The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 3,044 posts.
If you look for information about the Macintosh Plus and its ROM, you’ll usually find that the ROM has a capacity of 128 KB and that it exists in three revisions . But that’s incorrect: there’s a fourth ROM, 256 KB in size, which includes fonts for kanji (Japanese characters). And I found (and preserved) this ROM. I’m…
In this post, I’ll explain how I compiled an OCaml program to run on a TI-84+ CE calculator. 🐪
Simple tools for smart, attractive people like you
I often get distracted. I obviously don’t like it. So I decided to turn my computer’s clock into a constant reminder to help me focus. Implementation This hack requires: Ubuntu with GNOME desktop environment The Panel Date Format extension A simple bash script 1. Install the Panel Date Format extension # If you don't…
In 1985, Intel introduced the groundbreaking 386 processor, the first 32-bit processor in the x86 architecture. To improve performance, the ...
One of my longest-running projects has been an open hardware Ethernet switch. This has been one of the key driving forces behind many of my other projects, such as ngscopeclient and the high speed probes. It was also the project that got me into high speed digital design.
It began with a spark—a dormant passion reignited after many years away from motorcycling. Life had steered me in different directions, away from the saddle, but something deep inside pulled me back to the thrill and freedom that only riding offers. Returning to motorcycling after such an extended hiatus was daunting…
I have a Tektronix TDS 684B oscilloscope that I bought cheaply at an auction. It has 4 channels, 1 GHz of BW and a sample rate of 5 Gsps. Those are respectable numbers even by today’s standards. It’s also the main reason why I have it: compared to modern oscilloscopes, the other features aren’t nearly as impressive…
One of my favorite joys is exploring a city late at night on rollerblades. I’ve been doing it fairly regularly for about 10 years now, first in Boston and then in NYC. Every time day turns to night and back again a city takes a breath. At night people flow out or huddle up in buildings, leaving the streets clear for…
Deep dive into mechanical design that is optimized for 3d-printing.
(Hat tip to the late Bill Strauss and The Capitol Steps' Lirty Dies.) A few moons ago I was thinking of ways to take my Palm OS Fossil Wr...
A place to play around with technology and make it easy and fun
You might think that Apple, Commodore or perhaps Radio Shack made the first personal computer, but you’d be wrong.
Jailbreaking an old Kindle and turning it into a school dashboard using Cloudflare Workers, Puppeteer, and image processing.
How I built a simple portable audio player for my boy, summoning the spirit of the Gameboy
According to Flynn’s taxonomy SIMD refers to a computer architecture that can process multiple data streams with a single instruction (i.e. “Single Instruction stream, Multiple Data streams”). There are different taxonomies, and within those several different sub-categories and architectures that classify as “SIMD”.
How it took several months for me to get warm...
Have you ever looked at an NVMe drive and thought to yourself, 'Hey, this would be 31.7% cooler with HDMI ports?'
If you are reading this message, the experiment below is still ongoing. This page was served to you by a real Nintendo Wii.
The Cinema Industry is using its own standards for creating and distributing movies in a secure way. The DCI (Digital Cinema Initiatives) specification defines everything from file formats and encryption to the projection systems itself.
My smart bike company went bankrupt, so I added a physical button to turn the light on/off
2023-01-01: This project has been ongoing for a while... now its time to post some of this info and see what comes of it. I have access to several junk Milwaukee M18 batteries. Age varies a little. I thought it would be 'fun' to reverse engineer a battery just to see how it functions... That is until I actually opened
Designing a cheap two-port vector network analyzer with good measurement accuracy.
How I reverse engineered an ESP32-based smart home device to gain remote control access and integrate it with Home Assistant.
The Apollo 13 astronauts were stranded in space. Their survival depended on if they could make a carbon dioxide absorber inside the spacecraft.
Mike Kohn's music, software, and electronics projects.
