Day: March 19, 2025

Closeup of the original Manchester Baby CRT screen

Modern Computing’s Roots Or The Manchester Baby

March 19, 2025 by 1 Comment

In the heart of Manchester, UK, a groundbreaking event took place in 1948: the first modern computer, known as the Manchester Baby, ran its very first program. The Baby’s ability to execute stored programs, developed with guidance from John von Neumann’s theory, marks it as a pioneer in the digital age. This fascinating chapter in computing history not only reshapes our understanding of technology’s roots but also highlights the incredible minds behind it. The original article, including a video transcript, sits here at [TheChipletter]’s.

So, what made this hack so special? The Manchester Baby, though a relatively simple prototype, was the first fully electronic computer to successfully run a program from memory. Built by a team with little formal experience in computing, the Baby featured a unique cathode-ray tube (CRT) as its memory store – a bold step towards modern computing. It didn’t just run numbers; it laid the foundation for all future machines that would use memory to store both data and instructions. Running a test to find the highest factor of a number, the Baby performed 3.5 million operations over 52 minutes. Impressive, by that time.

Despite criticisms that it was just a toy computer, the Baby’s significance shines through. It was more than just a prototype; it was proof of concept for the von Neumann architecture, showing us that computers could be more than complex calculators. While debates continue about whether it or the ENIAC should be considered the first true stored-program computer, the Baby’s role in the evolution of computing can’t be overlooked.

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This M5Stack Game Is Surprisingly Addictive

March 19, 2025 by 1 Comment

For those of us lucky enough to have been at Hackaday Europe in Berlin, there was a feast of hacks at our disposal. Among them was [Vladimir Divic]’s gradients game, software for an M5Stack module which was definitely a lot of fun to play. The idea of the game is simple enough, a procedurally generated contour map is displayed on the screen, and the player must navigate a red ball around and collect as many green ones as possible. It’s navigated using the M5Stack’s accelerometer, which is what makes for the engaging gameplay. In particular it takes a moment to discover that the ball can be given momentum, making it something more than a simple case of ball-rolling.

Underneath the hood it’s an Arduino .ino  file for the M5Stack’s ESP32, and thus shouldn’t present a particular challenge to most readers. Meanwhile the M5Stack with its versatile range of peripherals has made it onto these pages several times over the years, not least as a LoRA gateway.

From The Ashes: Coal Ash May Offer Rich Source Of Rare Earth Elements

March 19, 2025 by 16 Comments

For most of history, the world got along fine without the rare earth elements. We knew they existed, we knew they weren’t really all that rare, and we really didn’t have much use for them — until we discovered just how useful they are and made ourselves absolutely dependent on them, to the point where not having them would literally grind the world to a halt.

This dependency has spurred a search for caches of rare earth elements in the strangest of places, from muddy sediments on the sea floor to asteroids. But there’s one potential source that’s much closer to home: coal ash waste. According to a study from the University of Texas Austin, the 5 gigatonnes of coal ash produced in the United States between 1950 and 2021 might contain as much as $8.4 billion worth of REEYSc — that’s the 16 lanthanide rare earth elements plus yttrium and scandium, transition metals that aren’t strictly rare earths but are geologically associated with them and useful in many of the same ways. Continue reading “From The Ashes: Coal Ash May Offer Rich Source Of Rare Earth Elements” →

Reviving A Maplin 4600 DIY Synthesizer From The 1970s

March 19, 2025 by 10 Comments

A piece of musical history is the Maplin 4600, a DIY electronic music synthesizer from the 1970s. The design was published in an Australian electronics magazine and sold as a DIY kit, and [LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER] got his hands on an original Maplin 4600 that he refurbishes and puts through its paces.

Inserting conductive pegs is how the operator connects different inputs and outputs.

The Maplin 4600 is a (mostly) analog device with a slightly intimidating-looking layout. It features multiple oscillators, mixers, envelope generators, filters, and a complex-looking patch bay on the right hand side that is reminiscent of a breadboard. By inserting conductive pins, one can make connections between various inputs and outputs.

