151
A 10 year old Xeon is all you need
Or running Gemma 4 on a 2016 Xeon with no GPU, 25 flags, 128 GB of DDR3, and a 25B-parameter MoE.
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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 3,044 posts.
Hardware & Electronics
Any year
152
Chuwi Minibook X
The Minibook X is a 10.5″ x86_64 sub-ultrabook with 16GB RAM, a 512GB NVMe drive, and only one majorly annyoing Linux quirk.
153
Patching my guitar amp's firmware
I’m having a lot of fun with reverse engineering lately, so when I was looking over the service manual for my guitar amp, a Yamaha THR10c, and saw references to a UART header in the schematic, I got excited. I wondered if anything cool was hiding in there. Next to it was a JTAG header. I knew next to nothing about…
154
I put a datacenter GPU in my gaming PC
I bought a datacenter GPU that doesn't fit in a normal motherboard, macgyvered the fan with jumper wires, and now I'm running a model that ties with Claude Sonnet 4.6 on benchmarks, all for £200.
155
Microcode inside the Intel 8087 floating-point chip: register exchange
In 1980, Intel introduced the 8087 floating-point chip, a co-processor that made floating-point operations up to 100 times faster. This chip...
156
It's hard to justify buying a Framework 12
My nephew just graduated high school, and wants a laptop. When he decides what computer to buy, price (or more precisely, value) is the most important attribute. Apple's MacBook Neo upended the 'value laptop' equation—Apple's not supposed to be both the cheapest option and the best value... but it seems like that's…
157
Warm up your MacBook (2019)
Who else hates putting their hands on an icy metal laptop after it's been riding outside in your cold backpack? Here's a one-line solution.
158
I'm Getting into Mesh Networks (Meshtastic, MeshCore, and Reticulum)
I love networking, a lot. So much so that I've run my own ISP since 2024, complete with its own ASN, IPv4/6 address space, fiber optics, etc. However, do this and you quickly realize how reliant you still remain on central service providers. The internet is a mesh,
159
Rust (and Slint) on a Jailbroken Kindle
I recently jailbroke my 7th generation Kindle Paperwhite. While my motivation probably should have been "breaking free from Amazon's clammy and tightening grip", the truth is I wanted a way to use it as a clock on my nightstand. I found this project and figured I could just make some adjustments to the code. And that…
160
News about Raspberry Pi 6 and Microcontroller Development
On Thursday, three of the lead Raspberry Pi engineers hosted an AMA on the r/engineering subreddit. Raspberry Pi 6 One of the most interesting tidbits was on the Pi 6. Looking back at previous launches: 2012: Raspberry Pi 2015: Raspberry Pi 2 (+3 years) 2016: Raspberry Pi 3 (+1 year) 2019: Raspberry Pi 4 (+3 years)…
161
Reverse engineering circuitry in a Spacelab computer from 1980
Spacelab was a reusable laboratory that could be carried in the cargo bay of the Space Shuttle, providing lab space for astronauts and exper...
162
z386: An Open-Source 80386 Built Around Original Microcode
This is the fifth installment of the 80386 series . The FPGA CPU is now far enough along to run real software, and this post is about how it works. z386 is a 386-class CPU built around the original Intel microcode, in the same spirit as z8086 .
163
80386 microcode disassembled
After I posted 8086 microcode disassembled , Ken Shirriff sent me a high-resolution image of the microcode ROM from the 80386. I didn’t expect I would ever do anything with it for a couple of reasons: one is that it’s absolutely huge (94720 bits) compared to the 8086 one (10752 bits) so (even with bitract or similar)…
164
The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics
The global memory crunch and the great repricing of consumer electronics
165
The History of ThinkPad: From IBM’s Bento Box to Lenovo’s AI Workstations
A sourced history of ThinkPad from IBM's 1992 700C to Lenovo's 2026 AI workstations: TrackPoint, keyboards, X-series, T-series and P-series.
166
Apple Silicon costs more than OpenRouter
Local LLMs can be very very cheap
167
Playing Atari ST Music on the Amiga with Zero CPU
How to emulate an Atari YM2149 audio chip on Amiga at litteraly 0 CPU cost, by Arnaud Carré
168
Hosting a website on an 8-bit microcontroller
My victim is the AVR64DD32 which is quite similar to the Atmega328 of Arduino fame. Compared to the older Atmega, these AVR DD lines are cheaper for the same memory, use a single programming pin and have nicer peripherals:
169
A nicer voltmeter clock
Sometimes, electronic circuit design is mostly about wood
170
Two computers, one monitor, zero fiddling (2025)
How to switch inputs between desktop and laptop on one monitor using built-in KVM and DDC
171
Removing the modem and GPS from my 2024 RAV4 hybrid
Modern cars are computers on wheels that send home nonstop telemetry about you. In this post I remove my 2024 RAV4 Hybrid's modem and GPS to prevent that :)
172
HDD Firmware Hacking
Do you know how a hard drive works? Come find out with me as I dump, reverse engineer, and modify the firmware on various HDDs and SSDs.
173
RTX 5090 and M4 MacBook Air: Can It Game?
What if you could strap a full desktop GPU to your MacBook Air? Turns out, you can.
174
MacBook Neo Deep Dive: Benchmarks, Wafer Economics, and the 8GB Gamble
MacBook Neo processor: Apple's A18 Pro, the iPhone 16 Pro chip. Geekbench 6: 3,569 single-core, between M3 and M4. Full CPU benchmarks, thermals, and $699.
175
My graduation cap runs Rust
Eric Park's website
176
Preserving Fisher-Price Pixter
Dmitry.GR: Fisher-Price Pixter: From unknown and obscure to fully documented, emulated, and preserved
177
Running local models on an M4 with 24GB memory
Experiments with getting usable outputs out of local models on a standard Macbook
178
Serving a website on a Raspberry Pi Zero running in RAM
My micro site, zero.btxx.org , is being served to the public internet from a Raspberry Pi Zero v1.3 running Alpine Linux.
179
PC Engine CPU
You are seeing this because the administrator of this website has set up Anubis to protect the server against the scourge of AI companies aggressively scraping websites. This can and does cause downtime for the websites, which makes their resources inaccessible for everyone.
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