Author: Jenny List

3411 Articles

A GPS Frequency Standard For When The Timing Has To Be Right

June 29, 2022 by 10 Comments

A metrology geek will go to extreme lengths to ensure that their measurements are the best, their instruments the most accurate, and their calibration spot-on. There was a time when for time-and-frequency geeks this would have been a difficult job, but with the advent of GPS satellites overhead carrying super-accurate atomic clocks it’s surprisingly easy to be right on-frequency. [Land-boards] have a GPS 10 MHz clock that’s based around a set of modules.

Since many GPS modules have a 10 MHz output one might expect that this one to simply hook a socket to the module and have done, but instead it uses another of their projects, a fast edge pulse generator with the GPS output as its oscillator, as a buffer and signal conditioner. Add to that an QT Py microcontroller board to set up the GPS, and there you have a standalone 10 MHz source to rival any standard. Full details can be found on the project’s wiki, and the firmware can be found on GitHub.

Careful with your exploration of standard frequencies, for that can lead down a rabbit hole.

Shielding A Cheap RTL-SDR Stick

June 29, 2022 by 22 Comments

Even though not every Hackaday reader is likely to be a radio enthusiast, it’s a fair guess that many of you will have experimented with an RTL-SDR USB dongle by now. These super-cheap devices are intended for digital TV reception and contain an RTL2832 chip, which with the proper software, can be pushed into service as a general purpose software defined radio receiver. For around $10 USD they’re fantastic value and a lot of fun to play with, even if they’re not the best radio ever. How to improve the lackluster performance? One of the easiest and cheapest ways is simply to shield it from RF noise, which [Alan R] has done with something as mundane as a tubular fizzy orange tablet container.

This is probably one of the simpler hacks you’ll see on this site, as all it involves is making an appropriate hole in the end of the tube and shielding the whole with some aluminium foil sticky tape. But the benefits can be seen immediately in the form of reduced FM broadcast band interference, something that plagues the cheaper dongles.

Perhaps the value in this hack aside from how easy it is on a cheap dongle is that it serves to remind us some of the benefits of paying a little extra for a better quality device. If you’d like to know more about RTL-SDR improvements, it’s a topic we covered in detail back in 2019 when we looked at seven years of RTL-hackery.

An Epic Tale Of Pirate Radio In Its Golden Age

June 28, 2022 by 29 Comments

With music consumption having long ago moved to a streaming model in many parts of the world, it sometimes feels as though, just like the rotary telephone dial, kids might not even know what a radio was, let alone own one. But there was a time when broadcasting pop music over the airwaves was a deeply subversive activity for Europeans at least, as the lumbering state monopoly broadcasters were challenged by illegal pirate stations carrying the cutting edge music they had failed to provide. [Ringway Manchester] has the story of one such pirate station which broadcast across the city for a few years in the 1970s, and it’s a fascinating tale indeed.

It takes the form of a series of six videos, the first of which we’ve embedded below the break. The next installment is placed as an embedded link at the end of each video, and it’s worth sitting down for the full set.

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Retrocomputing, Time To Hang Up The Original Hardware?

June 28, 2022 by 57 Comments

For those of us with penchant for older technology, there’s something special about operating with older hardware. Whether it’s a decades-old camera, a vintage keyboard, or a home computer from the 1980s, the modern equivalent just doesn’t quite compare. But working with older parts definitely isn’t for the faint-hearted, as the passage of time has taken its toll on their reliability. Is it time to recognize that the supply of replacement vintage parts is not infinite, and to switch from using original hardware to more modern alternatives? [Retro Recipes] poses this question after a particularly difficult-to-find Amiga fault, and discusses it while evaluating a replacement Amiga made entirely from modern parts.

The new Amiga in question is a recreation of an A1200 with a re-manufactured case and keyboard, and the guts of an A500 Mini retro console taking the place of the Commodore board. He goes through the process of making an Amiga hard drive image on a USB drive using the image from his original drive in his teenage years, and boots it both on the 500 Mini based machine and on the UAE emulator on a Mac laptop. You can follow him in the video below the break.

