Exploring Cheap Tantalum Caps Of Mysterious Provenance

July 22, 2024 by Dan Maloney 25 Comments

We’ve all heard about the perils of counterfeit chips, and more than a few of us have probably been bitten by those scruple-free types who run random chips through a laser marker and foist them off as something they’re not. Honestly, we’ve never understood the business model here — it seems like the counterfeiters spend almost as much time and effort faking chips as they would just getting the real ones. But we digress.

Unfortunately, integrated circuits aren’t the only parts that can be profitably faked, as [Amateur Hardware Repair] shows us with this look at questionable tantalum capacitors. In the market for some tantalums for a repair project, the offerings at AliExpress proved too tempting to resist, despite being advertised alongside 1,000 gram gold bars for $121 each. Wisely, he also ordered samples from more reputable dealers like LCSC, DigiKey, and Mouser, although not at the same improbably low unit price.

It was pretty much clear where this would be going just from the shipping. While the parts houses all shipped their tantalums in Mylar bags with humidity indicators, with all but LCSC including a desiccant pack, the AliExpress package came carefully enrobed in — plastic cling wrap? The Ali tantalums were also physically different from the other parts: they were considerably smaller, the leads seemed a little chowdered up, and the package markings were quite messy and somewhat illegible. But the proof is in the testing, and while all the more expensive parts tested fine in terms of capacitance and equivalent series resistance, the caps of unknown provenance had ESRs in the 30 milliohm range, three to five times what the reputable caps measured.

None of this is to say that there aren’t some screaming deals on marketplaces like AliExpress, Amazon, and eBay, of course. It’s not even necessarily proof that these parts were in fact counterfeit, it could be that they were just surplus parts that hadn’t been stored under controlled conditions. But you get what you pay for, and as noted in the comments below the video, a lot of what you’re paying for at the parts houses is lot tracebility.

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Mechanical Intelligence And Counterfeit Humanity

July 22, 2024 by Maya Posch 12 Comments

It would seem fair to say that the second half of last century up till the present day has been firmly shaped by our relation with technology and that of computers in particular. From the bulking behemoths at universities, to microcomputers at home, to today’s smartphones, smart homes and ever-looming compute cloud, we all have a relationship with computers in some form. One aspect of computers which has increasingly become underappreciated, however, is that the less we see them as physical objects, the more we seem inclined to accept them as humans. This is the point which [Harry R. Lewis] argues in a recent article in Harvard Magazine.

Born in 1947, [Harry R. Lewis] found himself at the forefront of what would become computer science and related disciplines, with some of his students being well-know to the average Hackaday reader, such as [Bill Gates] and [Mark Zuckerberg]. Suffice it to say, he has seen every attempt to ‘humanize’ computers, ranging from ELIZA to today’s ChatGPT. During this time, the line between humans and computers has become blurred, with computer systems becoming increasingly more competent at imitating human interactions even as they vanished into the background of daily life.

These counterfeit ‘humans’ are not capable of learning, of feeling and experiencing the way that humans can, being at most a facsimile of a human for all but that what makes a human, which is often referred to as ‘the human experience’. More and more of us are communicating these days via smartphone and computer screens with little idea or regard for whether we are talking to a real person or not. Ironically, it seems that by anthropomorphizing these counterfeit humans, we risk becoming less human in the process, while also opening the floodgates for blaming AI when the blame lies square with the humans behind it, such as with the recent Air Canada chatbot case. Equally ridiculous, [Lewis] argues, is the notion that we could create a ‘superintelligence’ while training an ‘AI’ on nothing but the data scraped off the internet, as there are many things in life which cannot be understood simply by reading about them.

Ultimately, the argument is made that it is humanistic learning that should be the focus point of artificial intelligence, as only this way we could create AIs that might truly be seen as our equals, and beneficial for the future of all.

CW Not Hard Enough? Try This Tiny Paddle

July 22, 2024 by Bryan Cockfield 7 Comments

For a long time, a Morse code proficiency was required to obtain an amateur radio license in many jurisdictions around the world, which was a much higher bar of entry than most new hams have to pass. Morse, or continuous wave (CW) is a difficult skill to master, and since the requirement has been dropped from most licensing requirements few radio operators pick up this skill anymore. But if you like a challenge, and Morse itself isn’t hard enough for you, you might want to try out this extremely small Morse paddle.

Originally meant for portable operation, where hiking to something like a mountain top with radio gear demands small, lightweight, and low-power options, this paddle is actually not too complex. It attaches to most radios with a 3.5 mm stereo cable and only has two paddles on flexible metal arms which, when pressed against the center of the device, tell the radio to either produce continuous “dits” or “dahs”. For portable use the key sits inside a tiny plastic case and only needs to be pulled out and flipped around to get started. And, while not waterproof, [N6ARA] reports that it’s so small you likely could just shield it from the rain with your other hand if you needed to.

