RetroFPGA Computer Museum

Preserving the World’s Computing Heritage Through FPGA Technology

Rebuilding the past. Understanding the present. Inspiring the future.

Welcome to the RetroFPGA Computer Museum

The RetroFPGA Computer Museum is an open engineering, educational, and digital preservation initiative dedicated to recreating historic computing systems using Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technology.

Our mission goes beyond collecting vintage computers. We aim to preserve the architectures, digital logic, programming techniques, and engineering knowledge that shaped the modern computing world.

From the earliest electronic computers to classic home computers, commercial mainframes, industrial controllers, military computing systems, spacecraft guidance computers, and video game consoles, the museum explores the evolution of computing across generations and civilizations.

Unlike a traditional museum where visitors can only observe historical machines behind glass, RetroFPGA aims to bring these systems back to life.

We want people to experience how historical computers actually worked.

Why This Museum Exists

Preserving Technology Before It Disappears

Historic computers are becoming increasingly difficult to obtain, maintain, and operate.

Many original machines are now decades old. Their components deteriorate, specialized replacement parts become unavailable, and proprietary integrated circuits may no longer be manufactured.

Magnetic storage media deteriorate. Capacitors fail. Circuit boards corrode. Technical documentation disappears, and the number of engineers familiar with these systems continues to decline.

Some historically important computers were produced in extremely limited quantities. Others were developed for government agencies, industrial facilities, military applications, scientific laboratories, and space missions.

Many of these machines were never available to the general public.

Even when original hardware survives, its acquisition and restoration may be prohibitively expensive.

A computer that can no longer operate risks becoming an artifact whose engineering knowledge is increasingly difficult to experience firsthand.

FPGA technology offers another path.

By reconstructing historical digital circuits in programmable logic, we can preserve and study their behavior without depending entirely on increasingly rare original components.

FPGA reconstruction does not replace the preservation of authentic historical hardware. Instead, it complements physical collections by making historical architectures accessible for experimentation, education, and long-term research.

Our goal is not simply to simulate the appearance of vintage computers.

Our goal is to preserve their engineering principles and bring their digital logic back into operation.

Five Eras of Computing

The museum organizes its historical exhibits into five major computing eras.

These periods provide an educational framework rather than rigid boundaries. Some architectures remained influential across multiple eras, and exhibits are classified according to their historical and technological significance.

Era I — Computing Pioneers (1940–1976)

The birth of electronic computing and the earliest generations of microprocessors.

This era explores the foundations of digital computing, including logic gates, registers, arithmetic units, memory systems, and early computer architectures.

Representative exhibits include:

Early electronic computing architectures
Intel 4004, 8008, and 8080
Altair 8800
SAP-1 educational computer
Early scientific and institutional computing systems

Era II — The 8-bit Golden Age (1977–1986)

The era when computing began entering homes, classrooms, and small businesses.

Microprocessors such as the MOS 6502 and Zilog Z80 powered an extraordinary variety of computers and entertainment systems.

Representative exhibits include:

Apple II
Commodore 64
Sinclair ZX81 and ZX Spectrum
BBC Micro
MSX computers
Nintendo Entertainment System
IBM PC and PC/XT
IBM PC/AT

Era III — The 16/32-bit Revolution (1987–1994)

Personal computers evolved toward more advanced operating systems, graphical interfaces, larger memory spaces, and increasingly sophisticated multimedia capabilities.

Representative exhibits include:

Intel 80386 and 80486 systems
Motorola 68000-family computers
Commodore Amiga
Atari ST
Apple Macintosh
NEC PC-9800 family
Sharp X68000
Nintendo Game Boy
Super Nintendo Entertainment System
Sega Mega Drive / Genesis

Era IV — Multimedia and Internet Computing (1995–2005)

Computing entered the age of widespread internet access, advanced graphical operating systems, and hardware-accelerated 3D graphics.

