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Why aren't motherboards mostly USB-C by now? (2021)
I’m beginning to think that the Windows PC that I built in 2015 is ready for retirement (though if Joe Biden can be president at 78, maybe this […]
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Interview with Jeff Geerling
Andrew Gregory of HackSpace magazine sat down with the one and only Jeff Geerling to chat about the wholesome corner of the internet he created.
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A CD Spectrometer (2006)
A simple spectrometer can be built from a CD and a box. Cut a slit on one side of the box. Place the CD on the other side with about 60 degree angle. Look down into the openning on the box. The slit should not be too wide, otherwise the spectrum lines will be blurred. It should not be too narrow either, otherwise the…
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My broken ThinkPad plays music upon booting
A puzzle with dodgy video recordings, funky spectrograms and deprecated APK's
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Regarding Proposed US Restrictions on RISC-V
A bipartisan group of 18 lawmakers in the US Congress have recently amplified a request to the White House and the Secretary of Commerce to place restrictions on Americans working with RISC-V (see also the initial request from the Senate ) in order to prevent China from gaining dominance in CPU technology.
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A kernel update broke my stylus
In short, after a Linux kernel update (6.5.8-200.fc.x86_64 on Fedora KDE), I can't use the top button of my pen on my tablet. This is really affecting my digital painting workflow!
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Starlink's User Terminal Firmware
This blog post presents an overview of Starlink's User Terminal runtime internals, focusing on the communications that happen within the device and with user applications and some tools that can help further research on the same topic.
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GPU.zip: side channel attack that exposes visual data processed on the GPU
On the Side-Channel Implications of Hardware-Based Graphical Data Compression
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Modern CPUs have a backstage cast
If you take someone with intermediate knowledge of computing in the right areas, and ask them how an x86 machine boots, they'll probably start telling you about how the CPU first comes up in real mode and starts executing code from the 8086 reset vector of FFFF:FFF0. This understanding of how an x86 machine boots has…
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What has changed in CPU cores in M3 chips?
Little seems to have changed in CPU cores in M3 chips, if you read reviews. Dig a bit deeper and there are major changes, as explained here.
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ECC RAM should be a human right
I am now a staunch advocate for ECC RAM, after the events of last week. You see, over the last several weeks my main desktop workstation has been misbehaving, with occasional freezing and crashing. After some diagnostics I began to suspect a faulty RAM module, and sure enough, upon performing a quick run of memtest86…
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Everything I know about floppy disks
Floppy disk drives are curious things. We know them as the slots that ingest those small almost-square plastic "floppy disks" and we only really see them now in Computer Museums. But there's a lot going on in that humble square of plastic and I wanted to write down what I've learned so far.
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Apple's interactive television box: Hacking the set top box System 7.1 in ROM
This article has been revised with recollections and corrections from former Apple employee Al Kossow, some good folks on Hacker News and t...
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Now you're thinking with relays
Tinkering with relay-based logic just for the fun of it.
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Pixel Binary Transparency: verifiable security for Pixel devices
Jay Hou, Software Engineer, TrustFabric (transparency.dev) Pixel Binary Transparency was originally announced in 2021; the following blog ...
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OpenCore Legacy Patcher – Use new macOS versions on old hardware
Experience macOS just like before
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TKey is a RISC-V computer in a USB-C case, that can run security applications
Introduction # The Tillitis TKey is a small computer in a USB stick form factor that can run small device applications that are loaded onto it. The purpose of the TKey is to be a secure environment for applications that provide some kind of security function. Some examples of such security functions are: Time-based…
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Testing Intel’s Arc A770 GPU for Deep Learning
This post covers my experience training image classification models with Intel’s PyTorch extension on the Arc A770 GPU.
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Building a Handheld PC
I’d like to share with you my latest project: Decktility!
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Chromebook Plus
Introducing the all-new Chromebook Plus, a new category of Chromebooks with double the performance.
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Printed robots with bones, ligaments, and tendons
For the first time, researchers have succeeded in printing a robotic hand with bones, ligaments and tendons made of different polymers using a new laser scanning technique.
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Burning a NeXTCube (1993)
I am writing this memo to explain what happened to the case our NeXTCube Computer, Serial Number AA001032.
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How Apple's developers reflashed Mac ROMs in the '90s
After I wrote about the possibility of programmable Mac ROM SIMMs in Quadras a couple of months ago, I suspected that there had been a way for developers at Apple in the 68k Mac era to reflash the ROM in their Macs during development, just like BIOS updates on PCs. The reason I believed this is because the ROM SIMM…
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Reverse-engineering Ethernet backoff on the Intel 82586 network chip's die
Introduced in 1973, Ethernet is the predominant way of wiring computers together. Chips were soon introduced to handle the low-level aspects...
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Is AM radio dead?
...that was the question I asked my Dad, a radio engineer for many decades, who worked at the biggest AM station in St. Louis, KMOX. The station is approaching its centennial in 2025, as are—some YouTube commenters argue—its primary audience! I recorded that video during my convalescence at my parents' house (I am…
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Year of the Voice – Chapter 2: Let's talk
Talk to your smart home and let it talk back with our new voice assistant features.
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The state of open-source in 3D printing in 2023
After several years of development, complicated by the pandemic, disrupted supply chains, and war in Europe, we announced our new Original Prusa MK4 today. We began shipping the first units of the XL two weeks ago. There is an upcoming PrusaSlicer...