1981
Sherbet: An Ergonomic Gaming Keypad
Designing, printing, and building a one-handed gaming keypad
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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 3,046 posts.
Hardware & Electronics
Any year
1982
DisplayPort and 4K
The Problem Video playback looks better with a higher scan rate. A lot of content that was designed for TV (EG almost all historical documentaries) is going to be 25Hz interlaced (UK and Australia)…
1983
Apple's long processor journey
There have been multiple generations of Macs. Apple has not really divided them up. 1. Original 680x0 Macs with 24-bit ROMs (ending with the SE/30, Mac II, IIx IIcx) 2. 32-bit-clean-ROM 680x0 Macs (starting with the Mac IIci) 3. NuBus-based PowerMacs (6100, 7100, 8100) 4. OldWorld-ROM…
1984
What made the 1960s CDC6600 supercomputer fast?
Anybody who has ever taken an advanced computer architecture class has heard of the CDC6600, which was the world’s fastest computer from 1964 to 1969. It was the machine that put Seymour Cray…
1985
I made my own PCBs with a 3D printer
Listen, anyone can make a PCB at home, it’s easy. PCBs (printed circuit boards) are those flat things with all the components that are inside all electronic devices, you’ve seen them. All you need is a laser printer, some glossy magazine pages, print your circuit onto the page, use a clothes iron to transfer the toner…
1986
ThinkPad T480 is my new main laptop which runs FreeBSD
I’ve been using FreeBSD as my primary server OS for quite a long time. But, for unknown reasons, I have never seriously used it on client workstations. Maybe it’s partly because I’m a CUI-oriented person who loves doing things on text terminals as much as possible. Actually, I have been pretty happy with any client OS…
1987
TV Backlight Compensation
Watching TV makes me see red! I mean it in the literal sense: my Panasonic's backlight is slightly broken causing an uneven pink color when it should be white:
1988
1989
Wacom tablets track every app you open
I have a Wacom drawing tablet. I use it to draw cover illustrations for my blog posts, such as this one.
1990
MacBook Pro 16 Has a Fan Problem
At the end of 2019, I traded in my two-year-old 15-inch MacBook Pro, sold off some older Apple gear (an iPad and older iPhones), and decided to spring for one of the newer 16-inch laptops. I had us…
1991
Starlink Is a Big Deal
Today, I watched a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket leave Cape Canaveral and deliver 60 small Starlink satellites to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) on the Starlink L3 mission.…
1992
The Failure of the iPad
Two days ago, ZDNet published this article: Meet the iPad, your work computer: These 10 apps make real productivity possible . These kinds of articles, where writers explain how they use their iPads productively, musicians talk about how the iPad is truly a professional tool, or painters show how they use the iPad for…
1993
My 2020 Hackintosh Hardware Spec
I built my last hackintosh in 2014 and it was overdue for an update. Since Apple recently updated their iMac with Core i9s and skipped the T2, this is probably the last time I'm building this sort of computer, before MacOS is locked down forever. Unfortunately, nothing in their lineup fits my needs, hence I chose to
1994
AWS Graviton2
In November of last year, AWS announced the first ARM-based AWS instance type ( AWS Designed Processor: Graviton ). For me this was a very big deal because I’ve been talking about ARM based servers for more than a decade, believing that massive client volumes fund the R&D stream that feeds most server-side innovation…
1995
25-Hour Digital Myst Clock/Chronometer
Discover the 25-Hour Digital Myst Clock, merging D'ni and conventional timekeeping for Myst fans, with a display of proper D'ni digits.
1996
A Year with the Surface Go
AndreGarzia.com website
1997
Pinebook Pro – First Impressions and Setup Tips
The Pinebook Pro is a 14" laptop built for developers and Linux end-users. It weighs less than 3lbs, which, in my case, replaces a two times heavier
1998
A 60 GHz phased array for $10
In 2018, I gave an talk at Hackaday Supercon that was basically Phased Arrays 101. You can watch it at the bottom of this post.
1999
BMW Connected Apps Protocol
Stories about my nerd projects
2000
Gathering Intel on Intel AVX-512 Transitions
Investigating some details of SIMD related frequency transitions on Intel CPUs.
2001
Inside the digital clock from a Soyuz spacecraft
We recently obtained a clock that flew on a Soyuz space mission. 1 The clock, manufactured in 1984, is much more complex inside than you'd ...
2002
Trying out the Pinebook Pro – a $200 ARM Laptop
The Pinebook Pro is a $200 laptop with ARM processors that promises a lot. Does it deliver?
2003
Everything I Know About SSDs
March 2019: Introduction: I started writing this rather long page for my own benefit, when I acquired a upgrade from my old 2006 Win 8 250 gb HDD PC to a Dell Optiflex 3010 with a 128 gb SSD. I never used more than 30 or 40 gb of the system drive, and I'm not a gamer or an avid film or music collector either. Not on a…
2004
2005
Laptop OEMs – make a proper high-end AMD laptop
Laptop makers have long shortchanged AMD-based offerings. Read on to find out how they can avoid common mistakes that limit the potential of their products.
2006
2007
BusKill: A kill cord for your laptop
BusKill is a Kill Cord for your laptop implementing a Dead Man Switch using $20 in USB hardware + udev rule to trigger your laptop self-destruct if stolen.
2008
RISC-V Stumbling Blocks
Recently, I’ve started to explore RISC-V. I experienced the journey as pretty refreshing, particularly because I’ve been working on x86 low-level software almost exclusively for about 10 years.
2009
The Joys of Unix Keyboards
A decade or so ago while helping a friends father clean out an old building, we came across an ancient Sun Microsystems server. We found it curious. Everything about it was different from what we were used to. The command line was black text on a white background, the connectors strange and foreign, and the keyboard…
2010
CPU Introspection: Intel Load Port Snooping
I blog about random things security, everything is broken, nothing scales, shared memory models are flawed.