Presumably, this paddle actually wouldn’t be that much different than using any other paddle except for the fact that it’s not heavy enough to resist the force of use, so you’d have to hold it with your other hand anyway. And, while this is a product available for purchase it’s simple enough that, presumably, the design could easily be duplicated with just a few parts. Paddles like this were made as an improvement to older technology like straight keys which require the operator to produce the correct lengths of tones for each character manually. While you can get higher speeds with a paddle, there are still some dedicated CW operators using a straight key.

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A small, white thermal printer with a cartoon cat face above the paper outlet. It is sitting on a black mat on top of a pale wooden table. A Raspberry Pi sits nearby.

Bluetooth Printer Works With AppleTalk

July 22, 2024 by Navarre Bartz 1 Comment

For retrocomputing enthusiasts, getting old computers to work with newer peripherals can be an exciting challenge or horrible headache. If you need to print out receipts from an old Mac, you might just be in luck now that [Hamin Mousavi] has gotten AppleTalk to work with cat printers.

[Mousavi] uses a Raspberry Pi 4 here in his version of the hack, but any Bluetooth capable computer running Linux should work. His command line screenshots are from a Debian-based system, but you should be able to translate to other systems as needed.

Thanks to previous work on these thermal printers, drivers are available for them on many other systems, so the tricky part comes down to getting the web connection to the printer working through the Linux box and then getting the Mac (in this case an iMac G3) to recognize the printer as something to install.

We’ve seen people do some really interesting things with thermal printers like making them D&D tools, breaking their paper DRM, and even black and white “Polaroids.”

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A custom LEGO throne for Dune's Baron Harkonnen.

A Throne For LEGO Baron Harkonnen

July 22, 2024 by Kristina Panos 2 Comments

If you’re both a LEGO and a Dune fan, unless you’ve been living in a cave on Mars with your eyes shut and fingers in your ears, you’re probably aware that LEGO released a set for the royal Atreides ornithopter. The blades flap and everything. Anyway, it comes with several minifigures, including one that doesn’t quite fit with the others — a full-length Baron Harkonnen.

Given that, [gorkyver] decided to create a throne for the Baron that he could rise from, just like in the movie, while delivering the iconic line. With no reference materials available other than pausing the movie, [gorkyver] created a throne from scratch in BrickLink Studio, which made it easy to generate both a parts list and step-by-step instructions.

At the heart of this build is an Arduino Nano, which takes input from the momentary push button and starts the show. The Baron slowly rises on a rack and spur gear connected to a stepper motor, and a DF Player Mini runs the audio through a 75 mm speaker.

Rather than just buying a big box store display case off of eBay, [gorkyver] recreated the skeleton in Fusion 360 and used a hairdryer to bend a sheet of PET-G around to enclose it. A couple of sweet adhesive graphics later, and it totally looks like a real set on display. Don’t miss the demo/build video after the break.

Did you hear? The European Space Agency printed some bricks out of meteorite dust, and there might be one on display near you.

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Small Mammals Appear To Have A Secret Infrared Sense

July 22, 2024 by Lewin Day 23 Comments

If you’ve ever watched Predator, you’ve noted the tactical advantage granted to the alien warrior by its heat vision. Indeed, even with otherwise solid camoflauge, Dutch and his squad ended up very much the hunted.

And yet, back in reality, it seems the prey might be the one with the ability to sense in the infrared spectrum. Research has now revealed this unique ability may all be down to the hairs on the back of some of the smallest mammals.

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Making A Solid State 6AK8 Tube

July 22, 2024 by Al Williams 13 Comments

[M Caldeira] had a project in mind: replacing a common vacuum tube with a solid-state equivalent. The tube in question was an EABC80 or 6AK8 triple diode triode. The key was identifying a high-voltage FET and building it, along with some other components, into a tube base to make a plug-in replacement for the tube. You can see a video about the project below.

These tubes are often used as a detector and preamplifier. Removing the detector tube from a working radio, of course, kills the audio. Replacing the tube with a single diode restores the operation of the radio, although at a disadvantage.

From there, he adds more diodes directly into the socket. Of course, diodes don’t amplify, so he had to break out a LND150 MOSFET with a limit of 500 volts across the device. It takes some additional components, and the whole thing fits in a tube base ready for the socket.

Usually, we see people go the other way using tubes instead of transistors in, say, a computer. If you want real hacking, why not make your own tubes?

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