Hackaday Links: March 8, 2015

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Nintendo is well known for… odd… hardware integration, but this video takes it to a new level. It’s a Gamecube playing Zelda: Four Swords Adventure, a game that can use a Game Boy Advance as a controller. [fibbef] is taking it further by using the Gamecube Game Boy Advance player to play the game, and using another GBA to control the second Gamecube. There’s also a GBA TV tuner, making this entire setup a Gamecube game played across two Gamecubes, controlled with a Game Boy Advance and displayed on a GBA with a TV tuner. The mind reels.

TI just released a great resource for analog design. It’s the Analog Engineer’s Pocket Reference, free for download, if you can navigate TI’s site. There are print copies of this book – I picked one up at Electronica – and it’s a great benchtop reference.

A few months ago, a life-size elephant (baby elephants are pretty small…) was 3D printed at the Amsterdam airport. A model of the elephant was broken up into columns about two meters tall. How did they print something two meters tall? With this add-on for a Ultimaker. It flips an Ultimaker upside down, giving the printer unlimited build height. The guy behind this – [Joris van Tubergen] – is crazy creative.

And you thought TV was bad now. Here’s the pitch: take a show like Storage Wars or American Pickers – you know, the shows that have people go around, lowball collectors, and sell stuff on the Internet – and put a “Tech” spin on it. This is happening. That’s a post from a casting producer on the classic cmp message boards. Here’s the vintage computer forums reaction. To refresh your memory, this is what happens when you get ‘tech’ on Storage Wars. Other examples from Storage Wars that include vastly overpriced video terminals cannot be found on YouTube. Here’s a reminder: just because it’s listed on eBay for $1000 doesn’t mean it’ll sell on eBay for $1000.

23 thoughts on “Hackaday Links: March 8, 2015

    1. On page 11, the background appears to be part of a reverse engineered schematic of an old ATX PSU. On page 35, something similar except it appears to be part of some sort of EPROM microcontroller programmer. Easter Eggs?

    2. Thank you! Was just trying to make the TI site work with some trash-mail-service. The postal code verification ist quite annoying (I don’t no the format of postal code of $random_country…).

  1. It is annoying, however, that you have to create an account on TI’s website to actually _download_ the document. That’s a pet peeve of mine, especially since every site has its own username and password formation rules and each one wants to sign you up for mailing lists… It drives me nuts.

    Then a year or two down the road I want to order a sample or something and they’re like “you can’t create an account with that email address, you already have one. If you can remember which username you picked we’ll send you a password reset link where you’ll have to remember your answer to one of three ill-fitting and insecure ” security” questions which you’re certain you wouldn’t have submitted a “real” answer…

        1. They fixed all of the direct links :-(

          Well – there is a another valid choice and that’s to simply walk away. I’m sure some other company will want my business enough to actually provide something for free. Requiring a login/password/email is not remotely close to the definition of free, imho.

  2. Two comments….

    The GCNGBA is nothing new. Did it when all the components became available years ago. I’ll be impressed when I see the Verilog/VHDL for the Macronix CMPV-DOL. Force the damn price down from the high $200’s.

    Speaking of prices, A tech version of American Pickers? Piss off. It’s because of these damn shows you get your bored butch-looking housewives and their mentally crippled husbands trying their hand at this kind of thing and artificially driving the prices of damn near everything they touch through the roof. You get crap that isn’t worth more than two Jacksons start having discussions with two Franklins because some dip thinks (s)he can base their prices on crap spouted out of a T.V. show. American Pickers, Storage Wars, Pawn Stars, American Restorers… all harmful to their fields.

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