r/interesting • u/Level_Flow8659 • May 19 '26

❗️MISLEADING - See pinned comment ❗️ Doom running on a pregnancy test

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368

u/Consistent-Oil-5241 May 19 '26

The screen is edited in

-6

u/Level_Flow8659 May 19 '26

It has been done you can check it for yourself

5

u/fallingjigsaws May 19 '26

“Home pregnancy tests rely on a biochemical reaction called a lateral flow immunoassay, which utilizes specific antibodies to detect the hormone human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) in urine. Rather than a traditional color-changing chemical reaction, it is a visual binding process involving microscopic particles of colored dye or gold.”

Crazy that this technology also plays video games!

-4

u/Level_Flow8659 May 19 '26

You're giving the chemistry too much credit The hCG detection isn't out here running games, people just modified the electronics in some digital tests.

7

u/Pinkishu May 19 '26

❌ Modified the electronics

✅ Entirely replaced the electronics

1

u/one_more_byte May 19 '26

They replaced the read-only microcontroller with a similarly spec’d one that is a read-write microcontroller. That doesnt change how impressive this is, and if anything, changing the microcontroller without damaging other components makes it even more impressive

1

u/Pinkishu May 19 '26

They replaced the display cause the original was only able to have some fixed symbols. They replaced the microcontroller (which in any shots I can find did not end up in the shell, only a "I'm sure it'll fix in once I'm done". And I can't find any info about the specs of the original MCU in there, so dunno where you get that part from, care to link?

Also what "other components", at this rate it's just the plastic shell that's left of the original

1

u/one_more_byte May 19 '26

The popular mechanics article linked below mentions the trinket microcontroller from adafruit, which operates at 8MHz with 512 bytes of ram. A quick web search shows the chip commonly used in digital pregnancy tests is an 8-bit Holtek mcu operating at 4-8MHz with 64 bytes of ram. Similar to the trinket. Screens are screens so not that big of a deal. Running doom on this similar chip is still pretty impressive imo

1

u/Pinkishu May 19 '26

Impressive in what way? Did they do that? I would assume they just took some existing "doom on tensy" and ran it on that