Category Archives: RAM

Making Vintage Computing Easy, The Hard Way

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If you want to not take for granted how easy and seamless computers have become, take up vintage computing as a hobby. If you venture down the retro path, you’ll quickly question how anyone ever got any useful work done with computers, and the farther back you go in computer history, the more difficult everything seems to become.

Case in point: how do you easily transfer files between a home-brew PC/XT and your modern desktop? Back in the day we did it with null modem cables or by sneaker-netting stacks of floppies, but [Scott M. Baker] found another way — …read more

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Respectfully Modifying the Amiga 500

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Modifying the Amiga 500 to speed up access to RAM in a memory expansion pack is a well documented procedure, with guides on the process written in the early 1990’s when the hardware was only a few years old. But as they were written for contemporary hardware, they make no concessions for how one should be treating a vintage computer that’s now over 30 years old. In 1993, cutting traces on the Amiga 500 motherboard was just a last ditch effort to eek a few more months of service life out of an outdated desktop computer. But in 2018, it’s …read more

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One Chip, Sixteen Times The RAM

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Have you ever upgraded your computer’s memory sixteen-fold, with a single chip? Tynemouth Software did for a classic Sinclair micro.

For owners of home computers in the early 1980s, one of the most important selling points was how much RAM their device would have. Sometimes though there just wasn’t much choice but to live with what you could afford, so buyers of Sinclair’s budget ZX81 computer had to put up with only 1 kiB of memory. The system bytes took up (by this writer’s memory) around 300 bytes, so user programs were left with only around 700 bytes for their …read more

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DIY Ram Pump Obeys the Laws of Physics

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Despite the claims of “free energy” on the title of the video below, this is not yet another wacky perpetual motion story. We here at Hackaday fully support the laws of thermodynamics, and we think you should too. But you have to admit that a pump that works without any apparent energy inputs looks kind of shady at first glance.

The apparatus in question is a ram pump, a technology dating back all the way to the 18th century. The version that [Junkyard – Origin of Creativity] built uses commonly available materials like PVC pipes and fittings. About the only …read more

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Azure Virtual Machine Announcements from Build

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Aidan Finn goes over several announcements Microsoft made regarding Azure virtual machines at the recent Build conference.

The post Azure Virtual Machine Announcements from Build appeared first on Petri.

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Intel Optane memory announced: A steroid to speed up your computer

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By Jahanzaib Hassan

Intel has finally announced a magic memory which would help in improving your computer’s speed. A chip named “Optane” has been announced by Intel to boost the speed of your PC, and it looks like the officials of Inter Corp. are very optimistic of this creation. According to the senior vice president of Intel, Navin […]

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Intel Optane memory announced: A steroid to speed up your computer

Posted on by

By Jahanzaib Hassan

Intel has finally announced a magic memory which would help in improving your computer’s speed. A chip named “Optane” has been announced by Intel to boost the speed of your PC, and it looks like the officials of Inter Corp. are very optimistic of this creation. According to the senior vice president of Intel, Navin […]

This is a post from HackRead.com Read the original post: Intel Optane memory announced: A steroid to speed up your computer

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Circuit Bent CD Player Is Glitch Heaven

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Circuit bending is the art of creatively short circuiting low voltage hardware to create interesting and unexpected results. It’s generally applied to things like Furbys, old Casio keyboards, or early consoles to create audio and video glitches for artistic effect. It’s often practiced with a random approach, but by bringing in a little knowledge, you can get astounding results. [r20029] decided to apply her knowledge of CD players and RAM to create this glitched out Sony Discman.

Portable CD players face the difficult problem of vibration and shocks causing the laser to skip tracks on the disc, leading to annoying …read more

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The Year That the Entire Computer Industry Ran Out of Memory

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For a few years in the mid-1980s, the RAM industry and the oil industry had a lot in common: Supply fluctuations could get severe. That’s why the most common kind of RAM was hard to find in the summer of 1988. Continue reading The Year That the Entire Computer Industry Ran Out of Memory→

FPGA Drives Old Laptop Screen

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Every year, new models of laptops arrive on the shelves. This means that old laptops usually end up in landfills, which isn’t exactly ideal. If you don’t want to waste an old or obsolete laptop, though, there’s a way to reuse at least the screen out of one. Simply grab an FPGA off the shelf and get to work.

[Martin] shows us all how to perform this feat on our own, and goes into great detail about how all of the electronics involved work. Once everything was disassembled and the FPGA was wired up, it took him a substantial amount …read more

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