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Floppy Disks: It’s Too Late
Someone has to break it to you, and that person is me. It’s over. You waited too long. You procrastinated or made excuses or otherwise didn’t think about it or care. You didn’t do…
Topics /
Hardware & Electronics
The most popular blog posts about hardware & electronics on Hacker News. 4,805 posts.
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IBM and Samsung Unveil Semiconductor Breakthrough
IBM and Samsung Electronics jointly announced a breakthrough in semiconductor design utilizing a new vertical transistor architecture that demonstrates a path to scaling beyond nanosheet, and has the potential to reduce energy usage by 85 percent.
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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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Making Electronic Calipers
Have you ever wished for a 500 Hz, millimeter-precise linear position sensing system? Well you're in luck --- all you need is some circuit board, a basic microcontroller, and a wee bit of maths!
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The Miserable State of Modems and Mobile Network Operators
This is a story of the complexities of cellular connectivity, the perils of closed ecosystems, and how to debug what you cannot see.
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A 74xx-Defined Radio (2021)
Video Appetizer TLDR I built a shortwave radio receiver from scratch using only cheap and easily available components, i.e. standard transistors, op-amps and 74xx logic chips. No typical radio part…
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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...
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Samsung's abandoned NX cameras can be brought online with a $20 LTE stick
Tooting photos on the go from Samsung WiFi cameras with a $20 LTE stick
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NAT Is the Enemy of Low Power Devices
If you have ever tried communicating with a device on a private network, you may have encountered Network Address Translation (NAT). Because the number of connected devices has long outpaced the number of unique addresses in the IPv4 address space, public IP addresses have to be shared between devices. This introduces…
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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.
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A guide to getting started with embedded systems
In this article, I share a beginner friendly guide to learning the basics of embedded systems and how they work. I talk about micontrollers, electronics, and software. I also share my motivation for working on embedded systems.
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Qualcomm’s Chain of Trust
Covering Qualcomm bootloader’s up to the point of Android being loaded
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FCC reaffirms $3M fine for marketing unauthorized drone transmitters
The American Radio Relay League (ARRL) is the national association for amateur radio, connecting hams around the U.S. with news, information and resources.
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I decided to build a nine-bit computer
The first nerdy dispatch from my Quixotic Hardware Project, QIXOTE-1
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LoRaWAN packet received at record distance of 702 km
With the rise of novel wireless technologies, we surprise ourselves over and over again of what these technologies are capable of. LoRa has been around now for
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CPU Introspection: Intel Load Port Snooping
I blog about random things security, everything is broken, nothing scales, shared memory models are flawed.
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iPhone 13 Pro camera review: Tanzania
The iPhone 13 Pro camera across southern Tanzania — macro, the longer telephoto, and Cinematic mode, from ants to helicopters.
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Why do some radio towers blink?
One day on my drive home, I saw three towers. One of them had a bunch of blinking white lights, another one had red lights that kind of faded in and out, and the third one, well, it wasn't doing anything. I'm lucky to have a radio engineer for a dad, so Dad: why do some towers blink?
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Mac Pros, Ara, and Modularity
Early yesterday Motorola announced their ambitious Ara project - a modular phone with interchangable parts and features. In theory it sounds great - battery running low? Swap in a new one. Need a bigger camera for that trip you're going on? Pop one in - no need for that big DSLR.
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ESP32-C6, a Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5 (LE) SoC
ESP32-C6 is Espressif’s first low-power and cost-effective Wi-Fi 6 + Bluetooth 5 (LE) SoC, with a 32-bit RISC-V core, for securely connected devices. ESP32-C6 is already certified by the Wi-Fi Alliance.
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The CPUs of Spacecraft Computers in Space
Many CPUs have been used in space craft, space stations and other such probes. Such CPUs must be highly reliable, and very durable. The temperatures in space, even with heaters, can vary widely. The radiation that a system is exposed too can be immense. So when designing one of these systems designers don't always use…
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Using a Canon EOS camera as a webcam in Debian
Learn how to use your Canon EOS camera as a webcam on Debian Linux with secure boot enabled. Step-by-step guide for installing dependencies, signing the v4l2loopback module, and using the camera in applications. Works with many camera brands including Canon, Fuji, HP, Kodak, Nikon, Pentax, Sanyo, and Sony.
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FPGAs and the renaissance of retro hardware
Almost every few weeks, a new and exciting retro hardware project is announced. These are truly …