Turning a vintage Hot Wheels PC into a modern gaming beast #Gaming #VintageComputing @ShankMods
Have you ever heard of the Hot Wheels PC? This classic toy-themed PC came out in the Fall of 1999 with the classic Hot Wheels theme. From The Verge:
By all accounts, the Patriot Hot Wheels Computer was a poorly executed idea. Released alongside the virtually identical Barbie Computer (the two were respectively “Designed specially for Boys [sic]” and “Designed specially for Girls”) in the fall of 1999, it sold for $599 and came bundled with various games and educational software, plus a plastic steering wheel peripheral.
The computer went on to fail even these modest expectations by shipping with a faulty power supply that affected roughly half the first batch of sales. A year later, Patriot Computer filed for bankruptcy with 3,100 PC orders undelivered, leaving buyers with a $100 gift certificate from Mattel by way of apology.
Now, Shank Mods has taken one of these and spent thousands of dollars on some of the most powerful gaming PC hardware available and melded them together. See the magic in the video below.
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
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