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Topics /
Hardware & Electronics
The most popular blog posts about hardware & electronics on Hacker News. 242 posts.
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Booting an M1 Mac from an external disk
If you’ve been unable to create a bootable external disk to use with your M1 Mac, this explains what you need and its limitations and quirks.
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Myths about USB NKRO and how USB HID works
A common myth about USB keyboards is that they can only support 6-key rollover, and not report more than 6 keys being pressed at a time. In fact, this is wholly untrue; the USB HID device class can support full N-key rollover (NKRO). While keyboards which purport to support USB NKRO are now common, some of them have…
214
Measuring keyboard-to-photon latency with a light sensor
For a long time when I’ve wanted to test the latency of computers and UIs I’ve used the Is It Snappy app with my iPhone’s high speed camera to count frames between when I press a key and when the screen changes. However the problem with that is it takes a while to find the exact frames you want, which is annoying when…
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Pinebook Pro longer term usage report
I bought a Pinebook Pro in the first batch, and have been using it on and off for several months now. Some people I know wanted to know if ...
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A Year with the Surface Go
AndreGarzia.com website
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Firefox 80 and my confusion over its hardware accelerated video on Linux
You're probably reading this page because you've attempted to access some part of my blog (Wandering Thoughts) or CSpace , the wiki thing it's part of. Unfortunately you're using a browser version that my anti-crawler precautions consider suspicious, most often because it's too old (most often this applies to versions…
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Macs with T2, M1 chips cannot be restored to factory state without Apple
Modern Apple computers can no longer be fully used and maintained in 100% offline environments, or in ways that will reasonably ensure that the computer is…
219
What is Electricity? (1996)
What is electricity? This question is impossible to answer because the word " Electricity " has several contradictory meanings. These different meanings are incompatible, and the contradictions confuse everyone. If you don't understand electricity, you're not alone. Even teachers, engineers, and scientists have a hard…
220
PC-XT Emulator on a ESP8266 (2018)
Can you run a 8086 PC-XT emulation with 640K RAM, 80×25 CGA composite video and a 1.44MB MS-DOS disk on a ESP12E without additional components? Yes, you can and I did. The CPU emulator is a po…
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AppleCrate II: A New Apple II-Based Parallel Computer (2015)
In 2004 I built the first AppleCrate , an 8-board system, as an inexpensive, easy to program vehicle for experiments in parallel programming�a kind of "blade server" for the Apple II, if you will! AppleCrate I (at the time I didn't realize that it was number "I" ;-) was great fun, and it enabled some very interesting…
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Wiring and Cabling: How to Lace Cable Harnesses (1962)
From OP 2230, "Workmanship and Design Practices for Electronic Equipment" , published by the direction of the chief of the Bureau of Naval Weapons , 1 December, 1962. pp. 7-9 --- 7-14.
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Detecting a 2.4 GHz transmission for under 1 EUR
As I was debugging a wireless mouse based on a 2.4 GHz proprietary protocol, I wanted to detect the transmitted signals. Note that I purposefully wrote “detect”: It was sufficient to see how often the transmission occurred (and if at all) and whether the link was unidirectional – i.e., only the mouse transmits and the…
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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…
225
Making Playstation 1 Modchips (2018)
When I was young I owned a PlayStation 1 (PS1). It was one of the first, if not the first, game consoles I owned and it had a profound effect on my future. I can trace the history of how I got involved in computers back to playing and modding
226
Recovering Iran’s NOUR 01 ‘Military Satellite’
Iran’s new military satellite, NOUR 01, most interesting fact may not be that it resembles a college engineering experiment but rather that it may have a connection to a Mexican military payl…
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Connecting a Macintosh SE to the Internet with a Raspberry Pi
How to connect a 68k Mac to the internet without an ethernet card!
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The Raspberry Pi 4 has a fan now – the Case Fan
Last year, I wrote a blog post titled The Raspberry Pi 4 needs a fan. And in a video to go along with that post, I detailed the process of drilling out a hole in the top of the official Pi 4 case and installing a 5v fan inside. But that solution wasn't great. The fan was a little loud and annoying, and would stay on…
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Chips and Geopolitics
TSMC showed the power of modularization, and now they are core to the U.S. national security strategy.
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Reverse engineering a Hit Clip (2013)
It’s hard to see a child outside today without some kind of iDevice pumping high fidelity 192kbps stereo lossless audio into their shiny white headphones, but BACK IN MY DAY, the iPod hadn’t been invented yet. Pickings were slim. Walkmen were outdated, CD players were pricey and would skip if bumped around despite…
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TSMC Builds a Dedicated 28nm Fab for Sony Orders
IFNews reports that TSMC will build a OEM production line exclusively for Sony to produce high-end CIS in 28nm process at the Nanke 14B fab...
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Exceptional failure: breaking the STM32F1 read-out protection
The firmware of microcontrollers usually contains valuable data such as intellectual property and, in some cases, even cryptographic material. In order to protect the confidentiality of these assets,
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ARM MacBook vs. Intel MacBook
Up to yesterday, my laptop was a large 15-inch MacBook Pro. It contains an Intel Kaby Lake processor (3.8 GHz). I just got a brand-new 13-inch 2020 MacBook Pro with Apple's M1 ARM chip (3.2 GHz). How do they compare? I like precise data points. Recently, I have been busy benchmarking number parsing routines where you…
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Reverse-engineering the 8086's Arithmetic/Logic Unit from die photos
The Intel 8086 processor was introduced in 1978, setting the course of modern computing. While the x86 processor family has supported 64-b...
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AVX-512 Mask Registers, Again
Taking a second look at the newly introduced mask registers, this time with the benefit of a SKX die shot from Fritzchens Fritz.
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Who needs a case? The 3D Printed Mil-Plastic is here
Short, medium, and long form tech projects. Detailed photos and build logs with benefits for paid subscribers.
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Using an old BlackBerry as a portable SSH or Telnet terminal
EDIT 2022-07-22: With the shutdown (or imminent shutdown) of the 2G/EDGE/3G network in the US I'm now switching to a BlackBerry Q10, which supports LTE and is able to run ConnectBot.
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Building DIY LED strips for fun
I work remotely and have for many years, but let's be honest: it's the case for a lot of people now. Lately I've been trying to step up how my home office looks, especially with regards to its video conferencing capabilities. I started using a DSLR as