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Some nutbag was able to play Doom on a calculator powered by old potatoes 

What’s next? Running the iconic game on an Apple-powered watch?

Doom calculator
Image: YouTube

Pregnancy tests have been used to play DOOM. So has the Playdate handheld console, complete with hand-crank-for-Gatling-gun action. Another bright spark has taken the next logical step and streamed DOOM Eternal to their Samsung fridge or a John Deere tractor.

There’s even a Tumblr account – itrunsdoom – that lists all the different pieces of tech it works on. What I’m trying to say is that if you have a screen, somebody has probably figured out how to run some form of DOOM on it. So, it comes as no surprise that someone has now mashed up that idea and ran the seminal fps on a TI-84 Plus graphing calculator, which was powered by potatoes.

I’m sorry… Potatoes?!

Yes, potatoes. YouTuber Equalo baked up the wonderful plan to run a version of DOOM powered entirely by the versatile root vegetable. Originally, he intended to do this on a Raspberry Pi Zero due to the low voltage needed to power it. Take a look:

His video shows the painstaking effort he went to as he chipped away at the idea over a full week. Boiling 100 pounds of potatoes and slicing them into 700 individual slices shows commitment. To hook them up in a connected grid as they begin to rot (and stink) puts his determination on a whole new level.

After all was said and done, the big moment arrived, and the spuds sparked past 100 milliamps and 5 volts of current. It all boiled down to this one moment. But the Raspberry Pi never worked. He’d made a hash of it. Maybe his murphy multiplications were off somewhere along the way. Maybe Raspberry Pi-tatoes wasn’t quite as delicious as he thought. Equalo is not one to be beaten, though. Facing into the devastating loss of tainted tubers, he used a high school math essential instead – the TI-84 Plus.

The classic calculator can already run DOOM, so it’s not a massive shock; he managed to get it running. But the fact a few hundred potato pieces powered it? That’s an impressive feat.

This whole experiment just goes to show how far creative (and probably hungry) minds can run with an idea. It goes beyond the scope of simply ‘does DOOM work’ and adds a crisp layer of engineering that’s so incredibly interesting to see.

What’s next? Running the iconic game on an Apple-powered watch?

Did you watch the video? Wild, right? Have any thoughts on this? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

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A gamer since I've been able to hold a controller, I can usually be found with a PlayStation, Xbox or Switch controller in my hand.

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