Representative exhibits include:

Intel Pentium-family computers
PowerPC-based computers
Windows 95/98-era systems
Sony PlayStation
Nintendo 64
Sega Saturn and Dreamcast
Early embedded networking systems

Era V — Modern and Open Computing (2006–Present)

Modern computing increasingly combines multicore processors, 64-bit architectures, integrated systems, and specialized computing accelerators.

Representative research areas include:

ARM-based systems
RISC-V processors
FPGA-based System-on-Chip architectures
Modern embedded computing
Heterogeneous computing
Open hardware architectures

Full reconstruction of contemporary high-performance processors is not always practical. Selected educational cores, architectural demonstrations, and verifiable subsystems will therefore form an important part of this era.

A Global Museum: Eastern and Western Computing Heritage

Computing history is not limited to one country, one company, or one technological tradition.

The RetroFPGA Computer Museum aims to document and reconstruct important computing architectures developed around the world.

This includes systems originating in North America, Europe, Japan, Taiwan, China, the former Soviet Union, and other regions with significant contributions to computing history.

Our collection will explore eight major categories:

Educational and Scientific Computing — Early computing machines, laboratory computers, research processors, and educational CPU architectures.
Home and Personal Computing — Home computers, personal computers, and early desktop computing systems.
Business and Commercial Computing — Mainframes, minicomputers, terminals, and business data-processing systems.
Industrial Computing — Industrial controllers, automation computers, process-control systems, and embedded industrial architectures.
Aviation and Aerospace Computing — Aircraft computers, avionics, navigation systems, and aerospace control architectures.
Military and Defense Computing — Historically documented military computing architectures, command-and-control computers, and selected public-domain or openly documented subsystems.
Spacecraft and Space Exploration Computing — Guidance computers, spacecraft control systems, satellite processors, and planetary exploration computing.
Video Game and Entertainment Computing — Arcade machines, home consoles, handheld gaming systems, and their specialized processors.

The museum will emphasize historical accuracy, technical documentation, legal access to software and hardware designs, and transparent identification of reconstructed versus original functionality.

Featured Future Exhibit: Apollo 11 Eagle Guidance Computer

The Computer That Helped Humanity Land on the Moon

One of the museum’s most significant planned aerospace exhibits is the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC), associated with NASA’s Apollo program.

On July 20, 1969, the Apollo 11 Lunar Module Eagle successfully landed on the Moon.

The spacecraft’s guidance computer played a critical role in navigation, guidance, and flight control.

Despite its extremely limited computing resources by modern standards, the AGC demonstrated remarkable advances in real-time computing, integrated circuit technology, and mission-critical software engineering.

The proposed FPGA exhibit will explore:

Apollo Guidance Computer architecture
CPU instruction execution
Fixed and erasable memory
The DSKY display and keyboard interface
Historical Apollo flight software
Real-time task scheduling
Apollo 11 landing-related computer alarms
The relationship between primary and backup guidance systems

The long-term objective is to provide an interactive educational environment where visitors can study and operate a historically grounded reconstruction of this pioneering spacecraft computer.

The exhibit is currently a research and development objective, not a completed FPGA implementation.

FPGA Hardware: From Entry-Level Boards to Advanced Platforms

The museum is built around FPGA technology because it allows digital hardware architectures to be reconstructed and executed as actual programmable logic.

Rather than requiring every historical system to coexist inside a single FPGA, the museum will use separate hardware configurations and independently developed exhibits.

Entry-Level FPGA Platforms

Our primary development platform is the Digilent Basys 3, featuring the AMD/Xilinx Artix-7 XC7A35T FPGA.

The Basys 3 provides an accessible foundation for:

Digital logic education
SAP-1 computer development
Simple 8-bit CPU architectures
VGA output
Keyboard and switch input
UART program loading
Hardware debugging and verification

Additional educational FPGA boards may be evaluated as secondary platforms.

Mid-Range FPGA Platforms

More complex historical computers require additional logic capacity, memory resources, and external interfaces.

