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As we’ve reported on many times over the years, Valve’s hardware efforts attract the attention of the DIY project community like no other. The Steam Controller is no exception, as creator Owen Feldman has managed to get classic text adventure Zork running on its internal hardware.
Feldman has documented the project on their blog, but it wasn’t always a smooth ride to convince the controller to play ball (via Hackaday). An internal tool discovered within a Steam hardware updater folder was used to flash the firmware—but Feldman managed to temporarily brick their controller in the process.
After recovering the controller, a custom Rust-based program was used to emulate an Intel 8080 CPU and run the CP/M-80 operating system on the Steam Controller’s internal processor. As the device has no keyboard or screen, the built-in USB connection was used for I/O streaming purposes.
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So, what do you do first when you’ve successfully convinced a controller to emulate a CPU and run an OS all on its own? Well, you play games on it, of course.
A floppy disk (hey, remember those?) copy of Zork was used to load the game via an external drive, resulting in a Steam Controller rig that’s been connected to a remarkable number of add-on devices. I doubt it knows exactly what hit it.
Still, the end result looks like a very playable experience. Feldman describes the process of creating the custom program as “1514 lines of pain,” but what they’ve ended up with is the PC hardware equivalent of a magic trick. Who knew the Steam Controller could play games in its own right?
However, I think I’ll be leaving this Steam Controller-flashing method well alone, and not just because my Rust coding abilities are non-existent. Feldman warns that bricking your device through the flashing process is a real possibility, and given that it’s a $99 piece of kit, perhaps it’s better to leave this one to the braver hardware hackers among us.
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