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A vector graphics workstation from the 70s
A bit of history and a repair of a Tektronix 4051 graphical computer from 1975. What was this computer's place in history, what was it used for and what parts exploded when turning it on.
Topics /
Hardware & Electronics
The most popular blog posts about hardware & electronics on Hacker News. 459 posts.
242
How Not to Buy a SSD
sugar, spice, and everything not nice
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Synthetic aperture radar autofocus and calibration
3D trajectory position error estimation autofocus, antenna pattern normalization, and polarimetric calibration for drone mounted SAR radar.
245
Golang on the Playstation 2
The PS2 is more than capable of doing some wild things, including running Linux. I always wondered if we could just write baremetal Go code on it, so I decided to give it a try.
246
USB-C hubs and my slow descent into madness (2021)
A short story of me trying out different USB-C hubs, taking them apart, and slowly descending into madness.
247
First Successful Lightning Triggering and Guiding Using a Drone
News Highlights: ◆We have achieved the world's first successful lightn...
248
Touching the Elephant – TPUs
Understanding the Tensor Processing Unit
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Introduction to reverse-engineering vintage synth firmware
A gentle introduction to reverse-engineering vintage synthesiser ROMs using the Ghidra disassembler.
251
The MiniPC Revolution
Reasons why you should consider breaking your hardware up into MiniPCs.
252
Pimping My Casio: Part Deux
Close to three years ago I wrote about using Oddly Specific Objects' alternate "motherboard" to modify a classic Casio F-91W watch: Pimping...
253
Sony PlayStation 2 fixing frenzy
Sony PlayStation 2 fixing frenzy - retrohax.net I once wrote a blog post about Nintendo Wii controllers. That post was already based on ...
254
Nvidia DGX Spark: great hardware, early days for the ecosystem
NVIDIA sent me a preview unit of their new DGX Spark desktop “AI supercomputer”. I’ve never had hardware to review before! You can consider this my first ever sponsored post …
255
JTAG 'Hacking' the Original Xbox in 2023
Released in November 2001, the original Xbox was Microsoft’s first venture into the game console industry. With its hardware closely resembling a cheap but v...
256
We'd be better off with 9-bit bytes
A number of 70s computing systems had nine-bit bytes, most prominently the PDP-10, but today 1 [ 1 Apparently, it was the System/360 that really set the standard here. ] all systems use 8-bit bytes and that now seems natural. 2 [ 2 Though you still see RFCs use "octet", and the C standard has a CHAR_BITS macro, to…
257
Zero ASIC releases Wildebeest, the highest performance FPGA synthesis tool
Democratizing silicon
258
Galaxy XR: The first Android XR headset
Galaxy XR is now available today. Here’s what to expect.
259
Programming in the Sun: A Year with the Daylight Computer
I’ve been hinting on X/Twitter about my use of the Daylight DC-1 as a programming environment, and after about a year of use, it’s time to write about it in longer form. This isn’t a full product review, but rather an experience report on coding in sunlight. It’s also about the Boox Tab Ultra – which has a different…
260
Notes on the Pentium's microcode circuitry
Most people think of machine instructions as the fundamental steps that a computer performs. However, many processors have another layer of ...
261
Why the original Macintosh had a screen resolution of 512×324
Many classic Macs came with — or supported — displays running at 512x384 pixels, but many compact Macs, ranging from the original 1984 machine up through 1991’s Macintosh Classic II had built-in CRTs running at 512x342 pixels. That covers all black-and-white compact Macs with a 9-inch screen. The later Color Classic…
262
Walkie-Textie Wireless Communicator
The Walkie-Textie is a simple handheld device with a 12-key keypad and OLED display that allows you to send and receive text messages using the LoRa wireless protocol. It's ideal for situations where there's no mobile signal, such as when you're camping or hiking in a remote area, when you don't want the cost of a…
263
Hacking the Humane AI Pin
On February 18, 2025, Humane announced it would be shutting down all services for the always online Humane Ai Pin in ten days, following a sale to HP . I had been vaguely aware of the Ai Pin, definitely more so than the average tech person, as I have a close friend who was one of the earliest adopters and eventually…
264
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.
265
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…
266
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?
267
Bringing a decade old bicycle navigator back to life with open source software
Published: 25-07-2025 23:37 | Last update: 02-08-2025 21:31 | Author: Remy van Elst | Text only version of this article
268
Pebble Time 2* Design Reveal
It's real and it's magnificent
269
The most famous carbon dioxide absorber
The Apollo 13 astronauts were stranded in space. Their survival depended on if they could make a carbon dioxide absorber inside the spacecraft.
270
ARM adds neural accelerators to GPUs
Explore Arm Neural Technology, the first to integrate neural accelerators into GPUs, enhancing mobile graphics with AI.