2023 Cyberdeck Challenge: Reviving The First Notebook Computer

July 4, 2023 by Jenny List 8 Comments

At first sight upon seeing [Don]’s HX2023 cyberdeck project one might be sad at the destruction of a retrocomputer, but in fact its classic Epson shell comes from a pile of spare parts left after restoring many other of the classic HX20 notebook computers to working order. The result stays true to the original but gives us so much more in the shape of a Raspberry Pi, and it’s worth cracking it open to see what components make this happen.

The first impression from the pictures is how tidy it all is, with the various USB-based boards contained on a large piece of perfboard spanning the whole case. As well as a USB hub and UPS board there’s an M.2 SSD interface and an audio board, and a DSI color TFT screen neatly fitted in place of the original monochrome item. Finally, there’s an Adafruit keyboard matrix interface board, allowing the use of the Epson’s original keys.

We like this conversion, because it manages to preserve a lot of what the original Epson had that made it great. We’re reminded of a cyberdeck inspired by the other great 8-bit notebook, the TRS-80 model 100.

There’s Always Room For Another Cycle Accurate PC Emulator

July 3, 2023 by Jenny List 17 Comments

While many Hackaday readers will have their own pieces of classic hardware lovingly preserved, it still remains that most of us get our fix of retro goodness through emulation. And while there are emulators aplenty for almost every platform imaginable, the world of emulation is never complete. Thus we’re happy to encounter a new player in the form of MartyPC, a cycle-accurate 8088 PC emulator written in Rust.

It’s a project that started only in April 2022, but alongside such in-depth processor support it has the full range of PC and XT peripherals including CGA and VGA cards to the extent that it will run even the most hardware-demanding demos. Below the break you can see it running the fiendishly hardware-specific PC demo Area 5150 — thought to be the first time an emulator has managed this task.

If there’s a snag it’s that the releases are so far Windows-only, though it’s claimed that it should also compile on other major platforms. There’s also a WebAssembly version, though sadly the link to it doesn’t work. We look forward to this emulator maturing, because we’re sure it will become a PC standby. After all, not everyone managed to snag one of the recent batch of new hardware.

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Ice Wrenchers, Wrencher Chocolates, And The Vaquform DT2

July 3, 2023 by Jenny List 9 Comments

What do you do when you find some friends have bought a vacuum forming machine? Make novelty chocolates and ice cubes, of course! This was my response when I had the opportunity to play with a Vaquform DT2 all-in-one vacuum forming machine, so what follows is partly a short review of an exciting machine, and partly an account of my adventures in edible merchandise creation.

The vaquform machine, on a neutral white background — The Vaquform machine in all its glory.

Vacuum forming, the practice of drawing a sheet of heat-softened plastic film over a model to make a plastic shell copy of it, is nothing new in our community. It’s most often found in hackerspaces in the form of home made vacuum forming tables, and usually requires quite a bit of experimentation to get good results. The Vaquform machine I was lucky enough to be able to try is an all in one machine that puts the whole process into a compact desktop machine of similar size to a typical 3D printer. It’s a machine of two parts with a moveable carriage between them for the plastic sheet; a vacuum table on its base, and a heater unit suspended above it. The unique selling point is that it’s an all-in-one computer controlled unit that does as much as possible for you, it simply requires the user to place a sheet in the carriage and follow the instructions.

When I first saw the machine I didn’t really have anything to try it with, so of course I resorted to producing a Wrencher or two. Because what it makes are essentially moulds, it made sense to produce something Wrencher-shaped with them, and thus the chocolate and ice plan formed. The first mould was made with laser-cut Wrenchers in 2mm acrylic, stacked on two more layers of uncut acrylic to make a bar with an inset Wrencher on top, while the second one used a 3D-printed array of larger stand-alone Wrenchers with channels between them. Would my first attempt at vacuum forming make usable moulds or not? Only one way to find out. Continue reading “Ice Wrenchers, Wrencher Chocolates, And The Vaquform DT2” →

Put More Power In Your Dental Hygiene Routine!

July 2, 2023 by Jenny List 15 Comments

What do you do, when you move into a shared apartment and find only one socket is available among four electric toothbrushes? Revert to an old-style manual brush? If you’re [luisengineering], not a bit of it. He’s modified an electric toothbrush with the only sensible power plant, a three-horsepower twin cylinder four-stroke gasoline motor. You’ll need to turn on translated subtitles from the original German to watch it, but we hope you’ll agree it’s worth it.

