[DrMattRegan] has started a new video series to show his latest recreation of a Commodore VIC-20. The core of the machine is [Ben Eater’s] breadboard 6502 design. To make it a VIC-20, though, you need a “VIC chip” which, of course, is no longer readily available. Many people, of course, use FPGAs or other programmable […]
For as long as AI Large Language Models have been around (well, for as long as modern ones have been accessible online, anyway) people have tried to coax the models into revealing their system prompts. The system prompt is essentially the model’s fundamental directives on what it should do and how it should act. Such […]
A regular comment we see on electric aircraft is to “just add solar panels to the wings.” [James] from Project Air has been working on just such a solar plane, and as he shows in the video after the break, it is not a trivial challenge. A solar RC plane has several difficult engineering challenges […]
Physicist John Archibald Wheeler made groundbreaking contributions to physics, and [Amanda Gefter] has a fantastic writeup about the man. He was undeniably brilliant, and if you haven’t heard of him, you have certainly heard of some of his students, not to mention his work. Ever heard of wormholes? Black holes? How about the phrase “It […]
As the current frontier of humanity in space, the International Space Station is heavily reliant on Earth not only for fresh supplies but also as a garbage disposal service for the various types of waste produced on the ISS by its human occupants. As future manned missions take humans further away from Earth, finding ways […]
[Igor] made a VU meter with LEDs using 8 LEDs and 8 comparators. This is a fast way to get one of 8 bits to indicate an input voltage, but that’s only the equivalent of a 3-bit analog to digital converter (ADC). To get more bits, you have to use a smarter technique, such as […]
Over the decades the technology behind flat panel displays has continuously evolved, and we’ve seen many of them come and go. Among the popular ones there are a few that never quite made the big time, usually because a contemporary competitor took their market. An example is in a recent [Wenting Zhang] video, a mystery […]
If you are involved in any sort of radio transmission, you probably have at least heard of SWR or standing wave ratio. Most transmitters can measure it these days and most ham radio operators have tuners that measure it, also. But what are you measuring? [KI8R] points out that if your coax has loss — […]
We always thought the older console games looked way better back in the day on old CRTs than now on a modern digital display. [Stephen Walters] thinks so too, and goes into extensive detail in a lengthy YouTube video about the pros and cons of CRT vs digital, which was totally worth an hour of […]
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