Welcome to MyRetroCorner

1 August 2026

Today I'm officially launching MyRetroCorner.

This site has been in my head for a while, although it didn't really start as a website. It started with old computers, bits of hardware I'd collected over the years, Raspberry Pis, late-night experiments and the usual question that gets me into trouble:

"I wonder if I can make this work again?"

That's really what MyRetroCorner is about.

I'm not trying to build another polished technology news site. There are plenty of those already. I want this to be somewhere for people who still get excited by an Amiga boot screen, a Commodore 64 READY prompt, an old beige PC, the sound of a floppy drive seeking — or, perhaps most importantly for my current obsession, the screech of a dial-up modem negotiating a connection.

My aim is to document what I'm building, share the hardware I've accumulated, record what I learn along the way and hopefully create something useful for the wider retro-computing community.

And the project that really pushed me into finally creating this site is RetroModem.

Bringing Dial-Up Back to Life

RetroModem started with a slightly ridiculous idea.

I wanted an old computer to be able to dial the Internet again.

Not through an Ethernet adapter disguised as something modern. Not by simply sticking a Wi-Fi card into an old machine.

I wanted the computer to think it was using a real modem.

That means:

ATDT442708

RING...
RING...

CONNECT 33600

And yes, it needs to make all the right noises too.

The project uses a Raspberry Pi to emulate the modem. An old computer connects to it through its serial port and talks to RetroModem using the AT commands that actual modems understood.

The Pi then establishes the modern network side of the connection using PPP and routes it to the Internet.

What started as a fairly simple experiment has grown rather quickly.

I've added dial tones, DTMF dialling, ringing, modem handshake sounds, busy and no-carrier tones, selectable audio output, an OLED status display and various other details that aren't strictly necessary but make the experience feel right.

And that's important to me.

There are easier ways to connect an old computer to the Internet.

The easy way isn't the point.

I want to preserve some of the experience of actually using these machines.

More recently I've started separating RetroModem into different modem personalities. Instead of simply pretending to be a generic modem, the goal is to let you choose what RetroModem should emulate.

A US Robotics Sportster is the first.

Hayes is next.

Eventually I'd love RetroModem to become a little library of classic modem personalities.

One Raspberry Pi. Lots of virtual modems.

The Hardware Collection

The second part of MyRetroCorner is going to be about the actual hardware.

I've accumulated quite a collection over time, and rather than having machines, peripherals and components sitting around without any record of them, I want to gradually document them here.

That means computers such as the Commodore and Amiga systems I'm particularly interested in, but also PCs, Raspberry Pis, modems, storage devices, displays, peripherals, expansion hardware and the assorted strange bits and pieces that inevitably accumulate when you're interested in old technology.

I don't want those pages to become copied specification sheets.

Specifications are useful, of course, but you can find those elsewhere.

I'd rather document my actual machines.

What condition they were in when I got them. What needed repairing. What I've upgraded. What I've discovered while using them. Photographs, benchmarks where they're interesting, software I've tried and the inevitable problems encountered along the way.

Sometimes the broken stuff makes the better story anyway.

Games and Software

Hardware without software isn't much fun.

I'll also be building up sections covering the games and software I actually use and remember.

There are already games appearing in the database, and over time I want to turn that into something substantial — screenshots, memories, information, discoveries and recommendations rather than simply another giant list of titles.

The same applies to operating systems and applications.

DOS, Windows 3.x, Windows 95/98, Workbench, Commodore software and whatever else I end up experimenting with will inevitably find its way onto these pages.

There's no sensible chronological boundary.

If I find it interesting and sufficiently retro, it qualifies.

That's the highly scientific editorial policy.

Building Things, Not Just Collecting Them

This is probably the most important part of the site for me.

I don't want MyRetroCorner to become a museum where everything sits behind glass.

I like building things with old technology.

RetroModem is one example, but there will be others.

Some will involve Raspberry Pis bridging old and new technology. Some will be restoration projects. Others may involve software, networking, electronics or completely unnecessary solutions to problems nobody has had since 1997.

Those are often the best projects.

And when something goes wrong, I intend to document that too.

One thing I've learned from working on RetroModem is that a description of why something didn't work can sometimes be more useful than the final instructions.

So project articles will include the dead ends, mistakes and fixes rather than pretending everything worked perfectly on the first attempt.

It certainly didn't.

Giving Something Back to the Retro Community

There's another reason for creating MyRetroCorner.

I've benefited enormously from information shared by other enthusiasts.

Old forum posts, personal websites, archived documentation, GitHub projects and someone writing about an obscure problem fifteen years ago have rescued more than a few of my projects.

I'd like MyRetroCorner to contribute something back.

As the site grows, I want it to become somewhere people can find useful information, project documentation, downloads where I'm legally able to provide them, configuration examples, code and practical solutions.

If I spend an evening figuring out some ridiculous problem involving a thirty-year-old computer and a Raspberry Pi, there isn't much point in the next person having to figure it all out again.

I'll write it down.

That's how these old machines stay alive.

Old Computers, Modern World

There's a phrase I've found myself coming back to while working on RetroModem:

Sometimes the better solution is to make the modern world speak the old computer's language.

That sums up a lot of what I want to do here.

I don't want to turn an Amiga into a modern PC.

I want to see what an Amiga can still do as an Amiga.

I don't want an old DOS computer to magically acquire Wi-Fi and forget that modems ever existed.

Sometimes I want to type:

ATDT442708

hear two rings and a ridiculous electronic argument between two imaginary modems, and then see:

CONNECT 33600

Is that practical?

Not particularly.

Is it fun?

Absolutely.

And that's reason enough.

So welcome to MyRetroCorner.

The site is only just beginning. There's plenty of hardware still to document, a rapidly evolving RetroModem project to finish, games and software to add, and quite a few ideas I probably haven't thought of yet.

If you're interested in old computers, restoring them, programming them, connecting them to things they were never designed to connect to, or simply remembering what computing used to feel like, I hope you'll find something here worth coming back for.

MyRetroCorner was born on 1 August 2026.

Let's see where it goes.

— S. M. Zaidi