Open Hardware: Retro, Raspberry Pi, RISC-V, and More
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Andrew Hutchings ☛ BBC Micro: Restoration part 3
In my previous post, I thought I had both BBCs fully working and almost complete. I cleaned the inside of the bottom half of the case for the white BBC and installed the motherboard again, screwing it back down. This would turn out to be a mistake.
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The Verge ☛ I printed chocolate on a 3D printer and ate it
Chocolate is fundamentally finicky to print, and not just in traditional 3D printing ways. Cocoa Press lets you program the heat of its nozzle to a tenth of a degree, because fractions of a degree can be the difference between hot enough that it’s runny or too cold to squirt out of the nozzle to begin with.
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Ruben Schade ☛ 8-Bit Software Fun: Starting with a Commodore
In today’s installment of 8-bit Software Fun, we’re starting from absolute first principles on a Commodore machine. Most online guides and videos assume a modicum of familiarity when talking about this kit, but what if you were someone like me who grew up in the 32-bit era and are starting from scratch?
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Raspberry Pi ☛ Machine Learning-powered EV charger availability detection with Raspberry Pi Pico W
This blog will explore how computer vision and an embedded machine learning (ML) image classification model can be deployed to an Arm Cortex-M0+ based Raspberry Pi Pico W board to inform employees when an EV charger is occupied or available.
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Byte Cellar ☛ Q&D: Enjoying Some Demos on the Amiga 2000 - Byte Cellar
Last night, I fired up my Amiga 2000 ‘020 and started running through some of the demos installed on its SCSI2SD volumes. One that I really enjoyed was Gagrakacka Mind Zones by Disaster Area, an Amiga Original Chipset (OCS/ECS) demo that took the first prize at the Oldskool Demo compo at the Flashback 2015 party. After watching it through, I pulled out the iPhone 15 Pro Max and did a quick and dirty capture of the demo running on my dual-screen A2000.
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Stephen Smith ☛ RISC-V Assembly Language Programming
“RISC-V Assembly Language Programming: Unlock the Power of the RISC-V Instruction Set” is my fourth Assembly Language programming book published by Apress, a division of Springer Nature. This book is part of their Maker Innovations Series. My first three books were on the three types of ARM instruction sets, namely 32-bit, 64-bit and thumb (used in microcontrollers). The RISC-V instruction set architecture is more unified, so with this new book, I could cover both 32-bit and 64-bit RISC-V Assembly Language.
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Ken Shirriff ☛ Inside the mechanical Bendix Air Data Computer, part 5: motor/tachometers
The servomotors in the CADC are unlike standard motors. Their name—"Motor-Tachometer Generator" or "Motor and Rate Generator"1—indicates that each unit contains both a motor and a speed sensor. Because the motor and generator use two-phase signals, there are a total of eight colorful wires coming out, many more than a typical motor. Moreover, the direction of the motor can be controlled, unlike typical AC motors. I couldn't find a satisfactory explanation of how these units worked, so I bought one and disassembled it. This article (part 5 of my series on the CADC2) provides a complete teardown of the motor/generator and explain how it works.