For the past two-and-half years Canadian consumer testing outfit RTINGS has been running an accelerated aging experiment across a large number of TVs available to a North-American audience. In their most recent update, we not only find out about the latest casualties, but also the impending end of the experiment after 18,000 hours — as […]
Until the 2000s vacuum tubes practically ruled the roost. Even if they had surrendered practically fully to semiconductor technology like integrated circuits, there was no escaping them in everything from displays to video cameras. Until CMOS sensor technology became practical, proper video cameras used video camera tubes and well into the 2000s you’d generally scoff […]
CRTs don’t last forever, and neither do the electronics that drive them. When you have a screen starting to go wonky, then you need a way to troubleshoot which is at fault. A great tool for that is a pattern generator, but they’re not the easiest to come by these days. [baritonomarchetto] needed a pattern […]
Our hacker [haas] is at it again with the Haasoscope Pro, a full redesign of the original Haasoscope, which was a successful Crowd Supply campaign back in 2018. This new Pro version was funded on Crowd Supply in April this year and increases the bandwidth from 60 MHz to 2 GHz, the vertical resolution from […]
A team of hackers, [Jason T. Jacques], [Decle], and [Michael A. Wessel], have collaborated to deliver the Microtronic Phoenix Computer System. In 1981 the Busch 2090 Microtronic Computer System was released. It had a 4-bit Texas Instruments TMS1600 microcontroller, ran at 500 kHz, and had 576 bytes of RAM and 4,096 bytes of ROM. The […]
As USB-C PD becomes more and more common, it’s useful to have a tool that lets you understand exactly what it’s doing—no longer is it limited to just 5 V. This DIY USB-C PD tool, sent in by [ludwin], unlocks the ability to monitor voltage and current, either on a small screen built into the […]
Over on YouTube our hacker [VIP Love Secretary] shows us how to make a simple MOSFET tester. This is a really neat, useful, elegant, and simple hack, but the video is kind of terrible. We found that the voice-over constantly saying “right?” and “look!” seriously drove us to distraction. But this is a circuit which […]
Over on Instructables, [Logan Fouts] shows us the Contrib Cal GitHub desk gadget. This build will allow you to sport your recent GitHub commit activity on your wall or desk with an attractive diffuse light display backed by a 7×4 matrix of multicolor LEDs. Motivate yourself and impress your peers! This humble project is at […]
Over on YouTube [The 8-Bit Guy] shows us how the TI-99/4A home computer worked. [The 8-Bit Guy] runs us through this odd 16-bit home computer from back in the 1980s, starting with a mention of the mysterious extra “space” key on its antiquated keyboard. The port on the side is for two joysticks which share […]