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Zork Zcode Interpreters Appear Out Of Nowhere
Some of our readers may know about Zork (and 1, 2, 3), the 1977 text adventure originally written for the PDP-10. The game has been public domain for a while now, but recently, the interpreters for...
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PicoGUS: For All Your ISA Sound Card Needs
Sound cards used to be a big part of gaming machines in the 90s and 2000s but have largely gone extinct in the wake of powerful CPUs doing the sound themselves. Sound cards were expensive back then...
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Freshening Up Google’s USB-C PD Sniffer
USB-C Power Delivery has definitely made the big mess of wires a bit smaller but not all cables are created equal — some of them can handle upwards of 100 W while the cheapest can handle only 10. To...
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Turbocharge Your Transient Sensors With Math
If you’ve made a robot or played around with electronics before, you might have used a time-of-flight laser distance sensor before. More modern ones detect not just the first reflection, but analyze...
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Spice Up Your Earrings With Microelectronics
We’ve covered [mitxela] in the past and if you know him, you’ll likely know him for putting the micro in microelectronics. This year, he’s at it again with his LED Industrial Piercing. This tiny PCB is...
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Game Graphics: Rasterization
Last time, I talked about racing the beam, a type of graphics used when memory was scarce. Now it’s time to step into the future with more memory and talk about what modern 2D games still do to this...
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Raspberry Pi Pico Parallel Mandelbrot Computation
The Mandelbrot set is — when visualized with some colors — an interesting shape with infinite detail. While the patterns are immediately obvious to the human eye, anyone who’s run one can tell you that...
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Compute the Mandelbrot Set With a Custom RISC-V CPU
When faced with an FPGA, some people might use it to visualize the Mandelbrot set. Others might use it to make CPUs. But what happens if you combine the two? [Michael Kohn] shows us what happens with...
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Building a Semi-Auto Cookie Dough Gun
Are you a chocolate chip cookie connoisseur? Do you want to eat more cookies than you probably should at the push of a button? Don’t worry, [Startup Chuck] has got you covered with his semi-automatic...
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Eliminate That Pesky Power-Only USB Cable With This Cable Tester
Ever wondered why your Arduino wasn’t programming, only to find out that the cable doesn’t have any data conductors? Worry not, [Spencer Maroukis] has got you covered with the USB Sleuth Cable Tester!...
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Give Your Projects A Retro Tint With This 8051-based Arduino Uno
Most of us are familiar with the Arduino Uno, a starting place for electronics projects since 2010. But what if the Arduino Uno was released in 1980? You’d probably get something like [ElectroBoy]’s...
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Why x86 Needs To Die
As I’m sure many of you know, x86 architecture has been around for quite some time. It has its roots in Intel’s early 8086 processor, the first in the family. Indeed, even the original 8086 inherits a...
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Homebrew GPU Tackles Quake
Have you ever wondered how a GPU works? Even better, have you ever wanted to make one? [Dylan] certainly did, because he made FuryGPU — a fully custom graphics card capable of playing Quake at over 30...
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Hack In Style With This Fallout Cyberdeck
There’s always an appeal to a cool-looking computer case or cyberdeck – and with authentic-looking Vault-Tec style, [Eric B] and [kc9psw]’s fallout-themed cyberdeck is no exception. The case looks like...
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256-Core RISC-V Megacluster
Supercomputers are always an impressive sight to behold, but also completely unobtainable for the ordinary person. But what if that wasn’t the case? [bitluni] shows us how it’s done with his 256-core...
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Creating 1 um Features The Hacker Way
[Breaking Taps] has done some lithography experiments in the past, including some test patterns and a rudimentary camera sensor. But now, it’s time to turn it up a notch with 1µm garage semiconductor...
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Is That A Coaster? No, It’s An LED Matrix!
I’m sure you all love to see some colorful blinkenlights every now and then, and we are of course no exception. While these might look like coasters at a distance, do not be deceived! They’re actually...
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What Happens If You Speedrun Making A CPU?
Usually, designing a CPU is a lengthy process, especially so if you’re making a new ISA too. This is something that can take months or even years before you first get code to run. But what if it...
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