Workshop

Not linked from anywhere. If you are here, you knew the way.

Original in German. Translated by Tank.

About me

Born in 1971; in 1983 a C64 stood in my bedroom. First BASIC, then assembler. I have not stopped since.

At sixteen the Amiga came, and with it the scene. I was Magic Drummer, first for the music, then for the code: intros for Skid Row and Endless Piracy, the logo drawn on graph paper at school and the coordinates typed in at night. My bulletin board was called Crackhouse. A few of those intros still run today, in archives, kept alive by people I have never met.

Tommy Powerz comes from the music. I had a song with a DJ called Frankie Flowerz and no name of my own. So: if you are Frankie Flowerz, I am Tommy Powerz. It rhymed. The name stayed; the music I put down in 2008.

Since 2006 I have run platforms that must not stand still, since 2012 with my own company in Berlin. On the side I am building an AI that works with me, and circuit boards an expert advised me against.

And at night I rebuild the machines from back then. This time without anyone else's ROM.

TODO · Placeholder. Tom writes this himself.

Blog

I write when I have thought something through. Every text carries the date I wrote it, not the date it went online. That is on purpose: ideas have a date.

  1. 2026-08-09
    AI Democracy A state goes into the mirror: honest, naked, with all its numbers and mistakes. Then the people give feedback. Everyone. Any time.

All posts

Arcade

Three machines, all built from scratch, all running their own firmware. There is not a single original ROM inside, and that is not an accident. That is the whole point.

3lite C64

6502, VIC, SID: all of it by hand again

The machine it all started with. Processor, video chip and sound chip are written from scratch, following measurements of the real chips. Instead of Commodore's operating system, my own one boots: the 3ROM, with its own BASIC in German and English. You can start typing like it is 1983. F2 starts PigMan, a game I wrote. And 61,000 pieces of scene music are waiting, played by the rebuilt sound chip. Anything that needs the original operating system does not run here. That is the price, and I pay it gladly.

Start the 3lite C64

Amigo500

An Amiga 500 in spirit, not in letter

The Amiga 500 was my machine in the scene. The rebuild has its own 68000 processor, checked against a million single steps of the real chip, zero deviations. Copper, Blitter and Paula are written anew. Instead of Commodore's Kickstart, my own one boots, which is why the box is called Amigo500 and not Amiga. The library holds the demos from the parties of 1989 to 1992, and a shelf with my own traces from the days as Magic Drummer.

Start the Amigo500

3lite Atari 2600

6507, TIA, RIOT: racing the beam, built by hand

The smallest machine and the hardest exercise. The Atari has no frame buffer: the processor paints each line the moment the beam draws it. My rebuild does exactly that, line by line. I measured 2,201 cartridges, 2,037 of them run. The processor is the same one as in the C64, trimmed by the wires the Atari never had.

Start the 3lite Atari 2600

All three run in the browser, with no install and nothing sent to a server. The machines speak their own language; only the C64 also speaks English.