Broadcast TV Simulator Keeps The Nostalgia Flowing

Watch out, Gen X-ers — there’s a nostalgia overload heading your way, courtesy of this over-the-air TV simulator. And it has us feeling a little Saturday morning cartoon-ish, or maybe e…

DOOM On A Volumetric Display

There’s something magical about volumetric displays. They really need to be perceived in person, and no amount of static or video photography will ever do them justice. [AncientJames] has bui…

A Digital Replacement For Your Magic Eye

Magic Eye tubes were popular as tuning guides on old-school radio gear. However, the tubes, the 6U5 model in particular, have become rare and remarkably hard to come by of late. When the supply dri…

Film, As You Have Never Had It Explained Before

For all the advances in digital photography, there remains a mystique for photographers and filmmakers about chemical film. Using it presents an artistic and technical challenge, and it lends an ae…

The Trashiest Of Mains Inverters

Switch-mode technology has made inverters which take a low DC voltage and turn it into a usable mains voltage within the reach of everybody. But still, there might be moments when a mains supply is…

Taking A Spirograph Mill For A Spin

Spirographs can make some pretty groovy designs on paper, but what if you want to take it a step further? [Uri Tuchman] has used the pantograph on his milling machine to duplicate the effect in har…

Make Your Own Point Contact Transistor

Beyond the power variant, it sometimes seems as though we rarely encounter a discrete transistor these days, such has been the advance of integrated electronics. But they have a rich history, going…

A Non-Musical Use Case For 8-Track

There was a time in the not-too-distant past when magnetic tape was the primary way of listening to and recording audio. Most of us are familiar with the cassette tape, a four-track system that pla…

A Journey Into Unexpected Serial Ports

Through all the generations of computing devices from the era of the teleprinter to the present day, there’s one interface that’s remained universal. Even though its usefulness as an ev…

Amiga, Interrupted: A Fresh Take On Amiga OS

Serena OS is not just another operating system—it’s a playground for hackers, tinkerers, and Amiga enthusiasts pushing vintage hardware to new limits. Born from modern design principles and f…

Simple 3D-Printed Table Loom For Complex Weavings

The loom has been a transformative invention throughout history, shaping the textile industry from simple hand looms to complex, fully automated machines. Now, thanks to advancements in 3D printing…

Homebrew Relay Computer Features Motorized Clock

Before today, we probably would have said that scratch-built relay computers were the sole domain of only the most wizardly of graybeards. But this impressive build sent in by [Will Dana] shows tha…

A Simple Liquid Level Indicator With A Single IC

Often, the only liquid level indicator you need is your eyes, such as when looking at your cold beverage on a summer’s day. Other times, though, it’s useful to have some kind of indicat…

Need A Tube? Reach For Plywood!

To be clear, when we are talking about tubes, we mean ordinary cylinders, not vacuum-amplifying elements. With that out of the way, when we need a tube like that, we usually think of PVC or some ot…

Making A Solid State 6AK8 Tube

[M Caldeira] had a project in mind: replacing a common vacuum tube with a solid-state equivalent. The tube in question was an EABC80 or 6AK8 triple diode triode. The key was identifying a high-volt…

Ask Hackaday: Should We Teach BASIC?

Suppose you decide you want to become a novelist. You enroll in the Hackaday Famous Novelists School where your instructor announces that since all truly great novels are written in Russian, our fi…

How Ten Turn Pots Are Made

It is easy to think of a potentiometer as a simple device, but there are many nuances. For example, some pots are linear — a change of a few degrees at the low end will change the resistance …

A Nostalgic Look At A Kid’s Shortwave Resistor

[Mikrowave1] had a Unelco shortwave receiver as a kid. This was a typical simple radio for the 1960s using germanium and silicon transistors. It also had plug-in coils you had to insert into socket…

Supercon 2023: Bringing Arcade Classics To New Hardware

The processing power of modern game consoles is absolutely staggering when compared to the coin-op arcade machines of the early 1980s. Packed with terabytes of internal storage and gigabytes of RAM…

Why The 555 Is Not A Timer, But Can Be One

Although commonly referred to as a ‘timer IC’, the venerable NE555 and derivatives are in fact not timer ICs. This perhaps controversial statement is the open door that gets kicked in b…