstake. It'll die in the next hour, but what minute?

Three hours later, and we're at 64% The battery monitoring circuit is only an estimate, so it doesn't drop linearly, but it's all looking good.

Starting a battery run, to check how the latest firmware changes have affected power consumption. For the record - 9:30am starting at 97% charged. Place your bets for when it drops below the reset threshold.

It's so hot that you can just put the components into the MicroBeast PCB, leave it out in the sun and it'll solder itself (*). Also, unlike your phone/desktop/laptop, MicroBeast runs cool as a cucumber. (*) Not actually true, but still...

I'm finalising the next revision of VideoBeast, ready to send out dev units. Kicad now makes it easy to tune the lengths of traces (the wiggles in the picture). In theory, similar lengths mean your video signal all arrives at the same time. I don't think it's really worth it in this case... 🧵

Doomscrolling? It won't even run Doom.

Some of the challenges for the Zorkulator are much more mechanical. Here I've 3D printed a sheet metal bending tool designed to make a small lip for the battery tray. This'll let me insert and extract batteries without needing an enormous hole in the Zorkulator case.

Having an I2C bus on MicroBeast/NanoBeast is like a superpower for small computers. With a couple of OS calls, you can get the time, control LEDs, use a little OLED display - all without reaching for yet another ESP32 or Pi Pico.

This is more of an "assemble it yourself" machine, than a "build it yourself". It's a sister to my MicroBeast kit, which you solder - but this uses the NanoBeast that squeezes the MicroBeast architecture down to a pre-assembled board.

I was hoping to demonstrate this last weekend at RetroFest 2026. A true 8-bit Pocket Computer running CP/M on an 8Mhz Z80. On board storage, USB-C or battery powered, internal module bay and full RC2014 expansion bus. It runs Microsoft BASIC and Zork. So it's called the Zorkulator. Please share.

To the specific challenge (multiply the value in A by 10), this is a pretty well known and 'clean' solution.

I thought I'd let AI have a go at Z80. The result - horribly inefficient code, unnecessary resource usage, and it then lies about the performance (cycles). ..and this is for a small, very regularly reproduced code snippet.

Insert joke about vibe coding. Yes, we do have a VI editor for MicroBeast.

So with a little bit of luck (and some bodge wires) it looks like I'll have a couple of VideoBeast dev boards available for the end of the month. MicroBeast or Spectrum compatible. The question is, who would be able to make the most use of one? Ideas? Suggestions? feersumbeasts.com/videobeast/d...

Successful weekend moving things on. VideoBeast features a full SPI interface under control of the host CPU, with DMA allowing up to 3Mb/s to video RAM. Essentially, you could just stream Bad Apple straight off the SD Card.

About 60% of VideoBeast development at the moment is making sure the MicroBeast BIOS doesn't screw over user apps. It's hard to debug features when your test programs get attacked by the operating system. 😂😂 #whowrotethis #itwasme

I really like Lotus cars - they appeal to the engineer in me - but it's notable that every single one of their big launches has been synchronised with a global financial crisis. I'm not saying stock up on tinned foods, but...

The MicroBeast kit is still going strong, with BIOS updates, a new Forth and improved BASIC, a great emulator and lots of work going on in the background on the video upgrade, VideoBeast. You can order one from my website, and join the 8-bit fun : feersumbeasts.com

It's a Beast in a Box... you don't have to keep your Beast in the box it comes in if you don't want to. And look at that lovely display!

Today's win: One universal binary LED display, VideoBeast display, LCD display or headless. MicroBeast or NanoBeast. Keyboard or terminal. USB powered, barrel jack or battery. I don't know why Microsoft make it all look so difficult...

Got to get the joke in... May the Forth be with you.

Ohhh... @samcoupe.com has put together a handy backplane for the MicroBeast! Isn't that cool?!

Just got a useful upgrade from Sipeed - their 16 channel logic analyser being chronically underused here to sniff I2C packets. I'm going through charging cycles whilst porting BeastOS to NanoBeast, and just validating the hardware is solid. Really pleased with how well it all works!

To the West there is a path. "Go West" You cannot go West, there is a duck blocking the path.

Testing battery charging circuits is boring. There, I've said it. OTOH - MicroBeast and NanoBeast can now run off batteries (and for a decent amount of time - somewhere around 8 hours depending on usage), and tell you charge levels and time to charge/discharge - with just an 8-bit CPU(*)

I've just spent four hours tracking down a software bug... ...that turned out to be a dry solder joint. On the one hand, I'm quite annoyed. On the other hand I'm very happy - it works!!! It's taken a while to get here, but I've got a properly working LCD screen. (Spot the bodges!)