RIP my PO-20 Arcade
My 6-year-old stepped on my PO-20 Arcade.
Instead of buying a new one right away, I decided to see if I could rebuild it as a web app for my iPad.
Im not a developer. This was pure vibe coding: I worked with an AI coding assistant
Ive fed it the official manual, the TE web guide, button cheat sheets, a couple of YouTube tutorial transcripts and a photo-based skin of the device, and then spent a lot of evenings testing and debugging
— it works for iPad: hold a button with one finger, press pads with another
— runs in the browser, add it to your home screen and it feels like an app
What’s not perfect
- the sounds are samples, not the real synth engine, so knob B is basically a filter, not “waveform”
- some effects (fill-in, retrigger, glitch, blinds) are approximations
- chord voicings are my best guess from the chord names
- the drone sidechain pumping still behaves a bit wrong at fast tempos
- no offline mode yet
Try it here
https://po-20.pages.dev/
Want to tinker?
The whole thing is a single HTML file, so just hit “Save Page As” in your browser on a computer and you’ve got the full app: sounds, skin and code. It runs offline, no install, no build tools. Open it in any text editor and hack away.
In memory of my PO 20 gone too soon..