Internally the different features and circuits are mostly unconnected from one another by default, so the patch board is how the instrument is “programmed” and the connections made can be quite complex. The 4600 is one of a few synthesizer designs by [Trevor Marshall], who has some additional details about on his website.

The video (embedded below) is a complete walk-through of the unit, including its history, quirks, and design features. If you’d like to skip directly to a hands-on demonstrating how it works, that begins around the 10:15 mark.

Synthesizers have a rich DIY history and it’s fascinating to see an in-depth look at this one. And hey, if you like your synths complex and intimidating, do yourself a favor and check out the Starship One.

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So What Is A Supercomputer Anyway?

March 19, 2025 by 13 Comments

Over the decades there have been many denominations coined to classify computer systems, usually when they got used in different fields or technological improvements caused significant shifts. While the very first electronic computers were very limited and often not programmable, they would soon morph into something that we’d recognize today as a computer, starting with World War 2’s Colossus and ENIAC, which saw use with cryptanalysis and military weapons programs, respectively.

The first commercial digital electronic computer wouldn’t appear until 1951, however, in the form of the Ferranti Mark 1. These 4.5 ton systems mostly found their way to universities and kin, where they’d find welcome use in engineering, architecture and scientific calculations. This became the focus of new computer systems, effectively the equivalent of a scientific calculator. Until the invention of the transistor, the idea of a computer being anything but a hulking, room-sized monstrosity was preposterous.

A few decades later, more computer power could be crammed into less space than ever before including ever higher density storage. Computers were even found in toys, and amidst a whirlwind of mini-, micro-, super-, home-, minisuper- and mainframe computer systems, one could be excused for asking the question: what even is a supercomputer?

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Make Fancy Resin Printer 3D Models FDM-Friendly

March 19, 2025 by 11 Comments

Do you like high-detail 3D models intended for resin printing, but wish you could more easily print them on a filament-based FDM printer? Good news, because [Jacob] of Painted4Combat shared a tool he created to make 3D models meant for resin printers — the kind popular with tabletop gamers — easier to port to FDM. It comes in the form of a Blender add-on called Resin2FDM. Intrigued, but wary of your own lack of experience with Blender? No problem, because he also made a video that walks you through the whole thing step-by-step.

Resin2FDM separates the model from the support structure, then converts the support structure to be FDM-friendly.

3D models intended for resin printing aren’t actually any different, format-wise, from models intended for FDM printers. The differences all come down to the features of the model and how well the printer can execute them. Resin printing is very different from FDM, so printing a model on the “wrong” type of printer will often have disappointing results. Let’s look at why that is, to better understand what makes [Jacob]’s tool so useful.

Rafts and a forest of thin tree-like supports are common in resin printing. In the tabletop gaming scene, many models come pre-supported for convenience. A fair bit of work goes into optimizing the orientation of everything for best printed results, but the benefits don’t carry directly over to FDM.

For one thing, supports for resin prints are usually too small for an FDM printer to properly execute — they tend to be very thin and very tall, which is probably the least favorable shape for FDM printing. In addition, contact points where each support tapers down to a small point that connects to the model are especially troublesome; FDM slicer software will often simply consider those features too small to bother trying to print. Supports that work on a resin printer tend to be too small or too weak to be effective on FDM, even with a 0.2 mm nozzle.

To solve this, [Jacob]’s tool allows one to separate the model itself from the support structure. Once that is done, the tool further allows one to tweak the nest of supports, thickening them up just enough to successfully print on an FDM printer, while leaving the main model unchanged. The result is a support structure that prints well via FDM, allowing the model itself to come out nicely, with a minimum of alterations to the original.

Resin2FDM is available in two versions, the Lite version is free and an advanced version with more features is available to [Jacob]’s Patreon subscribers. The video (embedded below) covers everything from installation to use, and includes some general tips for best results. Check it out if you’re interested in how [Jacob] solved this problem, and keep it in mind for the next time you run across a pre-supported model intended for resin printing that you wish you could print with FDM.

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