The log
Making OmaCRT.
Notes on developing OmaCRT: building a compositor, measuring latency, designing the launcher, and getting games onto a CRT television.
For setup instructions, see the manual.
explainer
Sega Model 3 on a real CRT television
Sega's Model 3 drew its races at 384 lines for a 24 kHz arcade monitor. OmaCRT 0.14.0 plays them on a 15 kHz television through Supermodel, which draws the scene at the tube's 240 lines rather than shrinking it to them. Getting there took one relaxed check in an OpenGL loader, two words of an EEPROM, and a flyer in place of a box.
2 022
6
9 min
2 022 words · 6 parts · 9 min
design
How people walk in the hall
The people in OmaCRT's arcade hall took sixteen rounds to walk properly. The first ones copied old adventure games; the ones that worked came from a gait laboratory's tables. This entry follows the rounds in five working figures, and the sprites, the joint table and the study plates are free to reuse.
1 479
5
7 min
1 479 words · 5 parts · 7 min
design
An arcade hall, drawn with an agent
Between a Monday evening and Tuesday afternoon, Claude Opus 5.5 redrew OmaCRT's pixel art from prompts a line or two long. This entry shows the design canvases it proposed, the attempts I turned down, and the Rust that stayed.
2 866
9
13 min
2 866 words · 9 parts · 13 min
note
Getting controllers to behave in OmaCRT
Bluetooth could report success after a failed pairing step. A controller could confirm on A in a game and B in the launcher. Fixing those problems led to a new pads screen on the television and controller controls in Quickshell.
1 165
6
5 min
1 165 words · 6 parts · 5 min
study
Flyback: a new Wayland compositor, written to drive a television
Flyback leases a display connector from Hyprland and drives a television at fifteen kilohertz. This study covers its architecture, frame scheduling and latency measurements, including the limits of variable refresh and four corrections to earlier results.
8 739
12
40 min
8 739 words · 12 parts · 40 min
design
An identity, drawn with an agent
I used Claude to develop a logo for Flyback from OmaCRT's existing design. This is how we went from three proposals to a finished mark, including two rounds of feedback and a crop measurement the agent got wrong.
1 927
8
9 min
1 927 words · 8 parts · 9 min
explainer
How a cathode ray tube works, and why one is fussy about what you send it
A CRT draws its picture with an electron beam, deflection coils and a phosphor coating. This article explains how they work together and why the signal timing matters when driving a television from a PC.
2 686
9
12 min
2 686 words · 9 parts · 12 min
Follow the log
Every entry in full, in whatever reader you use. No account, no letter, and nothing here that knows you were reading.