Op Amp Contest: Magnetic Core Memory The Dr Cockroach Way

No matter how memory technology marches on, magnetic core memory is still cool. Radiation-hard, nonvolatile, and so pretty. What’s there not to love? [Mark Nesselhaus] is no stranger to fun i…

Hackaday Prize 2023: 65uino 6502 Learning In A Familiar Package

[Anders Nielsen] presents his entry for the 2023 Hackaday Prize: The 65uino. Which as you might be able to guess, is a 6502-based microcomputer wedged into an Arduino Uno form factor (well, almost …

Minimal USB Device Connects With Just A Couple Of Resistors

If you’re like most of us, your basic approach to building something boils down to: “What’s the minimum amount I need to do to get this to work?” It’s not a bad strate…

Can You Use A POST Card With A Modern BIOS?

[Alessandro Carminati] spends the day hacking Linux kernels, and to such an end needed a decent compilation machine to chew through the builds. One day, this machine refused to boot leaving some he…

A History Of NASA Supercomputers, Among Others

The History Guy on YouTube has posted an interesting video on the history of the supercomputer, with a specific focus on their use by NASA for the implementation of computational fluid dynamics (CF…

Jet Engine Tachometer Turned Into Unique CPU Utilization Meter

When you’ve got a piece of interesting old aviation hardware on your desk, what do you do with it? If you’re not willing to relegate it to paperweight status, your only real choice is t…

Getting The Most From Fading ThinkPads

The ThinkPad line of laptops has been widely prized not only by businesses but also by those who appreciate a high standard of hardware quality and repairability. But some think the cracks are star…

A New Commodore C128 Cartridge

A new Commodore C128 cartridge in 2023?  That’s what [idun-projects] set out to do and, as you can see in the video below, did. I did the original C128 hardware design and worked with the ama…

Disabling Intel’s Backdoors On Modern Laptops

Despite some companies making strides with ARM, for the most part, the desktop and laptop space is still dominated by x86 machines. For all their advantages, they have a glaring flaw for anyone con…

A NOR Gate For An ALU?

If you know anything about he design of a CPU, you’ll probably be able to identify that a critical component of all CPUs is the Arithmetic Logic Unit, or ALU. This is a collection of gates th…

Server Network Cards Made Extra Cool

Using cheap and powerful server expansion cards in your desktop builds is a tempting option for many hackers. Of course, they don’t always fit mechanically or work perfectly; for instance, so…

8086 Multiply Algorithm Gets Reverse Engineered

The 8086 has been around since 1978, so it’s pretty well understood. As the namesake of the prevalent x86 architecture, it’s often studied by those looking to learn more about microproc…

Wooden ITX PC Case Smacks Of Sophistication

Computer cases have come a long way from the ugly beige boxes of the early 2000s. Still, if it was going to sit on his desk, [MXC Builds] wanted something with a little more class. His custom Ironb…

Raspberry Pi Adds Second Laptop Monitor

If you have a cheap laptop and you realize you can’t connect a second monitor to it, what do you do? Well, if you are [Pierre Couy], you grab a Raspberry Pi and put together a virtual screen …

Unconventional Computing Laboratory Grows Its Own Electronics

While some might say we’re living in a cyberpunk future already, one technology that’s conspicuously absent is wetware. The Unconventional Computing Laboratory is working to change that…

PCIe For Hackers: The Diffpair Prelude

PCIe, also known as PCI-Express, is a highly powerful interface. So let’s see what it takes to hack on something that powerful. PCIe is be a bit intimidating at first, however it is reasonabl…

A Thoroughly Modern Serial Terminal

The humble desktop serial terminal may have long disappeared from the world of corporate IT, but there are still plenty of moments when professionals and enthusiasts alike need to hook up to a seri…

Floppy-8 Is A Tiny PC In A Floppy Drive

At first sight, Floppy-8 is simply a LattePanda based PC built into the shell of a external vintage floppy drive. Indeed, it’s a very nicely executed LattePanda PC in a floppy, and we’r…

Supersized Laptop Laughs In The Face Of Portability

Sometimes a project needs to go big, and [Evan and Katelyn] threw portability to the wind to build the world’s biggest laptop. Stretching the believability of “bigger is better,” …

How To Build Jenny’s Budget Mixing Desk

Jenny did an Ask Hackaday article earlier this month, all about the quest for a cheap computer-based audio mixer. The first attempt didn’t go so well, with a problem that many of us are famil…