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Reverse-engineering the LM185 voltage reference chip and its bandgap reference
Many circuits, such as a computer power supply or a phone charger, require a stable voltage reference, but it's harder than you might expec...
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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 421 posts.
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A detailed look at the S-300P anti-aircraft missile system
Technical Report APA-TR-2006-1201; Title: Almaz S-300P/PT/PS/PMU/PMU1/PMU2 / Almaz-Antey S-400 Triumf / SA-10/20/21 Grumble/Gargoyle ; Abstract: Introductory technical analysis and development history of the Almaz-Antey S-300P family of Surface to Air Missile systems. Includes diagrams, imagery and variant tables…
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86Box: Why Not Pentium III?
When does “preservation” in emulation become impractical?
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Rust on Espressif chips Q1 2022
Scott Mabin's blog
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USB-C hubs and my slow descent into madness (2021)
A short story of me trying out different USB-C hubs, taking them apart, and slowly descending into madness.
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Reverse-engineering a mysterious Univac computer board
The IBM 1401 team at the Computer History Museum accumulates a lot of mystery components from donations and other sources. While going thr...
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The Reliability of Optical Disks
How long will burned CDs / DVDs / BluRays last?
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Retro Compaq LTE Laptop Powered by Raspberry Pi
A while ago a came across an old Compaq LTE 286 laptop. When they were first released around 1989, these PCs were somewhat groundbreaking because they were the first to be compact enough to resemble the “notebook” form factor that we take for granted today. Unfortunately this particular unit was pretty much beyond…
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I didn't return my Apple Studio Display
The Apple Studio Display is, unquestionably, a very good monitor. But the real question is, should you pay €1,800+ for it? I have been asking that question myself for the past ten days. Today I decided that while I can't recommend it, I wil
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Why the Black MacBook Cost More
From 2006 until 2008, Apple sold one of the coolest Macs ever: the black MacBook. The black MacBook was sold alongside the more popular — and less expensive — white MacBook. The price difference between the white and black models is often brought up when discussing Apple’s various strategies around product design and…
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How is portable AM radio possible?
If AM radio antennas were as long as a quarter wavelength of the carrier signal, you'd need an antenna as long as a football field.
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The hunt for the M1’s neural engine
How can you tell when software uses the Neural Engine in an M1 series Mac? How much power does it use, and what is Espresso? Mysteries unravelled.
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Oxide on My Wrist: Hubris on PineTime was the best worst idea
In my last Oxide-related post I got Oxide’s Propolis software running and said I might try and get their sled agent up and running next. Anyways that didn’t happen. Instead I ended up reading datasheets, writing rust codegen, spending 16 gigs of ram for an hour to build docs for a crate that’s just a glorified bundle…
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Twibright Optar – OPTical ARchiver – a codec for encoding data on paper
Data archiving codec for paper, laser printer and scanner
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Making a Stainless Steel Rubik's Cube
I wasn't entirely satisfied with the aluminum cube , so after thinking about the design for a while, I decided to make another one out of stainless steel. Just for fun, I thought I would make all the pieces using only manual machines. How hard could it be?
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Pocket-sized cloud with a Raspberry Pi
Put your pocket-sized silicon to work as the world's smallest API-driven cloud - to run automation scripts, scheduled tasks, functions and to host web sites
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Nintendo Switch prevents downgrades by irreparably blowing its own fuses (2020)
How the Nintendo Switch uses irreversible hardware fuses to prevent firmware downgrades.
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Connecting a gaming PC to Apple Studio Display
I'll never forget when I bought the first 5K Retina iMac. Almost as soon as I ripped it out of the box, I booted it while holding down Command-F2, assuming it…
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Librem 5: First Impressions
The Librem 5 does not run Android or iOS, it runs a proper Linux operating system ( PureOS , derived from Debian). There are hardware kill switches for the baseband modem, the camera and microphone, and WiFi and bluetooth. The phone's main selling point is that it doesn't spy on you.
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Results of 500 MicroSD Benchmarks on SBCs
I've tested over 20 microSD cards on every Raspberry Pi model to help you find the fastest one for your Raspberry Pi Single Board Computer
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The Apple-1's unusual MOS clock driver chip
Apple's first product was the Apple-1 computer, introduced in 1976. This early microcomputer used an unusual type of storage for its disp...
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Using a tiny HC32L110 ARM chip
A while ago, Hackaday highlighted a new chip, the HC32L110. This chip was one of the many ARM-based microcontrollers that sprung up in China, but this one was remarkable because its diminuitive size: it came in an 16-pin WCSP package of a miniscule 1.6x1.4mm. Aside from that, it seems to be a chip that is somewhat…
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Using a Minitel 1B as a serial terminal
So you've got your hands on a late 1980s Minitel 1B (or something slightly later) and then you realize that the entire Minitel network shut ...
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