Author: Jenny List

3525 Articles

All The Best Computers Boot To BASIC

August 27, 2026 by 33 Comments

Anyone whose first computing experience came in the form of an 8-bit home computer will tell you about booting straight into a BASIC interpreter. The machine invited you to program it, and no doubt many of our middle aged readers are here today because they ran with that.

Modern computers with their fancy 64-bit multitasking supercomputer operating systems may have lost that experience, but now thanks to [Tarjan] you can bring it back. They’ve produced Thoreau BASIC, a bootable bare-metal BASIC interpreter for x86 machines with UEFI.

It’s largely GW-BASIC compatible, but with a few upgrades for the 21st century. The available memory is now whatever the system reports, so imagine a BASIC machine with gigabytes of the stuff. And while it has all the old-style BASIC you know and love, it also has high-res 24-bit graphics, and can load bitmaps. There can even be multiple text windows, it’s BASIC as you have never seen it before.

We are not sure how many will take this interpreter and run with it, after all maybe those modern 64-bit operating systems can be rather useful at times. But we’re guessing there will be plenty who’ll at least have a play with it for old time’s sake. Meanwhile, BASIC is not the only piece of UEFI goodness we’ve brought you.

How Packaging Can Kill An Electronics Microbusiness

August 26, 2026 by 51 Comments

Quite a few in our community make a bit of cash on the side by selling our creations, and it’s not uncommon to find that a project which catches your eye can be picked up as a kit for a few of your preferred currency units. But there’s a problem facing such tiny producers in the form of regulations intended for large businesses which are beyond their ability to comply with. [Alain Pannetrat] writes for the Lectronz marketplace about one of them, the new European Union packaging waste regulations.

At face value it sounds like a good idea, that suppliers should be responsible in some way for the disposal of their packaging. It discourages excessive packaging and encourages recycling, indeed the EU even describe the scheme as boosting business. The problem is that its administration is left to individual member states, and someone selling across the whole bloc would have to join multiple schemes. The hefty price is nothing to a large enterprise, but impossible for a tiny one. He makes a very good point, that it’s difficult to claim to champion innovation, while also imposing something like this on grass-roots innovators. Going by the experiences of our acquaintances in this space an extra burden on top of that presented by the current unstable tariff and customs situation involved in selling to the USA would likely be the straw which broke the camel’s back.

In practice we suspect that many are simply doing the same as they have with compliance marking and waste electronic equipment regulations, simply not bothering and hoping they fly under the radar and never get caught. We hope we won’t end up reporting on any future crackdown, the landscape has definitely changed since we tried our hand in this business.

Blow Those Pyros With A Telephone!

August 25, 2026 by 19 Comments

A pyrotechnic charge is set off by passing a high voltage through a filament within it, melting the filament and igniting the charge. We could think of a variety of circuits that could do this, but perhaps we wouldn’t have come up with [Michał Słomkowski]’s solution. He’s used the ringer crank generator from an old military field telephone. It’s an old project he’s shared with us due to its recent republishing on his website.

The basic principle is simple enough, winding the generator charges a capacitor bank through a bridge rectifier. Then a thyristor is used as the trigger device, dumping the contents of the capacitor into the filament. But the full circuit has a couple of refinements. There’s a charge indicator circuit using a couple of Zener diodes and an LED, and a filament tester which passes a non-triggering current through the filament from a 9 volt battery. We like the use of an over-the-top high-current thyristor, no doubt what he had in his junk box.

Perhaps it’s a symbol of how far technology has moved, that today it’s surprisingly rare to find a bridge rectifier or a thyristor, and building this device today would involve a microcontroller and probably an AliExpress inverter module as a matter of course.

Meanwhile, should field telephones interest you, we’ve been there before.

AI Book Scanning: Just What Is A Rare Book?

August 25, 2026 by 114 Comments

One of the stories of the last few weeks has been that AI companies have been scanning books in very large numbers in order to train their models with content guaranteed to have been written before 2002, and thus AI free. It’s caused some outrage, because of the size of the operation, and because the scanning process is destructive. In particular the phrase being bandied around is that these are rare books, and it’s this phraseology I find problematic. I think it’s time to unpack why that is the case.

It’s Not Book Burning, Folks

Before I worked for Hackaday I had a long career in and around the publishing industry, mostly on the electronic side, but from time to time crossing paths with my colleagues in the world of paper-based publishing. I understand the appeal of a good book, I’ve spend a lot of my life among bibliophiles, and let’s just say I own a few books myself. In particular I understand the symbolism of destroying books, bringing to mind as it does the actions of repressive regimes. I have stood in Bebelplatz in Berlin where the photo of Nazi student organisation members burning the library of Magnus Hirschfeld’s institute was taken in 1933, and if you know me, you’ll have an idea why that’s close to home. But for all that, what the AI companies are doing is not the same thing.

