Hackaday Links: August 24, 2014

hackaday-links-chain

Remember those ‘cocktail’ arcade cabinets? The Ikea Lack table has existed for years, so why not make one into an arcade table? Raspberry Pi with RetroPie as the brains,  and an ancient 4:3 monitor as the display.

Old Unixes! Running on PDPs, Novas, and IBMs! Thanks to Simh, you can emulate these old machines. [Matt] put up a guide to getting Simh running on a Pi that includes running Unix V5 on an emulated PDP-11.

Ever wanted to run your own telecom? The folks at Toorcamp did just that, 50 lines, 10,000 feet of 1-pair, and 1,500 feet of 2-pair. There’s a facebook album of all the pics.

Remember last week when Sparkfun said they shipped 2000 Microviews without a bootloader? Make interviewed [Marcus Schappi], the guy behind the MicroView. There’s also a tutorial on how to fix the issue.

Barbie needs an exorcism.

Remember the [Lord Vetinari] clock from way back when? It’s a clock that ticks 86400 times a day, but the interval between each second is just slightly random and enough to drive people insane. Here’s a kit on Tindie that makes it pretty easy to build a Ventinari clock, or a variety of other clocks that are sufficiently weird. There’s also a martian clock that’s 39 minutes and 36 seconds longer than normal, perfect for the folks at JPL.

0x1f 0x000 IZO EMESS 1407981609

16 thoughts on “Hackaday Links: August 24, 2014

  1. That Lack table cabinet was a pretty nice idea; I might have to try it in the future!

    If I did – I don’t think I would enclose the legs, instead I would try to cut the monitor area out in such a manner to allow the placement of the Pi and other parts in the hollow below the LCD.

    I’m not sure if it could work, but it would be interesting to try!

    1. Is it a hidden message?!
      0x1f is 31, ASCII US (Unit Separator)
      0x000 is zero…
      The last number looks like a Unix time! It occurred 2am, Thursday 14 Aug 2014 (10 days ago).
      Anyone have ideas on IZO or EMESS? IZO is both an airport and movie from Japan, but neither of those sound plausible…

      [maybe overthinking]

    1. recalculating after my hex math mistake, I get NETJRJXX from IZOEMESS.
      Adding a space as the 27th letter in the alphabet and putting the space back in the cyphertext gives MCSDIQIWW. Using the space as the 1st letter makes no difference.

  2. They talked about at Toorcon possibly running a DMS-10 next year…how about a VCDX? It’s far more compact, and it emulates the WE32100 command processors in the 5ESS on a SPARC server…

    1. Just so long as they don’t try their hand at an ACTUAL 5E (I’ve been told that some London telecom once asked if a single 5E could serve the entirety of London from a single fortified bunker, and the answer was yes: but with ~50 cabinets -_- ).

    2. Hey there! Sorry I’m a little slow on the draw here. The reason we were thinking about a DMS-10 was because we’ve been in contact with someone that recently cut over to a CS-1500. Take a DMS-10 – same software and everything, condense the first row into a 2U box (line frames remain in place), and add support for internal packet transport – that’s a CS-1500. So no guarantees, but I’m looking forward to the challenge if it comes our way :) .

      Anyway, as much as I’d love a 5ESS, you’d be surprised how small a DMS-10 can get. To give you an idea, the SL-1/Meridian line is based on the same architecture; some of the cards are even interchangeable.

  3. The message is “HAD LINKS”. The other big text is “THE HACKADAY ONE TIRE PAD
    THE ONE TIME PAD IS ONE OF THE VERY FEW CRYPTOGRAPHIC TECHNIQUES THAT CANNOT BE BROKEN PROVIDED IT IS USED
    CORRECTLY THIS IS A VAGUE TERM BUT SELLING THE KEY IN A STORE DOES NOT COUNT AS USING A OTP CORRECTLY
    WHY ARE WE DOING THIS BECAUSE ITS COOL AND WERE WONDERING IF PEOPLE WILL ACTUALLY BUY IT ALSO WELL BE DOING A FEW MORE ARGS IN THE FUTURE AND OF COURSE THIS WILL BE A VALUABLE TOOL
    THIS OTP IS THREE AND A HALF INCHES BY FIVE INCHES AND THIRTY TWO PAGES LONG EACH PAGE CONTAINS FIVE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY FIVE RANDOM CHARACTERS THE BOOK CONTAINS A TOTAL OF EIGHTEEN THOUSAND FOUR HUNDRED CHARACTERS OF WHICH THIS PRODUCT DESCRIPTION USES FIVE HUNDRED AND SIXTY EIGHT” but no more clues to decrypt with 0x00 0x000

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