Kritik sah

Many pieces of consumer electronics are build down to a price, and the corners cut show up in their performance. The Gameboy Advance from Nintendo is no exception: its audio is a PWM stream that sounds awful through the included amplifier. [Cajun Panda] has a fix though, in the form of a replacement audio chain . It takes the form of a PCB that hooks into the pads of the removed GBA audio chip, and provides a much cleaner audio path with filtering and EQ and a class D audio amplifier. In addition there’s an audio codec and an ESP32 for Bluetooth connectivity, enabled by a long press of a GBA button and configured via a web interface on the ESP. Best of all there is no case modification, this is designed to remain as stock as possible. Everything can be found in a GitHub repository should you wish to make your own, so if you want to bring your GBA audio up to scratch you know where to go. If you want to make it even better don’t forget, you can always upgrade the screen . ...

Using the special pens to remove the wax coating on the template. (Credit: Old Typerwriters and Calculators, YouTube) Document duplication has been a highly desirable feature, long before medieval monks slaved over yet another illuminated manuscript by flickering candle light. Fortunately one part of the Industrial Revolution was the invention of machines like Cyclostyle copying machines, which covered a range of manual and automated devices. One such crank-powered device from 1890 is demonstrated in this video . The Cyclostyle and neo-Cyclostyle copying system was quite simple yet elegant: by removing the wax coating on a special piece of paper ink from a screen-printing system could be pressed through the resulting template, and allow for repeat copies to be made. With the machine demonstrated in the video the ink is applied to the top rollers, with the lower roller inking itself on them during the retraction cycle, before applying the fresh ink to the screen on the cycle followi...

It’s arguably adult-sized. (Credit: Sam Barker, YouTube) A staple of old movies featuring railways, many handcars – also called pump trolleys or pump cars – feature the characteristic seesawing beam. Requiring at least two people, the motion of this beam is subsequently converted into the rotating motion of the wheels, propelling it at a leisurely pace across the tracks. As a fun and yet functional mechanical contraption it also makes for an entertaining 3D printable project, which is what [Sam Barker] and [Tom] did . You can find the entire project over at Printables if you are feeling the itch as well, though as of writing details on the required bolts and shafts are still pending. Since the entire assembly had to be lugged over to the Open Sauce event in the US, they had to design it to be small enough to fit into check-in luggage and easy enough to reassemble in a hotel room. Naturally this put some constraints on the full size of the contraption, with it omitt...

We’ll start this week off with some disappointing, though not entirely unexpected, news — the ambitious commercial mission to save NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory is officially a bust. The space agency provided an update earlier this week explaining that the attitude control issues with the LINK spacecraft that started a few weeks after it launched will prevent it from being able to safely dock with the Swift Observatory and boost its altitude. As such, the space telescope is now expected to reenter the Earth’s atmosphere and burn up before the end of the year. Although LINK won’t be able to live up to its name, NASA did say operator Katalyst Space has been given permission to continue with the rendezvous attempt. The two craft won’t actually make contact with each other, but teams on both sides feel there’s lessons to be learned and data to be collected by seeing the orbital dance of these two vehicles play out for as long as possible. ...

After previously putting a very basic version of Minecraft on the Game Boy Color, [Tobi] decided to have some fun and port that version also to the Super Nintendo (SNES), just to see what would happen with its more powerful hardware. Even without using an add-on chip like the Super FX 3D chip that made games like Star Fox and Doom possible with its 3D-rendered geometry, the basic SNES hardware can already provide a serviceable Minecraft experience. You can download the SFC file here , featuring a starting world in which you can do all the usual Minecraft-ing shenanigans, like world destruction and construction. Unsurprisingly the game’s resolution is much higher than on the GBC, though the brief glimpse [Tobi] shows of Minecraft on the Game Boy Advance (GBA) with its proper 3D-rendering hardware are leaps ahead of what the basic SNES can do. This of course raises the question of what Minecraft on the SNES could look like once you add the Super FX or similar 3D accelerator ch...

A time-honored tradition in the electronics repair business is to make many into one, specifically a stack of broken devices into one that works. So too with a triplet of heavily corroded and bug-infested WiiMote controllers that [eWastelander] dug out of a box of e-waste. After suffering abuse like leaving in leaky alkaline cells, bugs and general corrosion the task was to see whether at least one working WiiMote could be assembled from these three. (Video, embedded below.) Adding to the fun was that the PCBs in these WiiMotes spanned at least two hardware revisions, and on one board the battery corrosion had caused an IC to fall off. After an initial assessment, neutralizing the battery acid and a deep clean of all the disassembled parts, it was time to give it a shot at reassembly into something resembling a Wii controller you could use and even want to touch without washing your hands afterwards. Ultimately at least one working WiiMote was put together, with still an open questi...