Homebrew Hercules Graphics Card
After viewing our CGA Redux livestream a friendly tinkerer named Arek contacted me if I was interested in a homebrew Hercules Graphics Card PCB that he designed. Naturally I said yes and assembled the card, playing beta tester for his design. It will probably be open sourced eventually, but is not yet available. So…
Fiber-infused ink enables 3D-printed heart muscle to beat
The ink helps heart muscle cells align so that they can contract in coordination
A Test Suite for the Intel 8088
In a previous article, I revealed one of the secrets to MartyPC 's accuracy, hardware validation . To summarize, it is a method of using a m...
Is the Intel N100 a better option than high-end ARM RK3588 boards at the moment?
The Intel N100 (and N200) seem to be Intel's attempt at trying to muscle into the market that high-end ARM SoCs look to have cornered. With the Rockchip
Trying every combination to flash my Asus motherboard's BIOS
tl;dr: Use an old-fashioned USB 2.0 flash drive, format it FAT32, download the firmware, make sure it's named correctly, and use the motherboard's 'BIOS Flashback' option after powering off the computer. This past week, I devoted far too much time to the task of updating my brand new motherboard's BIOS. It started…
Glitching a microcontroller to unlock the bootloader
Back in the summer I was lucky enough to finagle my boss into letting me take Dmitry Nedospasov ( @nedos )’s hardware hacking training . In it I cut my teeth on using an FPGA to interface with target hardware. After implementing a UART we implemented a module that could parse part of Apple’s OneWire, used to negotiate…
LLM Falcon 180B Needs 720GB RAM to Run
Yes, if you have enough CPU RAM
Of Sun Ray laptops, MIPS and getting root on them
I like Sun Ray laptops. They make surprisingly useful thin clients. Here, going from right to left, I'm playing Quake on my Solaris UltraBoo...
Making the most of Apple Silicon power: 2 Core capabilities (2022)
P cores are conventional in that they can deliver excellent performance at maximum frequency, but with high power use. E cores may take 4 times as long for a task, but use less than a third of the …
All Librem 5 smartphones have shipped
Purism makes premium phones, laptops, mini PCs and servers running free software on PureOS. Purism products respect people's privacy and freedom while protecting their security.
The anatomy of a smart bulb
I’ve been having some troubles with Zigbee. Yes, at our airbnb we have a rather big dining room where I’ve put 7 Zigbee RGBWW Smart bulbs. The problem is that each time I try to turn all 7 on or off there’s either a lag or some of them just won’t switch on or off. The controller is a Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 USB dongle, yes…
IBM Quantum System Two
IBM kicked off the IBM Quantum Summit 2022, announcing new breakthrough advancements in quantum hardware and software and outlining its pioneering vision for quantum-centric supercomputing.
Replacing the bad flyback transformer in Apple's Studio Display 17"
Content Warning: usage of Dremel, bad soldering, bad desoldering, underestimating high voltage, Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field
RISC on a Chip: David Patterson and Berkeley RISC-I
David Patterson and team at UC Berkeley give RISC its name and make the first RISC microprocessor design.
Inside the 1040ST
1MB and more
Repairing a tiny ribbon cable inside a 28 year old IBM ThinkPad 701c
I'm in the middle of turning two badly treated IBM ThinkPad 701CS machines (the ones with the lovely unfolding keyboard) into a single, wor...
Interesting features of John Harrison's sea clocks
I recently got to see John Harrison's sea clocks at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich. I recommend visiting if you get the chance. This post is about some of the interesting things I observed.
New RAM card, prototype Mac Portable, demo System 7
I guess this is a review of sorts, so here's the review part: you should buy Tech by Androda's new 7MB Macintosh Portable RAM card . On my D...
A dozen USB chargers in the lab: Apple is good, but not quite the best (2012)
When you buy a USB charger, how do you know if you're getting a safe, high-quality charger for your money? You can't tell from the outside...
Tempest: Transmit Radio Waves via a PC Video Card with No Extra Hardware
the quality of the music is not exactly what you are used to :-) but at least it works!