1621
Reverse-engineering a vintage power supply chip from die photos
I recently did a PC power supply teardown so I figured it would be interesting to go deeper and see what happens inside the power supply'...
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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 3,045 posts.
Hardware & Electronics
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1622
1623
JAMMA Video Standard
Everyone had their weird pandemic hobby, right? Well, mine is that I bought an arcade video game. Not the whole cabinet - just a board, to hook up ...
1624
Second IC
In 2018 I made the first lithographically fabricated integrated circuits in my garage fab. I was a senior in high school when I made the Z1 amplifier, and now I’m a senior in college so there are some long overdue improvements to the amateur silicon process. The Z1 had 6 transistors and was a great test chip to…
1625
Uptime Lab's CM4 Blade Adds NVMe, TPM 2.0 to Raspberry Pi
A few weeks ago, I received two early copies of Uptime.Lab's CM4 Blade. The Blade is built for the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4, which has the same processor as the Pi 4 and Pi 400, but without any of the built-in IO ports. You plug the CM4 into the Blade, then the Blade breaks out the connections to add some…
1626
Where are the robotic bricklayers?
When researching construction, you invariably discover that any new or innovative idea has actually been tried over and over again, often stretching back decades.
1627
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 ...
1628
Ultra fast Thunderbolt NAS with Apple M1 and Linux
In this post I discuss how you can upgrade a NAS Server by adding Thunderbolt 3 for lightning fast connectivity at 20 or 40Gbps. This particular implementation is specific to an Apple Mac Mini M1 and
1629
The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs
When M1 Macs were launched, a new GPU with iOS-like architecture started driving the external monitors. This meant that the old method for controlling monitors using DDC wouldn't work anymore. Apps like Lunar and MonitorControl had to find other ways to change the brightness of the monitors.
1630
Reprogramming a Sennheiser Microphone
I'm somehow interested in audio production. But not it more my pet hobby, nothing that would generate decent income. This means I usually do...
1631
My Fanless OpenBSD Desktop
After the disappointment of my X1 Nano and learning that all future Intel "Evo"-branded laptops would lack S3 suspend, I started thinking about returning to my M1 MacBook full-time or building an OpenBSD desktop. I chose the latter, building my first desktop machine in many years.
1632
Starlink review, four months in
SpaceX's Starlink internet service uses satellites in low-earth orbit to provide high-speed Internet to underserved parts of the world, especially places without easy access to cable or fiber. SpaceX's Starlink beta opened up in my area, so I installed Dishy—that's the nickname for the large white satellite dish…
1633
Building a Curve25519 Hardware Accelerator
Note: this post uses a $\LaTeX$ plugin to render math symbols. It may require a desktop browser for the full experience…
1634
Where’s the Apple M2?
DPReview just published Apple still hasn't made a truly “Pro” M1 Mac – so what’s the holdup? Following on the good performance and awesome power efficiency of the Apple M1 , there’s a hungry background rumble in Mac-land along the lines of “Since the M1 is an entry-level chip, the next CPU is gonna blow everyone’s…
1635
Automated Hydroponic System Build (2020)
Hydroponic farming is a method of growing crops without soil, with the main benefits of environmental and nutrient control, water conservation, and reduction of labor. This technique relies on a number of technologies that the principles of automation can be applied in order to improve yield and consistency. In this…
1636
Rethinking software testing: perspectives from the world of hardware (2019)
The conventional view of Software Testing The hardware and software worlds may seem poles apart, and in many ways, they indeed are. But there’s a wealth of knowledge that each can learn from the ot…
1637
Nicole gets a real computer – the Microsoft Z80 SoftCard (2020)
So there I was, very happy with my Apple ][plus. But then I saw someone on the internet post, and it seems that my Apple is an overpriced box with a toy micr...
1638
25 Gigabit Linux internet router PC build
init7 recently announced that with their FTTH fiber offering Fiber7, they will now sell and connect you with 25 Gbit/s (Fiber7-X2) or 10 Gbit/s (Fiber7-X) fiber optics, if you want more than 1 Gbit/s. While this offer will only become available at my location late this year (or possibly later due to the supply chain…
1639
Inside a 20-Watt Traveling Wave Tube Amplifier from Apollo
How did the Apollo astronauts communicate on their trip to the Moon, 240,000 miles back to Earth? They used a 32-pound amplifier, built ar...
1640
Reverse Engineer the BL602 WiFi Driver
What happens inside the WiFi Driver on RISC-V BL602... And how we found the incomplete source code for the driver
1641
The Secret Life of Machines
SERIES 1 The Vacuum Cleaner The Washing Machine The Sewing Machine The Refrigerator The Central Heating System The Television
1642
Writing a firmware-only keylogger
In the previous blog post, I looked at the EC firmware in my laptop. This time I will look into the WiFi firmware of the same laptop.
1643
Freespin: C64 demo running on 1541 floppy drive
Freespin is a Commodore 1541 demo, released in 2021. It runs on the Commodore floppy drive. It is is the first demo on this device.
1644
Tiny FORTH from scratch in 1 week (bootloader-based Arduino UNO, 2K of RAM)
Building a tiny FORTH for an Arduino UNO in one week
1645
“Space age electronics”: Inside a GE thin-film paperweight from the 1960s
In the early 1960s, General Electric developed a technology called thin-film electronics. 1 These circuits were built from thin films of ...
1646
Installing Linux into a 286 laptop from the year 1989
Ever wondered what useful things you could do with a 32 year old laptop? Well, this is one option: In this project I added a Raspberry PI Zero to the insides of the laptop. Both are connected via a…
1647
Hacking a PC sound card to read temperature and liquid level sensors
Measure with Music: How to Read Analog Sensors Using a PC Sound Card
1648
The Connection Machines CM-1 and CM-2 (2015)
Thirty years after its launch in 1987, a CM-2 was acquired by MoMA NY. It is only on display in selected shows - its inaugural exhibit was in " Thinking Machines: Art and Design in the Computer Age, 1959-1989"
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1650
Librem 5 Evergreen vs. PinePhone (Part 2)
It’s been about half a year since I wrote my original post comparing the Librem 5 and Pinephone. The original post saw some controversy as well as quite a bit of attention on Hacker News . Surprisingly, for a market dominated by new tech every year, there remains quite a bit of interest in these two devices.