The RP2040 is a microcontroller chip designed by Raspberry Pi in the UK. It's a dual-core ARM Cortex M0+ running at 200 MHz which provides up to 16 MB of off-chip flash and 264 KB on-chip RAM. It has 30 GPIO pins, 4 of which can be used as analogue inputs, two UARTs, two SPI controllers, two I2C controllers, and 16…
A tabletop LED display for quiet data
So you've got your hands on a late 1980s Minitel 1B (or something slightly later) and then you realize that the entire Minitel network shut ...
One of the more common arguments you hear in contemporary computer security circles is about hardware trust and embedded controllers. Technologies like Intel ME, the ARM Secure Element, TPMs, etc, remind us that the architecture of the modern computer is complex and not entirely under our control. A typical modern…
Apple today announced Apple Watch Ultra, which brings a new bold design and a wide range of features for endurance, exploration, and adventure.
The Rimac Nevera has set a top speed of 412kph (258mph), making it the fastest electric production car in the world.
It is the best of times for electronic ink but it is the worst of times for actually reading eBooks.
The 8086 microprocessor is one of the most important chips ever created; it started the x86 architecture that still dominates desktop and ...
The Apple Studio Display is, unquestionably, a very good monitor. But the real question is, should you pay €1,800+ for it? I have been asking that question myself for the past ten days. Today I decided that while I can't recommend it, I wil
In August 1999, Apple announced the first Power Mac G4: 1 The Power Mac G4 is powered by the revolutionary new PowerPC G4 chip architected by Apple, Motorola and IBM, and is the first personal computer in history to deliver supercomputer-level performance of over one billion floating-point operations per second. The…
Learn about three different antennas carried by SparkFun, and determine which will suit your long-range needs!
An expensive and unreliable way to record low quality videos!
The IBM 1401 team at the Computer History Museum accumulates a lot of mystery components from donations and other sources. While going thr...
Is exFAT as fragile as some say?
EDIT - the original article has an image of the PCB with the floppy power connector mounted the WRONG WAY. This is the INCORRECT WAY. Do NO...
The Advantage360 Professional is the successor to the well-known Advantage2. It comes with several new features, such as Adjustable Split, Wireless connection, Tenting, ZMK (highly customizable firmware), and many other minor things. In this blog post, I will explain the significant design changes and my experiences…
I’m not a POWER (or recently: Power) expert, only an enthusiastic user and advocate. Still, in the past couple of weeks a number of people from around the world asked my opinion how the POWER architecture could be kept relevant. This blog is really just an opinion, as I do not have the financial means to go ahead. It…
The PowerBook 1400 is, and remains, my favourite laptop. It was everything the PowerBook 5300 should have been and more. It was my first l...
Buying a new monitor is stressful because there's so many things to understand. After reading this article, you will know what to look for.
This post is going to be a bit different from my usual posts. It’s still about computers, but it’s about a different type of computer: the computer modules in my 2009 Dodge Ram 1500 pickup. Vehicles these days have lots of computers in them. I’ve historically been afraid to mess too much with them in fear of screwing…
Scott Mabin's blog
Apple's first product was the Apple-1 computer, introduced in 1976. This early microcomputer used an unusual type of storage for its disp...
Once upon a time, microcomputers were simple and easy to understand. So simple in fact that a kid like me, with no computer experience whatsoever, could actually understand them, build them, program them, and put them to work in his very own projects!
So, there you are, the proud parents of a beautiful new baby, and you can hardly contain your excitement as you unwrap that new 35mm camera kit you bought to document your child’s early years. Although you’ve had a point-and-shoot camera for a while, you wanted to step up to a “real” camera for the kind of quality…
Fast compact external SSDs are prone to thermal throttling. This is demonstrated during tests writing 96 files, when transfer rates fell from 2 GB/s to around 700 MB/s.
But there’s only one slot, you say? It’s all a matter of using a clever part to adapt a pass-through.
Creating the PiRS232 and playing with the Pi over serial has been leading towards an idea - I wanted to create a small, battery powered device, a sidecar that I could carry with my Psion and use as portable Linux terminal. I also managed to turn it into an Internet...
