271
The End of an Athlon
When I was researching the mess related to strange and poorly documented CPUID bits in the Athlon MP and XP processors , I had to swap a lot of CPUs. This was uneventful in most cases… but only most.
Topics /
Hardware & Electronics
The most popular blog posts about hardware & electronics on Hacker News. 460 posts.
272
Amiga 1000: Ten years ahead of its time
This computer was so good and so far out there, we didn't know what we had.
273
Building a robotics research setup that lives next to my desk
The first note in an independent robotics research project: a complete tabletop manipulation setup—industrial arm, two cameras, teleoperation, and a software stack built from scratch—for under €5,000.
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IBM Unveils Next Generation Dual-Architecture Processor for IBM Z and LinuxONE
The new processor is being developed to allow organizations to run Arm-native Linux environments simultaneously with z/OS and Linux on IBM Z, while benefiting from IBM’s established security, reliability, and scale.
276
How I leared what a decoupling capacitor is for, the hard way
I was very excited to get the latest version of my PCB from the manufacturer.
277
3D printing my laptop ergonomic setup
Apparently, one of my hobbies is making updates to my ergonomic setup, then blogging about it from an Amtrak train. I've gone and done it again.
278
Punkt. Unveils MC03 Smartphone
Punkt. unveils MC03, its latest smartphone designed to give users full control over personal data, privacy, and device usage.
279
Porting the ThinkPad X61 to Coreboot
An introduction to my IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad addiction Over 10 years ago I got my first ThinkPad x60. I got interested in free software by reading the about GNU …
280
BIO: The Bao I/O Coprocessor
BIO is the I/O co-processor in the Baochip-1x, a mostly open source 22nm SoC I helped design. You can read more about the Baochip-1x’s background here , or pick up an evaluation board at Crowd Supply .
281
Hardware hotplug events on Linux, the gory details
Maybe the code shouldn't be the only documentation?
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Starlink militarization and its impact on global strategic stability (2023)
In this piece, two researchers from PLA-affiliated National University of Defense Technology argue that Starlink will negatively impact global stability, in light of its clear military applications, increased risks of accidents and collisions in space, and SpaceX's close relationship with the U.S. military. The…
284
Electric motor scaling laws and inertia in robot actuators
Engineering contraptions
285
The Physics of GPS
An interactive exploration of how GPS works: from the speed of light and trilateration to the cheap clock problem and Einstein's relativity corrections.
286
Fun With Pinball
Fun With Pinball small board assembly instructions explanations flipper solenoid stepper video
287
New 14‑inch MacBook Pro with M6
Apple today announced the new 14-inch MacBook Pro with M6, delivering more performance, powerful on-device AI capabilities, and faster connectivity.
288
An iroh powered smart fan
Putting iroh on a bare ESP32 to build a temperature-driven smart fan you can check on from anywhere.
289
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…
290
iPhone Duo Teardown
We took the Duo all the way down to the gears, followed glowing dust into its hinge, and put its crease-hiding nano-texture under the microscope.
291
TSMC Risk
If hyperscalers and chip companies don’t build up a TSMC competitor they are set to forego billions of dollars in revenue and stunt the AI revolution.
292
Raspberry Pi Pico 2 at 873.5MHz with 3.05V Core Abuse
Adventures with dry ice and RP2350 - how fast can it go?
293
Reviving a four year old reMarkable 2
I found my old reMarkable 2 paper tablet, bought in 2021, it had sat unused for ~4 years or so. The device was in a sorry state:
294
Designing and assembling my first PCB
About a couple months ago I purchased an Arduino Nano ESP32 dev board. I had this sudden itch and I wanted to play around with hardware. I don't really have much experience in this space, besides working on firmware for an IoT company over a decade ago, but I've written tons of software over the years. I was very…
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Discovering hard disk physical geometry through microbenchmarking (2019)
Modern hard drives store an incredible amount of data in a small space, and are still the default choice for high-capacity (though not highest-performance) storage. While hard drives have been around since the 1950s, the current 3.5″ form factor (actually 4″ wide) appeared in the early 1980s. Since then, the capacity…
297
M5Stack Launches PaperMono
M5Stack today launches PaperMono, a compact ESP32-S3-based E-Ink development terminal designed for low-power information display, interaction, and connected IoT projects. PaperMono is now available through the M5Stack Store. Product Value Featuring a 3.97-inch 4-level grayscale E-Ink display, touch input, integrated…
298
AI Chip Architectures
A look at AI Chip Architectures. NVIDIA, AMD, TPUs, Trainium, Groq, Cerebras.
299
Ode to the AA Battery
Recently this post from @Merocle caught my eye: I'm fixing my iFixit soldering station. I haven't used it for a long time and the battery has gone overdischarge. I hope it will come back to life. Unfortunately, there are no replacements available for sale at the moment. Devices with built-in rechargeable batteries…
300
The USB Situation
I write this from the latest MacBook Pro. I've been running this as my primary machine for almost a month. When I'm not grinding out the latest soon-to-be-relea