Today I discovered 100kgarages.com. Seems like a cool idea. Not sure they’re operating in my area!
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Category Archives: Hardware
How to mount an Xbox formatted drive on Ubuntu
When I finally get a PCIe IDE adapter that works, this is gonna come in handy: How to mount an Xbox formatted drive on Ubuntu.
The IDE adapter that I have is this one, but it reports all disks as damaged (and they’re not). I think maybe it’s too new for the drives maybe? Speaking a newer version of the ATA protocol? I have no idea really.
I made a thing!
My new AV switch arrived today, and I set it up on my bench. But I had it laid out horizontally and it was taking up a lot of bench space and I decided I’d rather have it mounted vertically.
So I got an old component box like this one
from my drawer
and cut it up so I could mount my AV switch vertically, like this:
Bug fixed!
Notkia @ Hackster
This is great: Notkia. I’m gonna have to spend some time checking out Hackster.io.
Xbox CPU thermal paste replacement
So I popped the heat sink off the CPU in my ‘chipped’ Xbox. I wasn’t able to get the heat sink off the device to the left of that, which might be the graphics card? I’m not sure. I gave it a pretty mighty tug and it didn’t come loose, so not sure what the deal is there. I cleaned the CPU and the heat sink (I damaged the heat sink a little, you can see the scratches).
Xbox hacking
So my Xbox hacking project is under way. Just planning to work my way through bunnie’s book.
The Two Percent Solution
This is old (20 years old!), but fun: The Two Percent Solution.
Hewlett Packard HP 8018A Serial Data Generator
I saw this Hewlett Packard HP 8018A Serial Data Generator for sale for US $2,000 after having seen it mentioned over on Using a 1930 Teletype as a Linux Terminal. That sent me off trying to see if I could get my UTG962E from the UNI-T UTG900E series arbitrary function waveform generator to transmit a custom waveform. I managed to get the software installed on Windows and apparently I can upload any of *.sav, *.rec, *.dat, *.uwr, *.wfr, *.wf to my waveform generator, but I have no idea how to generate such files.
Apollo Guidance Computer
Reading about the Apollo Guidance Computer. Compare that to the US$3.23 ATtiny85.
| Spec | AGC | ATtiny85 |
|---|---|---|
| Word size | 16-bit | 8-bit |
| Clock | 2 MHz | 20 MHz |
| ROM | 72 KiB | 8 KiB |
| RAM | 4,096 B | 512 B |
The values in the above table are approximate, see the sources listed above for actual figures. Basically the $3 chip is ten times faster than the AGC but with less storage. Call it a draw?
Ben Eater
So I discovered this guy Ben Eater after watching his video How do hardware timers work?. It looks like he has some cool stuff.