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Hardware & Electronics
The most popular blog posts about hardware & electronics on Hacker News. 242 posts.
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5Gbps Ethernet on the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4
tl;dr: I successfully got the Intel I340-T4 4x Gigabit NIC working on the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4, and combining all the interfaces (including the internal Pi interface), I could get up to 3.06 Gbps maximum sustained throughput. Update: I was able to boost things a bit to get 4.15 Gbps! Check out my video here…
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Raspberry Pi – UASP, Trim, and Boot Performance via USB
In the past few weeks, I reviewed USB drive performance on the Raspberry Pi 4, and the importance of UASP support for USB drive performance. Both posts generated great discussion, and there were three things I wanted to cover in this follow-up, namely: Which drives support UASP Real-world performance benchmarks TRIM…
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A look at the die of the 8086 processor
The Intel 8086 microprocessor was introduced 42 years ago this month, 1 so I made some high-res die photos of the chip to celebrate. The ...
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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…
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Build Your Own FPGA (2012)
The Open 7400 Logic Competition is a crowd-sourced contest with a simple but broad criteria for entry: build something interesting out of discrete logic chips. It's now in its second year, and this time around I was inspired to enter it.
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Let's Build a 28-Core Raspberry Pi Cluster
I built a 28-core gigabit cluster, Kraken, consisting of 7 Raspberry Pi 3 Model Bs.
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Restoring and MIDI-Fying a Baby Grand Piano
As much as I love digital instruments, synthesizers and other electronic gear I also really love the look and feel of instruments made from wood, brass, steel and felt. There is objectively no difference between the best digitally sampled pianos but for some reason it doesn’t quite feel as much alive as an actual…
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Data Runner Watch Prototype – Modded Casio F91W
Today I want to show you a watch modification that I've been working on. I'm calling it the Data Runner, and it's another F91W mod, this time going the extra mile to make something functional and nice looking.
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Running a full desktop environment on a Kindle (2019)
Ethical Hacking and Cybersecurity Blog
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I Bought Apple Silicon
This article has been published 6 years ago . If you're into internet archeology, read it — but at your own risk. Honza doesn't have to necessarily agree with the content by now.
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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 ...
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A floppy-disk Walkman using a Raspberry Pi
I have built the most inconvenient way of playing music! It is lo-fi awfulness and cyberpunk grungy. Thanks! I hate it! Ingredients Raspberry Pi USB floppy drive Audio Cable / Headphones USB Battery WHY?!?! As I discussed yesterday, it's possible to fit half an hour of speech on a single floppy disk. The best band in…
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Backdoors and other vulnerabilities in HiSilicon based hardware video encoders
Serious vulnerabilities (including a backdoor) in IPTV/H.264/H.265 video encoders based on HiSilicon hi3520d hardware.
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The 2020 MacBook Air
Faster, cheaper, and now with a truly great keyboard.
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Pinephone first steps
After anki trashed my history, uploaded the trashed history to the sync server, and then repeatedly re-synced the trashed history every time I tried to restore from backup, I wrote my own spaced repetition app. It reads input from a markdown file, asks questions in the terminal and stores state in a json file. I wrote…
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Building my own HomeKit Thermostat
Built a custom HomeKit enabled thermostat, because I was fed up with the walled gardens of Nest
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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…
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My New Old Apple IIe Computer
How I found a vintage Apple IIe computer on the sidewalk and brought it back to life
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I made a mechanical keyboard with 3D-printed switches
The keyboard is done! This is basically the result of what I've been working on for the past 2 months, which has involved 3 iterations of testing machines, over 100 printed switches, and now finally a keyboard that I can type on. Unfortunately it is not a very good keyboard, but you can't win them all.
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A circuit board from the Saturn V rocket, reverse-engineered and explained
In the Apollo Moon missions, the Saturn V rocket was guided by an advanced onboard computer system built by IBM. This system was built fro...
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Gerät 32620: the machine that powered numerous number stations
A few years ago, I first stumbled over some recordings of number stations and started reading up on their history. For most of them, we have pretty good guesses who ran them and for what purpose. One example is the Gongs and Chimes Station , known for its melody that got increasingly creepy over the years, the more…
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How Pulse Oximeters Work (2015)
Principles of how pulse oximetry works explained without using complicated physics.
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Brilliant Hardware in the Valley of the Software Slump
Our software feels less refined as our hardware achieves platonic ideals
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ThinkPad 560E
I’ve been idly looking for one of the mid-90s ThinkPads known to have perfect OpenStep/Rhapsody support for years as a fun collector piece, but been unwilling to pay eBay prices. The other week I scored a pristine IBM ThinkPad 560E for $20 in a Shopgoodwill auction, below is notes on getting it up and running, plus…
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Tiny transformer inside: Decapping an isolated power transfer chip
I saw an ad for a tiny chip 1 that provides 5 volts 2 of isolated power: You feed 5 volts in one side, and get 5 volts out the other si...