Doom can do anything. From the 386 PC of the 1990s to the Raspberry Pi Pico of today. But did you expect to defeat the hordes of hell via Christmas decorations? Sprite_tm’s lovingly recreated IBM PC ‘babe’ inside It’s ESP32 and a perfect copy of Doom. But that’s not all, if you have good eyesight you can play!
it is clear to see Sprite_tm A project is a labor of love. The project is powered by an ESP32 microcontroller, specifically ESP32-C3-WROOM-02, which allows the project to wirelessly connect to a Bluetooth LE controller. Sprite_tm used the NimBLE lightweight Bluetooth stack to create a compatible keyboard and controller interface. Decorations play a special Gameboy Advance port of Destiny. Not the original production version, but a simplified version created by “Doomhack”. The stripped-down version runs great on an ESP32 RISCV SoC at 160 MHz and 400 KB of SRAM, restoring much of the original PC version to a port that was heavily censored upon release. Sprite_tm works with ESP32 and Espressif, the makers of the venerable ESP8266, so the choice of ESP32 chip is prudent. The core system is contained on a custom PCB and everything can be shrunk to fit a small PC case.
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The integrated 0.96-inch display looks too small for older eyes and a little too long for the model “monitor.” Sprite_tm cleverly rotates the monitor vertically so that part of the screen is visible on the monitor. I tweaked some code for resizing and rotating the video and it uses a small part of the screen. The decoration also includes I2S audio playback and a classic OPL audio version of the original soundtrack. Audio is played through appropriately scaled speakers. Powering the PC is a small lithium-ion battery that plugs into a custom PCB.
The 3D model of the IBM PC was created in OpenSCAD and is an approximation of the IBM XT PC case. The PC was printed using an SLA 3D printer, and Sprite_tm comments that it can also be printed on an FDM 3D printer, but SLA offers much better quality.
For more information on Sprite_tm’s outstanding Christmas decorations, visit www.sprite_tm.com Head over to their blog. There you can find all the schematics and files to recreate your own Doomed Christmas decorations.