We can see the logic in treating original hardware as a precious resource that’s not to be run up for fear of breaking it, but by the same token we’re still standing by that first sentence. But should the enjoyment of an older machine be limited only to those who have an original? We think not, so if enjoying an Amiga without an Amiga can be as good as the real thing then we’re all for it.

Of course, for those whose original Amigas have already broken, there are other ways to bring them back.

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Atari At 50: The Story Of Our Lives

June 27, 2022 by 14 Comments

It’s been a year of anniversaries, what with the 40th birthday of both the Commodore 64 and the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. But there’s another anniversary that in a sense tops them all, today marks 50 years since Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney incorporated Atari Inc, a name that will forever be synonymous with the development of the computer game industry. PC Magazine have marked the event with a retrospective, an affectionate look at the progress from Spacewar! coin-ops to the unsuccessful Jaguar console of the 1990s, and it pulls no punches over the lacklustre management that oversaw its decline in later years.

For us the high points of the Atari story were the VCS console and the ST line of computers, which probably best represent the brand’s successes in Europe where this is being written. It’s with something of a wince that we remember watching an Atari Lynx advert in a British cinema, in which the laugh came when the teenager-unaffordably high price was revealed. At least diehard Atari fans can take solace in that by then Commodore was equally being run into the ground.

One criticism PC Magazine makes is that the current Atari incarnation is doing little beyond rehashing past glories, and perhaps they’re right. Last year we covered their release of some new cartridges for the VCS.

Go-Kart Reverse Without The Pain

June 26, 2022 by 20 Comments

Go-karts are a huge amount of fun, but often lack the most basic of mechanical conveniences such as a reverse gear. You can’t start a small four-stroke engine in reverse, so their simple chain drive transmissions lack the extra cogs to make it happen. Enter [HowToLou], who has given his go-kart a reversing option by the addition of an electric motor.

It’s an extremely simple arrangement, the motor is a geared 12 V item which drives a V-belt to the axle. The motor is mounted on a pivot with a lever, such that normally the belt isn’t engaged, thus reverse can be selected by pulling the lever. A simple button switch applies power to the motor, meaning that the machine can travel sedately backwards on electric power.

We’re not entirely convinced by the integrity of some of his fixings and it would be interesting to see how much the V-belt wears under the influence of the pulley when not engaged, but as an alternative to a full gearbox we can see the point. But then again as regular readers may know, we’re more used to full electric traction.

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Mechanical Keyboards Are Over, This Device Has Won

June 24, 2022 by 37 Comments

The desk of any self-respecting technology enthusiast in the 2020s is not complete without a special keyboard of some sort, be it a vintage IBM Model M, an esoteric layout or form factor, or just a standard keyboard made with clacky mechanical switches. But perhaps we’ve found the one esoteric keyboard to rule them all, in the form of [HIGEDARUMA]’s 8-bit keyboard. You can all go home now, the competition has been well and truly won by this input device with the simplest of premises; enter text by setting the ASCII value as binary on a row of toggle switches. No keyboard is more retro than the one you’d find on the earliest microcomputers!

Jokes aside, perhaps this keyboard may be just a little bit esoteric for many readers, but it’s nevertheless a well-executed project. Aside from the row of binary inputs there is a keypress button which sends whatever the value is to the computer, and a stock button that allows for multiple inputs to be stored and sent as one. If you pause for a moment and think how often you use Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V for example, this is an essential function. There’s more information on a Japanese website (Google Translate link), which reveals that under the hood it’s a Bluetooth device running on an ESP32.

We can imagine that with a bit of use it would be possible to memorize ASCII as binary pretty quickly, in fact we wouldn’t be at all surprised to find readers already possessing that skill. But somehow we can’t imagine it ever being a particularly fast text input device. Take a look for yourselves, it’s in the video below the break.

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