1201
Designing my own ASIC with tiny tapeout
First, what is an ASIC? An ASIC is an Application Specific Integrated Circuit which basically means that it is an Integrated Circuit on a single piece of silicon and its use is limited to a particu…
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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 3,045 posts.
Hardware & Electronics
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1202
How the Xbox 360 knows if your hard drive is genuine
Reverse engineering the kernel-mode authenticity check, and how Microsoft knows about your hacked/custom hard-drive.
1203
Hyperscale in your Homelab: The Compute Blade arrives
This is the Compute Blade, and I'm test driving it in a four-node cluster: I'm testing the Dev version, and @Merocle from Uptime Lab sent four Blades, a 3D-printed 4-bay case (a metal 1U rackmount enclosure is in the works), and two fan modules. He's been testing 40 of these in a rack at Jetbrains for months, and…
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A dozen USB chargers in the lab: Apple is good, but not quite the best (2012)
When you buy a USB charger, how do you know if you're getting a safe, high-quality charger for your money? You can't tell from the outside...
1205
Reverse-engineering the conditional jump circuitry in the 8086 processor
Intel introduced the 8086 microprocessor in 1978 and it had a huge influence on computing. I'm reverse-engineering the 8086 by examining t...
1206
ECC RAM should be a human right
I am now a staunch advocate for ECC RAM, after the events of last week. You see, over the last several weeks my main desktop workstation has been misbehaving, with occasional freezing and crashing. After some diagnostics I began to suspect a faulty RAM module, and sure enough, upon performing a quick run of memtest86…
1207
Which GPU(s) to get for deep learning
Here, I provide an in-depth analysis of GPUs for deep learning/machine learning and explain what is the best GPU for your use-case and budget.
1208
Hyundai Head Unit Hacking
Standard-class Gen5 navigation
1209
Glitching a microcontroller to unlock the bootloader
Back in the summer I was lucky enough to finagle my boss into letting me take Dmitry Nedospasov ( @nedos )’s hardware hacking training . In it I cut my teeth on using an FPGA to interface with target hardware. After implementing a UART we implemented a module that could parse part of Apple’s OneWire, used to negotiate…
1210
Homelab analog telephone exchange
An introduction to my MCU based fully featured analog telephone exchange, how I mounted it in my home lab powered with batteries for months of use
1211
Counting the transistors in the 8086 processor: it's harder than you might think
How many transistors are in Intel's 8086 processor? This seems like a straightforward question, but it doesn't have a straightforward answ...
1212
WInd3x, the iPod Bootrom exploit 10 years too late
This is a write-up of the wInd3x bootrom exploit affecting iPod Nanos from 3rd gen to 5th gen. A ready-made tool to use this exploit is available at github.com/freemyipod/wInd3x .
1213
Yet another keyboard post, or, introducing ErgoNICE
I made a custom split mechanical keyboard! Because it's me, this involved things like contributing to a PCB design tool and discovering a ridiculously optimized way to read a keyboard matrix.
1214
Reverse-engineering an airspeed/Mach indicator from 1977
How does a vintage airspeed indicator work? CuriousMarc picked one up for a project, but it didn't have any documentation, so I reverse-en...
1215
Grayscale on 1-bit LCDs (2022)
Note: this post is also available in video format on YouTube . Some demo/ difference would be more obvious in video.
1216
How many AMD RX 7900 XTX's are defective?
I'm working on a project—a very dumb project, mind you—and I was trying to acquire the two current-gen flagship GPUs: an Nvidia RTX 4090, and an AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX. In some weird stroke of luck (it has been difficult to find either in stock), I was able to get one of each this week. (lol at the size difference...)
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8086 Processor's microcode pipeline from die analysis
Intel introduced the 8086 microprocessor in 1978, and its influence still remains through the popular x86 architecture. The 8086 was a fai...
1219
Taking over a Dead IoT Company
5 years after NYCTrainSign collapsed, I investigate why the company failed and end up writing an exploit to take over their fleet.
1220
Raspberry Pi's Camera Module 3 adds autofocus and new Sony sensor
Raspberry Pi just announced their new Camera Module 3, which comes in four variations (standard and wide angle, normal and NoIR for infrared use), and costs $25 for the standard versions, and $35 for wide angle. That's a step up from the older Camera Module 2, which cost $25 and only came in a 'standard' focal length…
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The (Almost) Definitive 486DX/50 Article
(Source: Infoworld, 25th May 1992, p56) We need to start at the beginning, because understanding the timeline of the 486 - Intel's 4th gener...
1225
Reverse Engineering the DualShock 4
This year I got a very special gift for Christmas: a broken DualShock 4. :smile:You may say it’s a relatively poor gift, but the person who gave me this know...
1226
Meta Quest Pro – Bad AR Passthrough
Introduction I have been taking pictures and making short video clips to demonstrate different aspects of the displays and optics of the Meta Quest Pro (MQP) for over a month. It was a bit of an on…
1227
Inside the 8086 processor's instruction prefetch circuitry
The groundbreaking 8086 microprocessor was introduced by Intel in 1978 and led to the x86 architecture that still dominates desktop and se...
1228
Building a Frankenstein 64
👶 From when Mosaic took over Gopher. 🏢 VP of Engineering @ Cloudflare 🕹️ Slightly addicted to retrocomputing 🔍 Hit Ctrl-K to Search
1229
Modeling my Grandpa with 3D Photogrammetry (2021)
Today I released a video about how—and why—I 3D Printed my Grandpa and put him on my bottle of ketchup. Watch it here. I sculpted a bust of my Grandpa in high school, gave it to my grandparents, got it back after he died and my Grandma moved out of her house (I wrote a tribute to my 'Grandpa Charlie'), and I kept on…
1230
USB-C done cheap: when 2 ports become 1 (2020)
How PC hardware is implementing USB-C in a way that may or may not violate standards.