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This Library Needs to Be At Least… Three Times Bigger

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Many of us have noted a tremendous price increase in many computer components for some mysterious reason. Whatever this cause is will be debated among the various modern philosophers and Diogeneses, but regardless of cause we all still have to live in this world and make do. That turns us towards getting maximum value from the things we already have rather than trying to go out and buy more computer components right now, like [svofski] using his vast swath of existing microSD cards to build an SD card library . The library is based around a tiny robotic arm that can physically grip the cards and move them in and out of a reader. The first iteration of the arm involved rotating the two pincers, but this turned out to be overly complicated and [svofski] eventually settled on a design resembling a rack and pinion that slides the two pincers together instead. With the gripper sorted out, it’s placed in system called T-bot arrangement, similar to coreXY kinematics, that lets it pick a...
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Reviving an SD Card With Shorted Capacitors

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Tiny capacitors in an SD card package. (Credit: Aeson Labs) A nice thing about SD cards is that even in their non-micro format they are conveniently small. This is however a bit of a problem when an SD card stops working, as they are not exactly designed to be easy to service, or to recover data from. There is however a very good chance that the Flash memory and controller are still fine, and it’s actually one of the passives on the tiny PCB that failed, as with the 32 GB SD card that [Yevgeniy Kapishon] recently diagnosed and recovered data from for a customer. A big hint during initial diagnostics was a clear short between the supply rail and ground, but as became clear when taking the SD card apart, this one was built as a monolithic package, without exposed components on a PCB as in older SD cards. Correspondingly an X-ray machine and thermal camera were used to figure out what was inside the package, and where the short was located. By combining the hot spot image with th...
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DOOM Played on Series of 555 Timers

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It’s technically true that any piece of software can be reproduced in hardware, although modern software’s size and complexity generally makes this a non-starter. But if we go far enough back in time, older software becomes easier and easier to implement in hardware. The original DOOM from 1993 might one day be recreated in full this way, but that day is not today. Instead, [Nick] has recreated the original music from that game, playing the opening track in nothing but 555 timers . The circuit starts with a 555 timer that acts as a system clock with a rate of just over 7 Hz. These pulses feed a binary counter which in turn feeds a decoder, giving the circuit 15 positions. Each output of the decoder feeds to a diode matrix which stores information about what pitch the circuit should play. The circuit only needs to play six pitches so the diodes effectively connect each moment in time to one of these six notes. From there the circuit feeds into a set of switches which select ...
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Casting Engine Parts from 3D Prints

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After building a couple of internal combustion engines by milling billet aluminium stock and cringing at the absolute waste of material this created, [Camden Bowen] figured he’d give casting metal parts a shot . Of course, the key here is to create the molds for said casting, which is where you got a few options available. Since DIY is really his thing, he also made his own kiln using cement and perlite, plus a propane burner. For the aluminium material to melt, he bought a stack of aluminium alloy wheels, as these are made of an alloy that’s actually suitable for casting. These were turned into ingots as a first step towards casting the engine parts, which among other things helps to purify the metal. For the actual casting method he picked lost PLA, meaning the intended shape is 3D printed in PLA, then put into plaster before it’s melted out of the newly minted mold in an oven and subsequently burned out in the kiln. For the plaster [Camden] used regular Plaster o...
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Running Multiple Linux Kernels Without Hypervisor

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In a move that’s no doubt going to trigger a lot of confusion and nostalgia, Mklinux is back , in a sense. As the announcement makes clear, this is multikernel Linux, not microkernel Linux , which is an experimental OS designed to run the Linux kernel as a user-space server running on top of OS X’s Mach kernel. Naming overlap niggles aside, this neo-mklinux lets multiple independent Linux kernels run simultaneously on bare metal. There is still a host kernel which handles the carving up of hardware resources to the newly spawned kernels, but unlike with a hypervisor there are no abstraction or translation layers. In theory this should mean basically perfect isolation between kernels, which is one of the main selling points along with increased performance. Compared to running KVM guests the provided benchmarks show much lower latency, at between parity to two times faster. A website is provided with instructions to get started, along with architectural details if that...
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Rooftop Camper For Roofless Vehicle

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The Honda Goldwing is one of the more famous motorcycles ever produced. It’s known for its reliability and comfort, but also for being one of the first motorcycles Honda rolls out new technology with. It was the first to have a factory-installed airbag as well as integrated GPS, and is now largely associated for being a sort of two-wheeled RV with how many creature comforts it supports for long-distance riders. [Matt] has a Goldwing of his own, and is taking that RV-like feeling to the extreme with a rooftop camper for this motorcycle . Of course, motorcycles don’t have roofs, but if this Goldwing had one this camper would definitely be above that. Goldwings are already heavy enough without an enormous weight dramatically increasing the center of gravity, and [Matt] certainly had his problems with that along the way. But before this adventure he had modified it into a hill climber, removing a lot of the extraneous equipment from it. Attaching some metal frame and a lightwei...
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The Mactini: A Computer That Does Almost Nothing

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Recently [Tucker Osman] brought to life what once was just a meme created by the BBC as it poked fun at Apple’s push for ever smaller devices that also dropped many features along the path towards questionable innovation. This ‘Mactini’ was a super-small laptop, with just a single button that did everything, befitting the overpriced more-money-than-sense status symbol vibe that [Jony Ive] brought to Apple. The input method suggested in the BBC video involves convoluted patterns using the single button, which would be functional, albeit cumbersome. Even as [Tucker] set out on this mission to make the Mactini real, he had to answer a lot of questions, while sticking to the rules that it had to follow the rough form factor of the original and have the same features. In lieu of overcomplicating things, he opted to use a 1.69″ ST7789V2-based SPI LCD along with a small RP2350-based board from Waveshare for the brains. Rather than just slapping the LCD example for t...
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