How many potatoes do you need to run Doom?

Posted on Friday, October 16 2020 @ 14:48 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
While not really useful, a small amount of electricity can be generated via a so-called potato battery. With a bunch of potatoes, you can start doing some interesting tricks. YouTuber Equalo decided to dedicate his free time to figuring out how many potatoes it takes to run the original DOOM.

He first tried to get a Raspberry Pi Zero running on potatoes but that didn't pan out as the Raspberry Pi Zero requires 120-140 milliamps to boot even with HDMI disabled. Then he turned to the Texas Instruments Ti-84 calculator, which needs just 10-30 milliamps.

Basically, the conclusion is you need a shit-ton of potatoes to run a very crude version of DOOM. Not only is it a lot of work to make the giant potatoes-based battery, it also starts rotting fairly quickly, which gives the gameplay an extra "rotten smelly" dimension. Happy weekend!
The brand-new, yam-energized Tater-84 Plus proves capable of zipping through the game, making this the first time to my knowledge that any computing device capable of playing Doom has been powered entirely by potato. The experience on a Z80 with 24KB of RAM is far from what you’d want, but it is Doom (at least the Ti-84 Plus version), and it is being powered by a massive, rotting organic battery.


Via: ExtremeTech


About the Author

Thomas De Maesschalck

Thomas has been messing with computer since early childhood and firmly believes the Internet is the best thing since sliced bread. Enjoys playing with new tech, is fascinated by science, and passionate about financial markets. When not behind a computer, he can be found with running shoes on or lifting heavy weights in the weight room.



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