news
Open Hardware/Modding: Raspberry Pi, Arduino, and More
-
Hackaday ☛ Raspberry Pi Gets Desktop Form Factor
Before the Raspberry Pi came out, one cheap and easy way to get GPIO on a computer with a real operating system was to manipulate the pins on an old parallel port, then most commonly used for printers. Luckily, as that port became obsolete we got the Raspberry Pi, which has the GPIO and a number of other advantages over huge desktop computers from the 90s and 00s as well. But if you really miss that form factor or as yearn for the days of the old parallel port, this build which puts a Raspberry Pi into a mini ITX desktop case is just the thing for you.
-
Hackaday ☛ Retro Semiconductors: The Silicon Controlled Rectifier
Over on YouTube [Lockdown Electronics] reviews an old bit of kit known as the Silicon Controlled Rectifier (SCR). Invented in the 1950s the SCR is a type of thyristor and they were popular back in the 1970s. They are often replaced these days by the TRIAC and the MOSFET but you might still find some old schematics that call for them and you can still buy them.
-
Andrew Hutchings ☛ A Socket 7 Upgrade: Moving Beyond the 486
A while back I built a 486-based machine to play with some late 80s / early 90s games, as well as try out hardware of the era. I blogged about the process here, with an update here.
-
Arduino ☛ Display your photos like they’re in MacPaint
LackPaint is basically a digital photo frame. Except instead of showing boring old family photos in the usual way, it displays them as heavily dithered grayscale images with a MacPaint software border. What you lose in fidelity, you gain in unfettered vintage vibes.