After explaining the problem, the video below the break continues with the assembly of the motor, a model unit available through the usual online suppliers. This alone is interesting, for no doubt many of us have seen these motors for sale and retain some curiosity about them. We expected him to retain the electric drive for the toothbrush and use a generator, but instead, he hooks up the motor via a shaft directly to the input gear. With three horsepower behind the brush, this will surely shift that stubborn plaque! Astoundingly as you can see in the video below the break the contraption works, and both he and a friends perform their dental ablutions with it.

We like the blend of craziness and engineering embodied by this project, and we commend it to you on that basis. If you’re short of electric toothbrush modding ideas, how about an engraving tool?

Continue reading “Put More Power In Your Dental Hygiene Routine!” →

An ESP32 Dev Board As A Framework Laptop Module

July 1, 2023 by Jenny List 17 Comments

The Framework laptop will no doubt already have caught the eye of more than one Hackaday reader, as a machine designed for upgrade and expansion by its users. One of its key features is a system of expansion modules. The modules are USB-C devices in a form factor that slides into the expansion bays on the Framework Laptop. Framework encourages the development of new modules, which is something [Spacehuhn] has taken on with an ESP32-S3 development board.

The board itself is what you’d expect, the ESP is joined by a multicolor LED and one of those Stemma/Quiik connectors for expansion. The case is handily provided by Framework themselves, and all the files for the ESP32 module can be found in a GitHub repository. We’re guessing it will find application in experimenting with WiFi networks rather than as a standalone microcontroller. Either way, it shows the route for any Framework owners into making their own add-ons. Take a look, we’ve placed the video below the break.

As you might expect we’ve given a lot of coverage to the Framework laptop since its launch, in particular, our colleague [Arya Voronova] is a fan and has shown us many alternative uses for the parts.

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A CVT For Every Application

July 1, 2023 by Jenny List 36 Comments

When the subject of CVTs or continuously variable transmissions comes up, the chances are that most readers will think of the various motor vehicles they’ve appeared in. Whether it’s a DAF, a Ford, a FIAT, or a Chevrolet, most major manufacturers have tried one at some point or another with greater or lesser success. The automotive ones inevitably use a variation on a V-belt or metal band between variable separation conical pulleys, but this is by no means the only CVT configuration. Serial tinkerer [Robert Murray-Smith] takes an in-depth look at the subject as part of his ongoing fascination with wind turbines.

What caught our eye about this video isn’t so much the final 3D-printed design he selects for his experiments, but the history and his look at the different CVT designs which have appeared over the years. We see the V-belts, as well as the various cone configurations, the disk transmissions, the hydrostatic ones, and even magnetic versions. His transmission uses two cones with a rubber coating, with of all things a movable golf ball between them. We’re guessing it will appear somewhere in his future videos, so watch out for it.

Meanwhile, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen a CVT, [James Bruton] used a hemisphere to make one on a robot.

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Hackaday Prize 2023: Throwaway Temperature Logger To Useful ARM Dev Board

July 1, 2023 by Jenny List 5 Comments

The global supply chain is a masterpiece of containerized logistics that allows a container to leave a factory in China and arrive on a British forecourt after only a few weeks, but along with the efficiency it brings a traceability and monitoring problem. If you are shipping perishable items such as medicines or foodstuffs, how can you be sure that they’ve remained refrigerated the whole journey through?

The answer comes in digital temperature loggers, and since these are throwaway devices [arduinocelentano] decided to look inside and see if they could be reused. The answer is positive, in that many models have the potential to be useful dev boards for very little money.

These devices usually take the form of a bulky USB dongle with an LCD display and a few buttons. Inside they invariably have a low-power ARM microcontroller and a battery as well as the temperature sensor and some flash memory to store the readings. The data is read by the customer through the USB port, and they’re single use with manufacturers paying only lip service to recycling, because the data must by necessity be impossible to erase or alter. Happily for all that, many of them appear to be well-designed internally, with the relevant debug and programming ports exposed and the ability to access the microcontroller. We look forward to seeing what comes of these boards, because while the worst of the chip shortage my now be receding it’s always good to find a new source.