1
The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets
To use the Montreal subway (the Métro), you tap a paper ticket against the turnstile and it opens. The ticket works through a system called ...
Ken Shirriff
Computer history, restoring vintage computers, IC reverse engineering, and whatever
- Popular posts
- 190
- Total points
- 35,765
- HN comments
- 13,189
- Rank
- #12 personal
Visit righto.com → RSS feedOn Hacker News Jul 2013 – Oct 2026
Hardware & Electronics 171History & Retro Computing 128Systems & Performance 21Software Engineering 10Crypto & Blockchain 9Security & Privacy 7
2
How Hacker News ranking really works: scoring, controversy, and penalties
The basic formula for Hacker News ranking has been known for years , but questions remained. Does the published code give the real algorithm...
3
Mining Bitcoin with pencil and paper: 0.67 hashes per day
This article is now available in Japanese: 紙と鉛筆でビットコインをマイニング：1日に0.67ハッシュ and Russian: Майним Bitcoin с помощью бумаги и ручки . I decided...
4
Macbook charger teardown: surprising complexity inside Apple's power adapter
Have you ever wondered what's inside your Macbook's charger? There's a lot more circuitry crammed into the compact power adapter than you...
5
The Pentium as a Navajo Weaving
Hurrying through the National Gallery of Art five minutes before closing, I passed a Navajo weaving with a complex abstract pattern. Suddenl...
6
Examining a vintage RAM chip, I find a counterfeit with a different die inside
A die photo of a vintage 64-bit TTL RAM chip came up on Twitter recently, but the more I examined the photo the more puzzled I became. The c...
7
The electromechanical angle computer inside the B-52 bomber's star tracker
Before GPS, how did aircraft navigate? One important technique was celestial navigation: navigating from the positions of the stars, planets...
8
Reverse-engineering the Yamaha DX7 synthesizer's sound chip from die photos
The Yamaha DX7 digital synthesizer was released in 1983 and became "one of the most important advances in the history of modern popular mu...
9
Teardown of a PC Power Supply
Have you ever wondered what's inside your computer's power supply? The task of a PC power supply is to convert the power from the wall (1...
10
Apple iPhone charger teardown: quality in a tiny expensive package (2012)
This article is now available in Vietnamese Bộ sạc iPhone của Apple . Disassembling Apple's diminutive inch-cube iPhone charger reveals ...
11
Intel's $475M error: the silicon behind the Pentium division bug
In 1993, Intel released the high-performance Pentium processor, the start of the long-running Pentium line. The Pentium had many improvement...
12
The Pentium contains a complicated circuit to multiply by three
This article is available in German at Heise Online . In 1993, Intel released the high-performance Pentium processor, the start of the long...
13
A Navajo weaving of an integrated circuit: the 555 timer
The noted Diné (Navajo) weaver Marilou Schultz recently completed an intricate weaving composed of thick white lines on a black background, ...
14
A bug fix in the 8086 microprocessor, revealed in the die's silicon
The 8086 microprocessor was a groundbreaking processor introduced by Intel in 1978. It led to the x86 architecture that still dominates de...
15
Reverse engineering the 59-pound printer onboard the Space Shuttle
The Space Shuttle contained a bulky printer so the astronauts could receive procedures, mission plans, weather reports, crew activity plans,...
16
A USB Interface to the "Mother of All Demos" Keyset
In the early 1960s, Douglas Engelbart started investigating how computers could augment human intelligence: "If, in your office, you as an ...
17
555 timer teardown: inside the world's most popular IC
This article is translated into Vietnamese at: Bên trong chíp định thời 555 . If you've played around with electronic circuits, you prob...
18
A CT scanner reveals surprises inside the 386 processor's ceramic package
Intel released the 386 processor in 1985, the first 32-bit chip in the x86 line. This chip was packaged in a ceramic square with 132 gold-pl...
19
Reverse-engineering a tiny 1980s chip that plays Christmas tunes
For the holidays, I decapped a chip that plays three Christmas melodies. The UM66T melody chip from the 1980s was designed for application...
20
Intel x86 documentation has more pages than the 6502 has transistors
Microprocessors have become immensely more complex thanks to Moore's Law, but one thing that has been lost is the ability to fully understan...
21
Y Combinator's Xerox Alto: restoring the legendary 1970s GUI computer
Alan Kay recently gave his 1970's Xerox Alto to Y Combinator and I'm helping with the restoration of this legendary system. The Alto was t...
22
Cells are fast and crowded places (2011)
I recently learned that cells are extremely crowded and busy places. I knew there's a lot of activity in cells, but I didn't realize just h...
23
Restoring YC's Xerox Alto day 8: it boots
We've been restoring a Xerox Alto from the 1970s for several months, and we finally got it to boot and run some programs! There's still so...
24
The origin of the cargo cult metaphor
The cargo cult metaphor is commonly used by programmers. This metaphor was popularized by Richard Feynman's "cargo cult science" talk with a...
25
Examining the silicon dies of the Intel 386 processor
You might think of the Intel 386 processor (1985) as just an early processor in the x86 line, but the 386 was a critical turning point for m...
26
The guidance system and computer of the Minuteman III nuclear missile
The Minuteman missile was introduced in 1962 as a key part of America's nuclear deterrent. The Minuteman III missile is currently the only U...
27
The Yamaha DX7 synthesizer's clever exponential circuit, reverse-engineered
The Yamaha DX7 digital synthesizer was released in 1983 and became extremely popular, defining the sound of 1980s pop music. Because micro...
28
Antenna Diodes in the Pentium Processor
I was studying the silicon die of the Pentium processor and noticed some puzzling structures where signal lines were connected to the silico...
29
Implementing FizzBuzz on an FPGA
I recently started FPGA programming and figured it would be fun to use an FPGA to implement the FizzBuzz algorithm. An FPGA ( Field-Progra...
30
Die photos and analysis of the revolutionary 8008 microprocessor, 45 years old
Intel's groundbreaking 8008 microprocessor was first produced 45 years ago. 1 This chip, Intel's first 8-bit microprocessor, is the ancesto...