1711
How to make a Smith chart
Deriving the basic mathematical properties of the Smith chart from electrical engineering
Topics /
Hardware & Electronics
The most popular blog posts about hardware & electronics on Hacker News. 3,045 posts.
1712
The 6502 CPU's overflow flag explained at the silicon level
In this article, I show how overflow is computed in the 6502 microprocessor at the transistor and silicon level. I've discussed the mathema...
1713
The Secret Life of Machines
SERIES 1 The Vacuum Cleaner The Washing Machine The Sewing Machine The Refrigerator The Central Heating System The Television
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1715
Microwave spontaneously turned on by its LED display
My microwave oven started to malfunction at around five years old. It started to randomly power on the lamp, fan, and turntable. It progressively got worse over several weeks until it was mostly stuck on. The microwave oven is not usable when this happens: It behaves as if the door were open, causing the control panel…
1716
Why does my ripped CD have messed up track names? And why is one track missing?
A delve into CD ripping and metadata
1717
Back to the future: Are hackers the future of amateur radio?
Last fall, under the aegis of Ham Radio Village , I was awarded a grant to take my one-day Tech class on the road. Ham Radio Village believes that more people in technical fields should have amateur radio licenses and that amateur radio is underrepresented in the hacker, STEM/STEAM, and maker communities. Currently…
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1719
Intel i7 loop performance anomaly
Recently I've been doing some benchmarking and came upon a very surprising behavior from a number of different Intel i7 CPUs (it manifests on Sandy Bridge and Haswell desktop-class CPUs as well as Sandy Bridge-EP Xeon CPUs).
1720
What Microchip doesn't (officially) tell you about the VSC8512
This is part 3 of my ongoing series about LATENTRED, my project to create an open source 1U managed Ethernet switch from scratch.
1721
Using a laptop as an HDMI monitor for an SBC
Though I spend the majority of my time working with microcontroller class devices, I also have an embarassingly robust collection of single board computers (SBC), including a few different Raspberry Pi models, the BeagleV Starlight Beta (RIP), and more. Typically when setting up these devices for whatever automation…
1722
Power, frequency, management: how M1 E cores win
macOS manages the loading and frequency of M1 cores according to the QoS set, and rules which differ between the original M1 and the M1 Pro.
1723
CCTV Cameras Sold on Amazon Come with Pre-Installed Malware
I needed a simple set of good outdoor surveillance cameras for a friends home. Like everything else I buy, I turned to Amazon. I found (what seemed like) a great deal for a set of 6 poe cameras and...
1724
Looking into the Stadia Controller Bluetooth Mode Website
With the end of Google's Stadia platform on January 18, 2023, Google published a website allowing people to "Switch the Stadia Controller ...
1725
Travels with a Pi (2018)
Pete's Random Notes Blog - I have opinions on lots of things...
1726
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
1727
How to Improve Bluetooth Audio Quality on Linux
Bluetooth Audio on Linux is a bit of a mess. There's a fair bit you can do to significantly improve the quality though.
1728
Apple II graphics: More than you wanted to know
The Apple ][ is one of the most iconic vintage computers of all time. But since Wozniak’s monster lasted all the way until 1993 (1995 if you could the IIe ca...
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Reverse-engineering the Globus INK, a Soviet spaceflight navigation computer
One of the most interesting navigation instruments onboard Soyuz spacecraft was the Globus INK, 1 which used a rotating globe to indicate...
1731
Unlocking my Lenovo laptop, part 3
The decryption function If you are just joining this story you may want to start at part 1. In part 2, we discovered that a embedded controller update is performed by uploading a small 'flasher' program to the EC. This flasher program is then responsible for programming a new firmware image t
1732
Adventures in reverse engineering Broadcom NIC firmware
For some time now, I've been reverse engineering the firmware of the Broadcom BCM5719 Ethernet NIC chip, so that open source firmware can be produced for it. The BCM5719 is a PCIe chip which provides up to four Gigabit Ethernet ports, and is mainly intended for use in server applications. It can be used with the Linux…
1733
When Your Smart ID Card Reader Comes With Malware
Millions of U.S. government employees and contractors have been issued a secure smart ID card that enables physical access to buildings and controlled spaces, and provides access to government computer networks and systems at the cardholder’s appropriate security level. But many government employees aren’t issued an…
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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.
1736
Coding for SSDs
Translations: This article was translated to Simplified Chinese by Xiong Duo and to Korean by Matt Lee (이 성욱). Introduction I want to make solid-state drives (SSDs) the optimal storage solution for my key-value store project. For that reason, I had to make sure I fully understood how SSDs work, so that I can optimize
1737
How Computers Boot Up (2008)
The previous post described [motherboards and the memory map] memory-map in Intel computers to set the scene for the initial phases of boot. Booting is an involved, hacky, multi-stage affair - fun st
1738
CPU Counters on Apple Silicon: article + tool
Last time I wrote about profiling in Zig on Apple Silicon, I touched on PMU counter profiling. This time I decided to go further and create my own tool to fetch all available counters for Apple Silicon processors (M1, M2, and later). Brief explanation of PMU counters PMU (Performance Monitoring Unit) counters are…
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Political Chips
Chips are the clearest example that economic efficiencies will not be the ultimate decider of technology’s end state: politics will play an important role.