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The "35-cent" Commodore 64 softmodem
Rockwell famously used 6502-based cores in modems for many years, but that doesn't mean other 6502s couldn't be used. If only there were a w...
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602
Investigating an “evil” RJ45 dongle
Reverse-engineering hardware can be difficult -- but sometimes, all you need is a comfy armchair and some Google Translate.
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Project Mini Rack – compact and portable homelabs
Today I'm announcing Project MINI RACK, an open source project to help those building homelabs, RF/wireless rigs, and other electronics projects into mini 10" racks. Not everyone can afford (either due to budget or space constraints) to have a full 19" rack in their home. Besides that, people may want to deploy small…
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Cosmos Keyboard: Scan your hand, build a keyboard
Cosmos is the easiest way to design a keyboard around your one-of-a-kind hands. Scan your hand using just your phone camera, then fit a keyboard to the scan. The key positions align to your fingers' lengths and movement.
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From ASCII to ASIC: Porting donut.c to a tiny slice of silicon
Implementing the famous donut.c animation in actual silicon using CORDIC and ray marching
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I will never need to buy a new computer again
If you're in your early thirties or older, you remember the breakneck pace at which computers were improving in the 90s and 2000s. If you brought home a shiny new 400MHz Pentium 2 system in 1998, it was literally outdated and replaced by a faster model with higher clock speed and more RAM/bigger harddrive by the time…
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De-smarting the Marshall Uxbridge
This is the story of a commercially unavailable stereo pair of thebi-amped Marshall Uxbridge, with custom-built replacement electronics:active filters feedin...
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Why is my CPU usage always 100%?
If you’re new to this series, I’ve been documenting the process I went through upgrading my old PXA166-based Chumby 8’s 2.6.28 Linux kernel to a modern 6.x version. Here are links to parts 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , and 8 . At this point in the project, all of the main hardware peripherals were working great. I…
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Binary modding a water dispenser to save me from pressing a button (2021)
A few months ago, I decided that it’s time I started to become more responsible and to start drinking more water. Unfortunately, the tap water where I live has a very high calcium content, which makes it a lot better when filtered and cooled first. To solve both issues, I picked up a second-hand professional water…
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Gate-level simulation of ASIC in browser
TinyTapeout VGA 1D Cellular Automata Simulation
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Building Ultra Long Range Toslink
This post is a textual version of a talk I gave at The 38th Chaos Computer Congress at the end of 2024. You can watch the talk that was recorded by the wonderful C3VOC team below if that’s your preferred medium:
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Reverse Engineering the Constants in the Pentium FPU
Intel released the powerful Pentium processor in 1993, establishing a long-running brand of high-performance processors. 1 The Pentium incl...
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The Begining of the End for ANT+ Wireless
First off, no, your ANT+ devices aren’t goin...
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Self driving 1993 Volvo with open pilot
Together with some friends, I decided earlier this year to particpate in the Carbage run 2025 Winter edition. This is a 6-day journey in winter all the way through Sweden to the polar circle, and back down to Helsinki in a group of roughly 400 cars. One small catch (you might have guessed it from the name): your car…
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Choosing an op-amp for your project
Just say no to LM741 and LM324 / LM358.
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System76 built the fastest Windows Arm PC
System76 built their first workstation-class Arm PC, the Thelio Astra, and it's marketed for streamlined autonomous vehicle development. But I'm not an automotive developer, just someone who enjoys Linux, Arm, and computing. So I was excited to spend a few weeks (which turned into a few months) testing the latest…
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USB On-The-Go
USB, the Universal Serial Bus, was first released in 1996. It did not achieve widespread adoption until some years later; for most of the '90s RS-232-ish serial and its awkward sibling the parallel port were the norm for external peripheral. It's sort of surprising that USB didn't take off faster, considering the…
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The Alder Lake SHLX Anomaly
Apparently shlx is a “medium latency” (3 cycles) instruction on Alder Lake. My disappointment is immeasurable, and my day is ruined.
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Documenting an 1115 ft radio tower climb
Some broadcast engineering tasks are a bit too daunting for me to consider. Climbing the massive towers that power radio and TV stations is one of them! Your browser does not support the video tag. Recently, local engineer Aaron Cox had the perfect set of conditions for a drone flight to capture some of that risk, as…
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Shmøergh Hog – The making of a simple analog synth
The making of a simple analog synth
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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...
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The Nvidia Way
Tae Kim's terrific new book on the story of Nvidia and Jensen Huang
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Homebrew Batteries
I am a simple enthusiast attempting to convey my love and enjoyment of radio, electronics, and computing and perhaps to inspire YOU to build something too.
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Reverse Engineering the Stream Deck+
Sniffing USB HID traffic from the Stream Deck Plus to map its dial encoder and touchscreen events, building on the original Stream Deck reverse engineering.
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VPR: Nordic's First RISC-V Processor
VPR (pronounced “Viper”) is Nordic Semiconductor’s first RISC-V processor, landing in the new nRF54H and nRF54L lines of SoCs after their initial announcements in April and October of 2023 respectively. Readers of this blog are familiar with my long-running obsession interest in RISC-V (see my RISC-V Tips and RISC-V…