Repairing A Hallicrafters S-120

[MIKROWAVE1] claims he’s not a radio repair guy, but he agreed to look at a malfunctioning Hallicrafters S-120 shortwave receiver. He lets us watch as he tries to get it in shape in the video…

How Hot Is That Soldering Iron?

It is common these days to have a soldering iron where you can set the temperature using some sort of digital control. But how accurate is it? Probably pretty accurate, but [TheHWCave] picked up a …

Pulling Apart A Premium WebCam

Over at EDN, [Brian Dipert] has been tearing down web cameras. A few months ago, he broke into a bargain basement camera. This time, he’s looking into a premium unit. Although we have to admi…

Edge-Lit, Thin LCD TVs Are Having Early Heat Death Issues

Canadian consumer goods testing site RTINGS has been subjecting 100 TVs to an accelerated TV longevity test, subjecting them so far to over 10,000 hours of on-time, equaling about six years of regu…

Fixing A Busted Fluke While Fighting A Wonky Schematic

Fluke meters have been around for a long, long time. Heck, we’ve got a Fluke 73 that we bought back in 1985 that’s still a daily driver. But just because they’ve been making them …

An AVO 8 Teardown

AVO meters — literally amp, volt, ohm meters — are not very common in North America but were staples in the UK. [TheHWcave] found an AVO 8 that is probably from the 1950s or 1960s and w…

Retro Calculator Panders To Trekkies… Or Trekkers

Back in 1976, when calculators were not common or cheap, a company named MEGO made the Star Trekulator: a calculator sporting a Star Trek theme. However, it was a bit odd since the calculator didn&…

Unlocking The Mystery Of An Aircraft ADI

If you’ve ever seen the cockpit of an airplane, you’ve probably noticed the round ball that shows your attitude, and if you are like us, you’ve wondered exactly how the Attitude D…

Korean Multifunction Counter Teardown

[Thomas Scherrer] likes to tear down old test equipment, and often, we remember the devices he opens up or — at least — we’ve heard of them. However, this time, he’s got a H…

A Vintage AC Bridge Teardown

If you ever encounter a British engineer of a certain age, the chances are that even if they use a modern DMM they’ll have a big boxy multimeter in their possession. This is the famous Avo 8,…

$3 Smartwatch Can Run Python

[Poking Technology] doesn’t think much of his new smartwatch. It is, by his admission, the cheapest possible smartwatch, coming in at about $3. It has very few useful features but he has figu…

All About CRTs

For old-timers, CRTs — cathode ray tubes — were fixtures as kids sat in front of TVs watching everything from Howdy Doody to Star Trek. But there’s at least one generation that th…

Hackaday Links: June 16, 2024

Attention, slackers — if you do remote work for a financial institution, using a mouse jiggler might not be the best career move. That’s what a dozen people learned this week as they be…

Digital Meter From 1973, A Teardown

[Thomas] found an interesting probable millivoltmeter with some Beckman displays. Like many instruments from that time period, this one had a lot of tobacco smoke residue inside. The display unit i…

The Secret Behind The Motion Of Microsoft’s Bendy Mouse

The Surface Arc is a designed-for-travel mouse that carries flat, but curves into shape for use. It even turns on when it’s bent and shuts itself off when it’s flat. The device isn&#821…

Here’s The Norwegian Tape Deck Teardown You’ve Been Waiting For

“They just don’t build ’em like they used to” is a truer statement every year. Whether your vice is CRTs, film cameras, or tape decks, you’ll know that the very best g…

80s Function Generator Is Both Beauty And Beast

You know how the saying goes — they don’t make them like this anymore. It’s arguably true of pretty much any electronic device given the way technology changes over time, though w…

Early CD Player Teardown

While CD players are nothing new today, they were the height of high-tech in the early 1980s. [w1ngsfly] shows us the inside of a Phase Linear 9500 player from 1983. Not only does it have many comp…

Hacked Oscilloscope Plays Breakout, Hints At More

You know things are getting real when the Dremel is one of the first tools you turn to after unboxing your new oscilloscope. But when your goal is to hack the scope to play Breakout, sometimes plas…

Waveform Generator Teardown Is Nearly Empty

We always enjoy [Kerry Wong’s] insightful teardowns, and recently, he opened up a UTG1042X arbitrary waveform generator. Getting inside was a bit of a challenge since there were no visible sc…