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Wireless Amiga Tank Mouse
Taking a look at a Wireless Tank Mouse that I picked up from Sordan.ie and seeing how well it works with my Commodore computers.
Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 3,046 posts.
Hardware & Electronics
Any year
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Why Intel is adding instructions to speed up non-volatile memory
The latest version of the Intel manual has a couple of new instructions for non-volatile storage, like SSDs . What's that about?
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With PowerPC, Windows CE and the WiiN-Pad Slate, Everyone's a WiiN-Er
Telemedicine (and mobile health generally) accumulated a hunk of public mindshare during the pandemic emergency, but speaking as someone wit...
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Reverse-engineering an unusual IBM modem board from 1965
The vintage IBM circuit board below has a large metal block on it that caught my attention, so I investigated it in detail. It turns out t...
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80386 Memory Pipeline
The FPGA 386 core I've been building now boots DOS, runs applications like Norton Commander, and plays games like Doom. On DE10-Nano it currently runs at 75 MHz. With the core now far enough along to run real software, this seems like a good point to step back and look at one of the 80386's performance-critical…
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A Pixel Purse LED Cube Controlled by a Cisco 3G Modem
I presented this project at BangBangCon West 2020, but never got around to publish a blog post about it. A 10 minute talk is not enough to cover some technical aspects, and since I’m starting to forget them, it’s about time to write things down.
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Apple Vision Pro – Potential hardware issues
Introduction This part will primarily cover the hardware and related human physical and visual issues with the Apple Vision Pro (AVP). In Part 3, I intend to discuss my issues with the applications…
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Building my $1,200 Hackintosh
I’ve wanted a new Mac for awhile now. Now I have one faster than almost any Mac that Apple can sell you. Here’s how I built it.
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What's the risk from fake Yubikeys?
I found this on a security-related Slack (shared with permission). It launched an entertaining discussion about the risks of taking a potentially fake FIDO token. We all know the risks of taking a free USB drive and shoving it in our computer, right? USB sticks can install software, act as a keylogger, transmit data…
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ARM and Intel have different performance characteristics: a case study
In my previous post, I reviewed a new fast random number generator called wyhash. I commented that I expected it to do well on x64 processors (Intel and AMD), but not so well on ARM processors. Let us review again wyhash: uint64_t wyhash64_x; uint64_t wyhash64() { wyhash64_x += 0x60bee2bee120fc15; __uint128_t tmp; tmp…
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Building a USB to Mac ADB keyboard adapter
Write-only blogging
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The Sad End of Intel Desktop Boards
As previously discussed on this blog, Intel decided to quit the desktop board business in 2013. What has not been discussed is how Intel treated the buyers of the last generation (i.e. 8-series Lynx Point chipsets) of those boards. Since I have now acquired two of those boards, DZ87KLT-75K and DQ87PG, I had an…
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NVMe SSD boot with the Raspberry Pi 5
In my video about the Raspberry Pi 5, I mentioned the new external PCIe port makes it possible to boot the standard Pi 5 model B directly off NVMe storage—an option which is much faster and more reliable than standard microSD storage (even with industrial-rated cards!). Enabling NVMe boot is pretty easy, you add a…
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Why good external SSDs are faster with Apple Silicon
Why an Intel Mac’s up to 40 Gb/s from Thunderbolt 3 is less than an Apple silicon Mac’s up to 40 Gb/s from USB4, and how you can benefit from it.
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IBM, sonic delay lines, and the history of the 80×24 display
What explains the popularity of terminals with 80×24 and 80×25 displays? A recent blog post " 80x25 " motivated me to investigate this. The ...
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ARM64EC (and ARM64X) Explained
ARM64EC (and ARM64X) Explained Probably the most confused looks I get from other developers when I discuss Windows and ARM64 is when I used the term " ARM64EC ". They ask is the same thing as ARM64? Is it a different instruction set than ARM64? How can you tell if an application is or ARM64 ARM64EC?
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Decoding DME aircraft radio navigation system with the LimeSDR
DME (distance measuring equipment) is an aircraft radio navigation system that is used to measure the distance between an aircraft and a DME station on ground. DME is often colocated with a VOR station, in which case the VOR provides the bearing information. DME works by measuring the two-way time of flight of pulse…
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Reverse Engineering the Prom for the SGI O2
mattst88's blog - Reverse Engineering the PROM for the SGI O2
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Raspberry Pi Floppy Controller Board
If there’s one criticism I hear more often than any other about the pi, it’s “ I wish my Raspberry Pi had a floppy drive “. It’s really shocking that the pi doesn’t have the ubiquitous 34-pin floppy header that we all know and love. How else are you supposed to interface your Tandon TM100-2A or your Teac FD-55BR or…
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SSE: mind the gap
SSE and SSE2 are available in every single x86-family CPU with 64-bit support. You too can play around with SIMD, which is great fun! Unfortunately, SSE2 level in particular also happens to be what…
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Not all OCuLink eGPU docks are created equal
I recently tried using the Minisforum DEG1 GPU Dock with a Raspberry Pi 500+, using an M.2 to OCuLink adapter, and this chenyang SFF-8611 Cable. After figuring out there's a power button on the DEG1 (which needs to be turned on), and after fiddling around with the switches on the PCB (hidden under the large metal…
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X-ray reverse-engineering a hybrid module from 1960s Apollo test equipment
In this blog post, I reverse-engineer a hybrid module that was used for ground-testing of equipment from the Apollo space program. But fir...
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My Senior Design Project: Node.js WiFi-Extending Robot
A wifi-deploying tank robot controlled with JavaScript/Node.js.
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