Open Hardware: Reverse Engineering, pico-WSPR-tx, Raspberry Pi, and Arduboy
-
Devever ☛ Adventures in reverse engineering Broadcom NIC firmware
For some time now, I've been reverse engineering the firmware of the Broadcom BCM5719 Ethernet NIC chip, so that open source firmware can be produced for it. The BCM5719 is a PCIe chip which provides up to four Gigabit Ethernet ports, and is mainly intended for use in server applications. It can be used with the Linux "tg3" driver and is approximately the twelfth generation of chips in a long line of Ethernet NICs ultimately descended from the Tigon range of NICs made by Alteon, the IP of which got transferred to Broadcom at some point.
One example motivating the production of open source firmware for the BCM5719 is that it's the only closed-source firmware blob found in the Talos II, a high-performance POWER9-based system otherwise wholly free of firmware blobs.
-
Hackaday ☛ Pico-WSPR-tx Does It In Software
What do you need to make a radio transmitter? There are builds that work with just a couple of transistors. But how about a GPS-disciplined small signal beacon? You can actually get the job done for less than the cost of a fancy hamburger, thanks to [RPiks]’s pico-WSPR-tx and the Weak Signal Propagation Reporter Network (WSPR).
-
Hackaday ☛ The Best Kind Of Handheld Gaming Is Homemade
[CNCDan] previously dabbled with Raspberry Pi CM4-powered gaming handhelds but was itching for something more powerful. Starting in May 2023, he embarked on building an Intel NUC7i5BNK-powered handheld dubbed NucDeck.
-
Hackaday ☛ Wolfenstein 3D Clone Makes Arduboy Debut
The 8-bit Arduboy isn’t exactly a powerhouse by modern gaming standards, or even really by old school standards for that matter. But for the talented developers that produce software for the system, that’s just part of the challenge. To date the monochromatic handheld has seen miniaturized takes on many well-known games, with several taxing the hardware beyond what most would have assumed possible.