All About CRTs
For old-timers, CRTs — cathode ray tubes — were fixtures as kids sat in front of TVs watching everything from Howdy Doody to Star Trek. But there’s at least one …read more Continue reading All About CRTs
Author Archives: Al Williams
All About CRTs
For old-timers, CRTs — cathode ray tubes — were fixtures as kids sat in front of TVs watching everything from Howdy Doody to Star Trek. But there’s at least one …read more Continue reading All About CRTs
3D Scanning, Phone Edition
It seems to make sense. If you have a 3D printer, you might wish you could just scan some kind of part and print it — sort of like a …read more Continue reading 3D Scanning, Phone Edition
Inside NFC
[Ken Shirriff] likes to take chips apart and this time his target is an NFC chip used in Montreal transit system tickets. As you might expect, the tickets are tiny, …read more Continue reading Inside NFC
The Book That Could Have Killed Me
It is funny how sometimes things you think are bad turn out to be good in retrospect. Like many of us, when I was a kid, I was fascinated by …read more Continue reading The Book That Could Have Killed Me
Fixed Point Math Exposed
If you are used to writing software for modern machines, you probably don’t think much about computing something like one divided by three. Modern computers handle floating point quite well. …read more Continue reading Fixed Point Math Exposed
Clearly 3D Printing
[Joel] picked up a wireless mouse kit. The idea is you get some 3D printing files and hardware. You can print the shell or make modifications to it. You can …read more Continue reading Clearly 3D Printing
In Future, Printer Documents You
[Jason Dookeran] reminded us of something we don’t like to think about. Your printer probably adds barely noticeable dots to everything you print. It does it on purpose, so that …read more Continue reading In Future, Printer Documents You
Vintage Hacks for Dot Matrix Printers in China
In an excerpt from his book The Chinese Computer: A Global History of the Information Age, [Thomas Mullaney] explains how 1980s computer tech — at least the stuff that was …read more Continue reading Vintage Hacks for Dot Matrix Printers in China
Build Your Own Tape Recorder/Player
If you want to read something from magnetic tape, you need a tape head, right? Or you could do like [Igor Brichkov] and make your own. It looks surprisingly simple. …read more Continue reading Build Your Own Tape Recorder/Player