The Obscure Electronics Tools You Didn’t Know You Needed

The right tool for the job can turn a total headache into a 30-second operation. This is all the more important when you’re trying to streamline an assembly process, and the reason why you’ll find so many strange and wonderful purpose-built tools on any production line. With a nod to that old adage, [EvilMadScientist] have collected the tools you didn’t know you needed – until now.

If you’re wiring big through-hole boards all day, you’ve probably bemoaned the uneven bends on all your resistors. How did the big companies get it right way back when? They used a tool to …read more

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Do You Know The CR816?

Hackaday readers (and writers) are an odd bunch. While the rest of the tech press falls over for the newest, shiniest CPU on the market, we’re the type who’s more interested the unexplored dark corners of metaphorical Silicon Alley. So when someone comes to us with a good writeup of a chip that we’d never heard about, we’re all ears.

[Remy]’s writeup of the CoolRISC 816 microcontroller CPU makes it obvious that he shares our taste for the esoteric. It has a 22-bit “RISC” instruction set. It has a dedicated 8-to-16 bit multiplier. Some of the instructions are so un-reduced …read more

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