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Hello! I'm maniek86. I am a young electronics hobbyist, low-level programmer, and retro tech enthusiast based in Poland. I am currently studying, and I spend my free time working on cool projects like designing custom PCBs, playing with digital electronics, FPGAs, and embedded hardware. I love writing low-level software and bringing retro hardware back to life. I'm mostly self-taught, driven by curiosity and a love for the internet's vast resources. I also enjoy collecting and preserving old PC hardware, as well as analyzing how it works at a low level.

On this website, I write about my projects and share my work.

My skills & interests

Low-level, hardware: Assembly (x86, 6502, M68K), C, C++, VHDL (FPGAs). I enjoy doing low-level development (I have written own x86 operating systems and a BIOS).
Hardware design, electronics engineering: PCB design, system architecture. I've designed multiple PCBs and built several homebrew computers from scratch using individual chips.
Web, scripting: I occasionally like to mess around with Python, JavaScript, PHP, HTML/CSS and Shell scripting.
Other programming languages: C#, Lua and probably more to come. I adapt quickly and learn new languages whenever I need to.
Environments: Linux enthusiast (Debian Linux as a daily driver).

Featured projects

I spend a lot of time designing retro hardware and quirky software. Here are a few things I'm most proud of: maniek86's homebrew computers

M8SBC-486

My current flagship project. This is a fully custom 486 homebrew computer where I designed the schematics, routed the PCB, created the chipset from scratch using an FPGA and developed the BIOS sources. I put a lot of effort into making it PC-compatible and in the end, it is capable of running Linux, DOS and even DOOM! This is my first project in which I designed a four-layer PCB and used an FPGA for the first time.

Homebrew 6502, 68000 and 486 computers

My passion for digital electronics naturally led me to homebrew computers. The first one I built used a 6502 CPU, and I got it to the point where it could run BASIC. My second build was even more ambitious: I jumped from the 8-bit 6502 to a 16-bit Motorola 68000. It can run programs written in C and I even built my own graphics card for it using TTL ICs - it can run the "Bad Apple!!" demo pretty smoothly! Still, 16-bit wasn't enough for me, so I decided to build a 32-bit machine using an i486 CPU. Who knows what CPU I am going to use next (because neither do I!). Check out the homebrew computers page for more!

8-bit ISA Debug & POST Card

Custom hardware I designed for debugging ISA bus systems and reading POST codes. This was my first project that dragged me deeper into CPLDs and FPGAs. Plus, I learned VHDL because of it!

Stillalive-os

An older and fun project written in C where I turned the iconic "Still Alive" ending sequence from the game Portal into an actual, bootable operating system. This project taught me a lot about low-level programming, especially on x86 architecture.

Connect & support

Interested in my work or want to collaborate? You can find me across the web:

My public & open source work: Check out my GitHub - I like open source work, so I usually open source my projects.
Videos: Check out my YouTube channel - I occasionally post about my projects. It's mainly a Polish channel, but I often post content that doesn't require understanding the language!
Support: If you like my projects and want to help fund my work, consider supporting me on Ko-fi. Because I am still studying, I rely entirely on my pocket money to pay for components, parts and hosting my website.
Contact: See About page.

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