Collaborate Disseminate
If you’ve ever watched a cartoon where something blows up, you’ve probably seen a detonator — the device with a plunger that, when you push it, some dynamite blows up …read more Continue reading An Explosive Look at Detonators
If you spend much time helping people with word processor programs, you’ll find that many people don’t really use much of the product. They type, change fonts, save, and print. …read more Continue reading Linux Fu: Deep Git Rebasing
The 80386 was — arguably — Intel’s first modern CPU. The 8086 was commercially successful, but the paged memory model was stifling. The 80286 also had a protected mode, which …read more Continue reading [Ken] Looks at the 386
You smell smoke and the piece of gear you are working on stops working, probably at an inopportune time. You open it up and immediately see the burned remains of …read more Continue reading Burnt Resistor Sleuthing
What do you do when a PCB is cracked or even broken in two? [MH987] has a plan: superglue the board back and then bridge the traces with solder, solder …read more Continue reading PCB Repair is a Sticky Proposition
Over the ages, a lot of human activity has been concerned about getting water from where we find it to where we want it. If you want to move water …read more Continue reading The Wirtz Pump Spins
It is hard to imagine that for thousands of years, the Great Pyramid of Giza was the tallest manmade structure in the world. However, like the Lincoln Cathedral and the …read more Continue reading Tech in Plain Sight: Skyscrapers
We love that these days you can buy ready-made microcontroller boards that are very capable. But sometimes you need to — or just want to — do it yourself. Unfortunately, …read more Continue reading How Not to Build an RP2040 Board
If you want to add sound to something these days, you usually store it digitally. Microcontrollers are cheap and fast, and you can hold a lot of audio on a …read more Continue reading Tiny Tape Cartridge Remembered and a Teardown
There is a lot to like about open software, and in some areas, a well-thought-out piece of software can really make a huge impact. A great example of this is …read more Continue reading Decoding the 8088