Mid-range FPGA platforms will support selected 16-bit and 32-bit systems, advanced graphics controllers, and larger computer architectures.

Potential platform families include larger Artix and Kintex devices, along with comparable FPGA solutions from other manufacturers.

High-End FPGA Platforms

Advanced historical systems may require substantially greater resources, particularly when reconstructing complete computers with complex peripherals.

High-end FPGA platforms will be evaluated for selected late-era computers, sophisticated multimedia architectures, and large historical computing systems.

FPGA System-on-Chip Platforms

FPGA SoC devices may provide additional capabilities for modern architectural research, host interfaces, memory management, and hybrid computing experiments.

The Basys 3 remains the project’s primary development platform. Mid-range and high-end FPGA platforms are planned expansion targets rather than replacements for the existing development work.

A Museum of Working Computers

Every exhibit is intended to provide more than a static technical description.

Depending on available documentation and hardware resources, exhibits may include:

Reconstructed CPU logic
Memory and peripheral interfaces
Original or compatible software
Assembly language programming tools
VGA or other display output
Keyboard and controller input
Interactive demonstrations
Debugging and instruction tracing
Historical documentation
FPGA resource and timing reports

Whenever possible, users will be able to select a historical computer, load its FPGA configuration, upload compatible programs, and interact with the reconstructed system.

Some exhibits may reproduce complete machines, while others will focus on documented processors or individual subsystems.

The museum will clearly distinguish cycle-accurate reconstruction, functional compatibility, educational approximation, and experimental research.

Open Engineering and Education

The RetroFPGA Computer Museum is also a practical engineering education project.

Its development combines:

Verilog and SystemVerilog
FPGA architecture and digital design
CPU microarchitecture
Assembly language
Memory systems
Hardware interfaces
Linux development tools
Automated simulation and verification
Historical computing research

Our long-term goal is to publish reusable source code, tutorials, verification tools, hardware documentation, and compatible demonstration software wherever licensing and historical source availability permit.

This will allow students, researchers, engineers, and enthusiasts to learn not only what historical computers did, but how they were built.

Development Roadmap

The museum will grow incrementally.

Phase 1 — Museum Foundation

Establish the repository structure, exhibit catalog, hardware platform standards, and documentation framework.

Phase 2 — Educational CPU Gallery

Continue the existing SAP-1 development work and expand into additional educational CPU architectures.

Phase 3 — Program Loading and Debugging

Develop reusable Linux-based tools for FPGA configuration, program upload, execution control, and debugging.

Phase 4 — Classic Microprocessor Gallery

Introduce historical processor families such as the MOS 6502, Zilog Z80, Motorola 68000, and selected Intel architectures.

Phase 5 — Complete Historical Computer Systems

Reconstruct selected home, commercial, industrial, and entertainment systems.

Phase 6 — Aerospace and Specialized Computing

Research and implement historically documented aerospace, spacecraft, scientific, and defense-related computing systems.

Phase 7 — Advanced FPGA Expansion

Evaluate mid-range, high-end, and FPGA SoC platforms for increasingly complex exhibits.

The roadmap is a long-term plan. Individual exhibits will progress according to available documentation, engineering feasibility, hardware resources, and verification results.

Our Vision

Computing history belongs to humanity.

The machines that transformed science, industry, communication, entertainment, aviation, and space exploration represent generations of human creativity and engineering achievement.

Yet many of these systems are becoming increasingly inaccessible.

Some survive only in museums. Others remain in private collections, historical documents, archived source code, or memories of the engineers who designed them.

The RetroFPGA Computer Museum seeks to preserve this heritage through an open, practical, and educational approach.

We believe that understanding the history of computing is essential to understanding its future.

We are not simply rebuilding old computers.

We are preserving the ideas, architectures, and engineering knowledge that made modern computing possible.

One FPGA at a time. One computer at a time. One era at a time.

Rebuilding the world’s computing heritage for future generations.Computer Museum