Collaborate Disseminate
If you need to send data from sensors, there are plenty of options, including a bewildering selection of wireless methods. Trouble is, most of those protocols require a substantial stack …read more Continue reading Simple CMOS Circuit Allows Power and Data Over Twisted-Pair Wiring
It’s been a long time since computer hobbyists stored their programs and data on cassette tapes. But because floppy drives were expensive peripherals and hard drives were still a long …read more Continue reading A Cassette Interface for a 6502 Breadboard Computer, Kansas City-Style
Most of us have beheld the sonic glory of an Atari Punk Console, that lo-fi synth whose classic incarnation is a pair of 555 timers set up to warble and …read more Continue reading The Atari Punk Console, Now With More Vacuum Tubes
In these days of cheap microcontrollers, it is hard to remember there was a time when timing things took real circuitry. Even today, for some applications it is hard to beat the ubiquitous 555 timer IC. It is cheap, plentiful, and reliable. What’s interesting about the 555 is it isn’t …read more
It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of creation as we’re building our latest widget. By the same token, it’s sometimes difficult to fully appreciate just how old some of the circuits we use are. Even the simplest of projects might make use of elements that were once a mess on some physicist’s or engineer’s lab bench, with components screwed to literal breadboards and power supplied by banks of wet-cell batteries.
One such circuit turns 100 years old in June, which is surprising because it literally is the building block of every computer. It’s the flip-flop, and while …read more
Continue reading A 100th Birthday Celebration for the Flip Flop