DOOM. Boil it, mash it, stick it in a stew, it’s the game that runs on anything and everything. Now, the classic shooter is running on a rather unlikely target—a cheap clamp meter of very limited resources, thanks to the work of [Artur Bieniek].

The clamp meter in question is the FNIRSI DMC-100, which can be had for the low price of just $30 or so if you know where to look. It’s a far cry from the many thousands of dollars you’d pay for a heavy old 486-based machine back in 1993. [Artur] got the doomgeneric engine running on the Artery AT32F415 chip that runs the clamp meter.

The chip is pretty capable, with its 150 MHz clock speed, though the 32 KB of RAM posed rather a big limitation to the project. It may be one of the lowest RAM DOOM ports out there.

Color graphics are displayed on the meter’s 320 x 240 screen, and there are even sound effects on the built-in buzzer. Controls are mapped to the rather curious choice of a DJI RC-N1 drone controller.

DOOM for the FNIRSI DMC-100
https://github.com/ArturBieniek4/DMC100-Doom

DOOM running on the FNIRSI DMC-100 clamp meter: the DOOM engine (doomgeneric, derived from id Software’s GPL source release) on an Artery AT32F415 with 32 KB of RAM, 99 KB (101,376 bytes) of flash for the program and a 4 MB SPI NOR flash without execute in place. It plays episode 1 of Freedoom: Phase 1 (E1M1 to E1M9 with the title screen, intermissions, the finale, the menu and four save slots) on the meter’s 320×240 screen, with sound effects on the meter’s buzzer. A DJI RC-N1 drone controller can be used as a game pad.

It’s technically true that any piece of software can be reproduced in hardware, although modern software’s size and complexity generally makes this a non-starter. But if we go far enough back in time, older software becomes easier and easier to implement in hardware. The original DOOM from 1993 might one day be recreated in full this way, but that day is not today. Instead, [Nick] has recreated the original music from that game, playing the opening track in nothing but 555 timers.

The circuit starts with a 555 timer that acts as a system clock with a rate of just over 7 Hz. These pulses feed a binary counter which in turn feeds a decoder, giving the circuit 15 positions. Each output of the decoder feeds to a diode matrix which stores information about what pitch the circuit should play. The circuit only needs to play six pitches so the diodes effectively connect each moment in time to one of these six notes. From there the circuit feeds into a set of switches which select different resistor networks of another 555 which is actually responsible for producing sound. The resistor networks have different values to adjust the timing of the 555 to produce different pitches.

Of course this entire exercise is largely academic as almost any microcontroller would be able to be programmed to play this chiptune quite easily,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ER7X53e6r7c

Biological Computer with Living Human Brain Cells Successfully Plays Doom Game

https://www.electricaltechnology.org/2026/03/worlds-first-living-neuron-biological-computer.html