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Reverse engineering circuitry in a Spacelab computer from 1980
Spacelab was a reusable laboratory that could be carried in the cargo bay of the Space Shuttle, providing lab space for astronauts and exper...
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Hardware & Electronics
The most popular blog posts about hardware & electronics on Hacker News. 3,046 posts.
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Reprogramming a Sennheiser Microphone
I'm somehow interested in audio production. But not it more my pet hobby, nothing that would generate decent income. This means I usually do...
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I Quit My Job To Teach People About Hardware
This topic was discussed in greater detail in Episode 184 of to The Amp Hour. This article is more about the personal feelings that have accompanied this (ongo
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Building a $400 at-home DIY spin bike for Peloton and Apple Fitness+
Looking to build a DIY bike for spin classes at home? I have you covered with my build and review of the Sunny bike and accessories for under $400
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The Texas Instruments TMX 1795: the first, forgotten microprocessor
The first 8-bit microprocessor, the TMX 1795 had the same architecture as the 8008 but was built months before the 8008. Never sold commerci...
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A VR Cycling Experience for $40
I’ve made an Arduino thing that can wirelessly talk to a mobile device over BLE and can now meter the revolutions of a wheel with an optical tachometer. I’m using these two hardware fea…
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Enhancing your MIDI devices with Perl
This post also appeared on perl.com.
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Raspberry Pi Zero W as a headless time-lapse camera
tl;dr: There are many ways to capture time-lapse videos. But this one is cheap, completely wireless, and mine. If you want to skip the post and go straight for the glory, grab a copy of my Time-lapse app for the Raspberry Pi. Time-lapses transform subtle, slow processes into something beautiful, and often make us…
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The largest computer ever built
While cold war jets are an old interest of mine, almost everything built to fight the cold war fascinates me. All ages are characterized by madness; only a few have that madness captured in physica…
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Tips for Building and Deploying Robots
This post is not about research or developing software for robots. Instead it is some tips on how to go about building robots for mass deployment and how to leverage those deployed robots for improving your product.
2507
Edge of Emulation: Game Boy Sewing Machines (2020)
Emulating the unknown: Controlling Sewing Machines with a Game Boy
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The Flying Nimbus – A high-power, self-balancing transportation contraption
What does a recycled (heavily used) go kart tire, an action-packed three-phase servo drive and a gyro/accelerometer have in common?
2509
Examining the core memory module inside a vintage IBM 1401 mainframe
The IBM 1401 mainframe computer was announced in 1959 and by the mid-1960s had become the best-selling computer , extremely popular with me...
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Testing the Z80 Chip with a 1970s Beauty
The Fairchild Sentry 610 was optimized for engineers
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Composite Video on the NES: Why's it so wobbly?
The Nintendo Entertainment System. Is it the platonic ideal of an 8-bit video game system? Well, only because it’s so prominent and successful– it’s actually...
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RISC-V isn’t as interesting as you think
I had wrote this before the Unleashed was revealed, so some of the bits on economics have changed. As of writing this, I still stand by my other beliefs. One of the most hyped things in hardware design is RISC-V,… Continue reading →
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Modernizing my 1980s sound system
Where the last two posts were primarily about software ( Navidrome and beets , respectively), this post will be more about hardware (and a bit of software to control it). Hopefully it’ll be useful to others with older sound hardware, especially those who are compelled (as I am) to avoid buying a “connected” device…
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An ode to the 10,000 RPM Western Digital (Veloci)Raptor
Back in 2004, I visited a now bankrupt Dutch computer store called MyCom 1 , located at the Kinkerstraat in Amsterdam. I was there to buy a Western Digital Raptor model WD740, with 74 GB of capacity, running at 10,000 RPM.
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IP over Lasers
Mike Kohn's music, software, and electronics projects.
2518
ARM server market
Microservers and the motivations for microservers have been around for years. I first blogged about them back in 2008 ( Cooperative, Expendable, Microslice, Servers: Low-Cost, Low-Power Servers for Internet-Scale Services ) and even Intel has entered the market with Atom but it’s the ARM instruction set architecture…
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Welding and the automation frontier
The big question about Artificial Intelligence, other than whether it will destroy human civilization, is the effect it will have on employment.
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Happy 45th Birthday to the IBM PC and Model F/XT
A celebration into the IBM PC, the Model F/XT keyboard, where it came from and what it became