035 - Retro-friendly homelabs with ZimaOS

In this episode, John and Dave talk about discovering ZimaOS and building an affordable home lab using repurposed hardware - and how that single setup quickly expands into media streaming, network-wide ad blocking, ROM organization, browser-based retro gaming, backups, and local services. Along the way, they also touch on the Commodore 64 Ultimate, a Sega Channel preservation project, a retro electronics repair simulator, and why digital preservation and self-hosting matter more than ever.

Topics & sub-topics discussed:

• ZimaOS - app-based operating system that makes home labs approachable
  https://www.zimaspace.com/zimaos

• Home lab fundamentals - NAS, backups, ad blocking, VMs, and always-on servers

• ROMM - organizing ROM libraries with metadata, artwork, and downloads
  https://github.com/rommapp/romm

• EmulatorJS - play retro games directly in your web browser
  https://emulatorjs.org

• Jellyfin - self-hosted media streaming without subscriptions
  https://jellyfin.org

• The 8-Bit Files Podcast & Discord
  https://the8bitfiles.com