Collaborate Disseminate
An abiding memory of the early-80s heyday of 8-bit computing for many is operating their computer from the carpet in front of the family TV. While the kids in the computer adverts had parents who bought them a portable colour telly on which to play Jet Set Willy, the …read more
Continue reading FPGA Raises Component Video From A Sinclair ZX Spectrum
We’re saddened to learn of the passing of Gershon Kingsley in December 2019 at the age of 97. The composer and electronic music pioneer was not exactly a household name, but the things he did with the Moog synthesizer, especially the surprise hit “Pop Corn”, which he wrote in 1969, …read more
There’s a lot of argument over which was the first modern computer to be built. There’s room for debate, but EDSAC — the work of Dr. Maurice Wilkes — certainly was among the first. While we’ve seen simulators before, [hrvach’s] FPGA-based simulator for the MiSTer platform has a lot going …read more
When used for cracking passwords, a modern high-end graphics card will absolutely chew through “classic” hashing algorithms like SHA-1 and SHA-2. When a single desktop machine can run through 50+ billion password combinations per second, even decent passwords can be guessed in a worryingly short amount of time. Luckily, advanced …read more
Modern physics experiments are often complex, ambitious, and costly. The times where scientific progress could be made by conducting a small tabletop experiment in your lab are mostly over. Especially, in fields like astrophysics or particle physics, you need huge telescopes, expensive satellite missions, or giant colliders run by international …read more
Continue reading Crunching Giant Data from the Large Hadron Collider
It’s a trope among thriller writers; the three-word apocalyptic title. An innocuous item with the power to release unimaginable disaster, which of course our plucky hero must secure to save the day. Happily [Sylvain Lefebvre]’s DOOM chip will not cause the world to end, but it does present a vision …read more
After trying out hardware hacking using an FPGA to interface with target hardware, [Grazfather] was inspired to try using the iCEBreaker (one of the many hobbyist FPGAs to have recently flooded the market) to build a UART-controllable glitcher for the Olimex LPC-P1343.
When the target board boots up, the bootROM …read more
Continue reading Using an FPGA to Glitch the Olimex LPC-P1343
We are certainly spoiled by all the microcontroller options nowadays — which is a great problem to have. But between the good old 8-bit controllers and an increasing number of 32-bit varieties, it almost seems as if the 16-bit ones are slowly falling into oblivion. [stnolting] particularly saw an issue …read more
Continue reading NEO430 Puts A Custom MSP430 Core In Your FPGA
FPGAs are awesome — they can be essentially configured into becoming any computing device you want. Simply load your selected bitstream into the device on boot, and it behaves like a different piece of hardware. With great power comes great responsibility.
You might try to hack a given FPGA system …read more
Continue reading Researchers Break FPGA Encryption Using FPGA Encryption
There was a time when making a radio receiver involved significant work, much winding of coils, and tricky alignment of circuitry. The advent of Software Defined Radio (SDR) has moved a lot of this into the domain of software, but there is of course another field in which a radio …read more
Continue reading An FPGA And A Few Components Can Make A Radio