news
Open Hardware, Tinkering, and Mandating Kill Switches
-
Open Hardware/Modding
-
FRANK OS Turns a Microcontroller Into a Tiny Retro Desktop PC
Based on FreeRTOS, this operating system has a start menu, file manager, and a terminal.
-
CNX Software ☛ Discovery Drive – An ESP32-S3-based azimuth/elevation rotator for satellite dishes and SDR antennas (Crowdfunding)
KrakenRF, the team behind the KrakenSDR, has designed the Discovery Drive ESP32-S3-based, low-cost, fully weatherproof, automatic azimuth/elevation (Az/El) antenna rotator for their Discovery Dish or other directional antennas, such as Yagis and Wi-Fi grids, weighing up to 5kg. Compared to DIY projects like SatNOGS (which require 3D printing and hardware sourcing), the Discovery Drive is designed as a plug-and-play solution. You can simply mount it to a mast, attach the dish, connect to 12V power and Wi-Fi, and use its web UI to start tracking polar-orbiting weather satellites (like METEOR-M2 or FENGYUN), CubeSats, or amateur radio satellites.
-
Raspberry Pi ☛ Celebrating Pi Day with some of your greatest hits
Tomorrow is Pi Day, and to celebrate, we’ve compiled some of the most interesting Raspberry Pi projects from around the world. It would be brilliant if you could take to the comments section to show us some of your spectacular builds — relying on just one person’s greatest-hits list (mine) is too big a burden to bear on such a momentous day.
-
Naman Sood ☛ A Framework 13 retrospective
The Framework Laptop is a beautiful concept. It takes the repairability of laptops of the past—with their upgradeable memory, storage, CPU—and kicks it up a notch. Not only can you repair and swap out all of those, you can also upgrade your motherboard, change out your screen bezel for a new look, replace your battery if it starts puffing up, and even swap ports out so you can always have the ones you need. It’s the perfect laptop for someone like me, who grew up tinkering, repairing, and building computers for fun and profit.
-
Jeff Geerling ☛ Restoring an Xserve G5: When Apple built real servers
Recently I came into posession of a few Apple Xserves. The one in question today is an Xserve G5, RackMac3,1, which was built when Apple at the top—and bottom—of it's PowerPC era.
-
Ruben Schade ☛ My first network kit, part one
I reminisced with a client recently about my first network kit, and I realised I hadn’t ever really talked about it here. Nor do I have a network page on my Retro Corner. Let’s begin to rectify this egregious oversight with a new series of long-winded posts about early childhood networking (mis)adventures and nostalgia!
My first network experience wasn’t with a device per se, but a cable. For several years my dad used
INTERLNKandINTERSRVon MS-DOS to transfer files between his work laptop, and the home 486. I remember him demonstrating by plugging one end of the serial cable into his work machine, and the other end into the family computer. Then with one command, I watched with childhood awe at the files from one machine suddenly appearing on the other. Okay, it wasn’t “suddenly”, it took an age. Still, I remember thinking it’s like the computers were talking! I think back to that day a lot, especially when I’m feeling cynical and need to remind myself why I do all this stuff.
-
-
Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications
-
BBC ☛ Met Police chief gives phone firms deadline over thefts
The force wants to make resetting phones more difficult, with requirements for multi-factor authentication and time delays; moves to stop parts being sold without device matching serial numbers, and the ability to block devices globally in real time.
"For nearly three years we have sought meaningful engagement with phone manufacturers and their response to date does not match the scale of harm and risk to their customers."
London Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan said there is "no reason" why in a year's time there should not be fully accessible serial numbers for officials and "kill switches" for stolen phones.
-