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A CT scanner reveals surprises inside the 386 processor's ceramic package
Intel released the 386 processor in 1985, the first 32-bit chip in the x86 line. This chip was packaged in a ceramic square with 132 gold-pl...
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I'm returning my Framework 16
My current laptop is an aging X1 Carbon generation 7, purchased some time in mid 2019. A few months ago a few keys of the keyboard stopped working, specifically the 5, 6, - , = and Delete keys. Sometimes I can get it working again by mashing one of them for a while, but it's not consistent. Given my past experiences…
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My quest to make motorcycle riding that tad bit safer
It began with a spark—a dormant passion reignited after many years away from motorcycling. Life had steered me in different directions, away from the saddle, but something deep inside pulled me back to the thrill and freedom that only riding offers. Returning to motorcycling after such an extended hiatus was daunting…
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Custom telescope mount using harmonic drives and ESP32
How I went from buying a €200 tracker to building a custom telescope mount with harmonic drives, ESP32, and way more engineering than necessary
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An invalid 68030 instruction accidentally allowed the Mac Classic II to boot
This is the story of how Apple made a mistake in the ROM of the Macintosh Classic II that probably should have prevented it from booting, but instead, miraculously, its Motorola MC68030 CPU accidentally prevented a crash and saved the day by executing an undefined instruction.
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Is an Intel N100 or N150 a better value than a Raspberry Pi?
tl;dr: it depends. About one year ago, I bought an Intel N100 mini PC (specifically the GMKtec N100 NucBox G3) and compared it to the Raspberry Pi 5 8GB. A year later, and we have a newer $159 16GB version of that mini PC with a slightly-faster Intel N150, and a new 16GB Raspberry Pi 5. I re-ran all my benchmarks, and…
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Modifying an HDMI dummy plug's EDID using a Raspberry Pi
I recently found myself needing to change the monitor that a cheap HDMI “dummy plug” pretended to be. It was a random one I had bought on Amazon several years ago that acted as a 4K monitor, and I needed it to be something simpler that didn’t support a 4K resolution. The story behind why is a long one that I’m still…
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Chasing RFI Waves – Part Seven
Here is part seven (the final part) of my non-fiction work about the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Green Bank, West Virginia. You can also read parts one, two, three, four, five an…
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Getting bitten by Intel's poor naming schemes
Don't you love misleading documentation?
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Thoughts on Daylight Computer
on the Amtrak from Denver to Sacramento When I get to write or read on a screen that’s reflecting the sun back at me instead of needing to be shielded from it, I get a dose of this feeling that this is what all computing could feel like. I want so much more of this in my life. This is a piece of hardware that makes me…
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Most Stable Raspberry Pi? Better NTP with Thermal Management
eBay affiliate disclosure: Links labeled “eBay affiliate link” lead to eBay. As an eBay Partner, I may earn a commission if you make a purchase. I’ve written before about building microsecond-accurate NTP servers with Raspberry Pi and GPS PPS, and more recently about revisiting the setup in 2025. Both posts focused on…
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I'm a laptop weirdo and that's why I like my new Framework 13
It turns out I've always done weird things to my laptops.
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De-smarting the Marshall Uxbridge
This is the story of a commercially unavailable stereo pair of thebi-amped Marshall Uxbridge, with custom-built replacement electronics:active filters feedin...
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Reading NFC Passport Chips in Linux
For boring and totally not nefarious reasons, I want to read all the data contained in my passport's NFC chip using Linux. After a long and annoying search, I settled on roeften's pypassport. I can now read all the passport information, including biometrics. Table of ContentsBackgroundRecreating the MRZPython code to…
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Gooey rubber that's slowly ruining old hard drives
As part of my work toward an upcoming post about a lost piece of very obscure Mac history that has finally been found, I’ve been playing around with old Apple-branded SCSI hard drives made by Quantum and Conner in the 1990s. What I’m about to describe is already common knowledge in the vintage computing world, but I…
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Designing Electronics That Work
I’ve put together a 300+ page book with basically everything I learned the hard way over the last 10 years founding and working at several hardware startups. It started out as a self published work, but No Starch Press picked it up and it went through a very extensive editing process to make it even better.
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Boxie – an always offline audio player for my 3 year old
How I built a simple portable audio player for my boy, summoning the spirit of the Gameboy
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I bought a £16 smartwatch just because it used USB-C
Look, I'm an idiot. I know that, you know that, and the man on the moon knows that. Let's not get into why I'm an idiot; let's just accept that I have my peculiarities and you have yours. My idiocy is a quest to make sure all my portable electronics can recharge using USB-C. Modern smartwatches are tiny and they do a…
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Big GPUs don't need big PCs
Ever since I got AMD, Intel, and Nvidia graphics cards to run on a Raspberry Pi, I had a nagging question: What's the point? The Raspberry Pi only has 1 lane of PCIe Gen 3 bandwidth available for a connection to an eGPU. That's not much. Especially considering a modern desktop has at least one slot with 16 lanes of…
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PCBs, copper pours, ground planes, and you
A closer look at a fashion trend in printed circuit board design.
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The biggest CRT ever made: Sony's PVM-4300
And a surviving example of one surfaced in December 2024.
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Fix HDMI-CEC weirdness with a Raspberry Pi and a $7 cable
Revenge tale against Consumer Electronics "Control".
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Drilling down on Uncle Sam's proposed TP-Link ban
The U.S. government is reportedly preparing to ban the sale of wireless routers and other networking gear from TP-Link Systems , a tech company that currently enjoys an estimated 50% market share among home users and small businesses. Experts say while the proposed ban may have more to do with TP-Link’s ties to China…
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Building Ultra Long Range Toslink
This post is a textual version of a talk I gave at The 38th Chaos Computer Congress at the end of 2024. You can watch the talk that was recorded by the wonderful C3VOC team below if that’s your preferred medium:
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How bad can a $2.97 ADC be?
A tale of suspiciously cheap ADS1115s
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Coffeematic PC – A coffee maker computer that pumps hot coffee to the CPU
A 1980s GE coffee maker converted into a working computer. Part art, part absurd machine, fully functional.
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Open Hardware Ethernet Switch project, part 1
One of my longest-running projects has been an open hardware Ethernet switch. This has been one of the key driving forces behind many of my other projects, such as ngscopeclient and the high speed probes. It was also the project that got me into high speed digital design.