In this case they’re destroying the books for two reasons. Firstly, as I remember from a previous employer in the publishing world, it’s much easier to digitise a stack of papers than it is a bound book. Thus I’m pretty sure that’s one reason they remove the binding before digitising the pages. Then secondly, as I understand it it’s a copyright issue. If they buy a book, digitise it, and destroy the physical copy, they can legitimately claim that only one copy of it exists, and they hope, sidestep copyright claims from publishers. Continue reading “AI Book Scanning: Just What Is A Rare Book?” →

The Days Of Broadcast Digital TV Could Be Numbered

August 25, 2026 by 61 Comments

When the analog TV signals were turned off in most places around fifteen years ago, their replacement took the form of a set of digital multiplexes. ATSC for North America, and DVB-T for Europe and other places. This would deliver a multi-channel broadcasting solution for the future, and this would be how those not on a cable would consume their telly. It’s a surprise then to find that some governments are already looking at turning off digital TV broadcasting, with the UK in particular wanting to put a date on the switch-off of 2032.

It’s been no secret for many years that linear broadcast TV is being overtaken by streaming services, and this move projected to come at the end of the transmitting contract was always likely to come eventually. Even with increasingly few younger people watching traditional TV though, it still comes as a bit of a shock that it’s happening so soon. The replacement will be an online service for which initially a set-top-box will be required. We’re guessing there will be a storm of protest, but since it’s still quite a few years away and broadband coverage is now near-universal, there’s a good chance it will peter out as the time approaches.

Aside from the end of analog TV, we’ve seen a steady decline in AM and Long Wave transmission across Europe. What makes this surprising then is that instead of being a legacy analogue system, the one facing the turn-off is the future-proof replacement, and one that still sees plenty of use at that. A major shift in consumer electronic technology is taking place, but will anyone notice it?

Header: Carlos Adampol Galindo, CC BY-SA 2.0.

A 1990s Homebrew OS With GUI And Web Browser, In AM29000 Machine Code

August 24, 2026 by 11 Comments

The AM29000 series of processors were AMD’s entry into the world of super-fast next-generation silicon of the late 1980s. It was a time when ARM was still a niche architecture in a British educational computer, the 68000 series was still a major player, and it was by no means certain that the x86 would maintain its position. It therefore wasn’t an unreasonable choice for someone building a high performance computer at the time, which is what [Oscar Toledo G.] and his father did. If that wasn’t enough, he went on to write an operating system for it in AM29000 assembly, complete with a GUI, a C compiler, and an up-to-date web browser for the late 1990s. The story makes for an engaging read.

It’s written across two parts, with the first looking at the computer and the early software development, and the second at the C compiler and web browser. It’s a tale of epic mastery of the machine, and something we remember ourselves, piecing together knowledge in a time before the Internet placed it all at our fingertips. Tales such as hand porting — we can’t really say compiling — C code into AM29000 machine code are completely next-level. You have to read these two write-ups, and there’s even an in-browser emulator should you want to try it.

Meanwhile, in case you think something is a little familiar here, he’s the same person who brought us a Transputer in the browser.

An Electronic Explanation Of 1960s Fuzz Boxes

August 24, 2026 by 10 Comments

It’s likely that even those of us who have never picked up a guitar in our lives will recognize the sound of an electric guitar with a fuzz box effects pedal. The raspy distorted sound has been at the heart of so many very well known recordings. Behind it is a distortion circuit, or as [Bill Jehle’s Mad Scientist Guitar Lab] is here to tell us, eight different circuit topologies.

The result is a fascinating trip through the evolution of rock music through the 1960s, as he examines circuits from simple diode clippers through to frequency doublers and phase shifters. He’s provided a playlist as an accompaniment so you can even have an immediate listen to each sound. It’ll mess up our YouTube recommendations, but worth it for the informative journey.

It’s also a window into a lost period in electronics where all they practically had was the transistor, so each device had to put in the maximum work for a living. Designing circuits like these called for intimate knowledge of the device characteristics, and just how they could be safely exceeded. The video is below the break, and well worth a watch.

If clever transistor music circuits interest you, you’ll love the flawed devices that gave the Roland 808 its sound.

Continue reading “An Electronic Explanation Of 1960s Fuzz Boxes” →