Making A Magnetic Core Memory USB Drive

June 29, 2026 by Maya Posch 1 Comment

Some of us have felt somewhat nervous about the collapse of DRAM and NAND Flash memory supply in the consumer market, while others seem to have fully embraced it. Someone like [polymatt] for example, whose recent project entails a USB drive that skips back quite a few decades and opts to use a glorious 64-bit core memory device for storage.

To really embrace the DIY spirit here, the PCBs were milled using a small CNC router before the core memory was assembled alongside the other components, including apparently L293 H-bridge ICs as the drivers, along with an ESP32 module for the brains and USB interface.

Much like NAND Flash, core memory relies on sensing the state of a cell through a destructive read action, which thus requires a fair bit of surrounding logic to set up read and writes, parse sense line values and restore any read value after said destructive read. Determining the right voltage to use during read and write actions is essential, and here determined experimentally.

The final build contains two PCBs inside an enclosure that’s filled with silicone oil. Other than looking cool through the acrylic window, it also helps to keep the individual cores at a fairly consistent temperature, which is helpful with reliable bit flipping, even if it’s probably overkill here.

Ignoring for a moment that just the memory required for the USB stack in the ESP32 module is many times the size of this core memory device, it’s still a very cool project whose appeal goes far beyond mere practicality.

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The Terrifying 2011-Era Case Of Max Planck’s Retracted Papers

June 29, 2026 by Maya Posch 2 Comments

In the world of scientific publishing there are many reasons why a paper can be retracted, but generally there is an obvious and clearly communicated reason for doing so. Thus when [Yves Gingras] – a historian of physics – and [Mahdi Khelfaoui] – a colleague – noticed recently that two 1940s papers by [Max Planck] had been quite recently retracted, this resulted in an eyebrow-raising double-take, before naturally publishing their investigation’s findings on arXiv.

They first became aware of this courtesy of the site Retraction Watch and their list of ‘Retractions by Nobel Prize winners‘, which had the authors do a spit-take when they saw [Max Planck] listed. This page led them to a total of two database entries, as listed above. One is for a 1940 paper, the other for a 1942 paper, only five years before [Planck]’s death.

As for the provided reasons, both articles were struck with a generic ‘copyright violation’, which at the very least seems somewhat puzzling, and started both authors of this recent investigation on their journey. What they found was less of a nefarious plot and more of an accidental black hole that had formed when scientific journals began to digitize papers.

The original journal that [Planck]’s papers were published in was absorbed like so many into Springer Nature, where an automated system then tried to sort through all the papers, including the usual detecting of copyright issues. With these papers predating the era of convenient DOIs and the more standard forms of citing related works, said automated system appears to have become rather confused and hurt these papers in its confusion.

From the side of Springer Nature there has so far been no commentary on this, and as of writing the original papers are still listed as withdrawn. Although one can still read the original scanned papers via the Internet Archive, such as here the 1940 paper, it’s disturbing to see that automated systems have apparently been let loose on these veritable archives of scientific and academic history, heedless of the damage inflicted along the way.

Although after fifteen years these two retractions were finally noticed, the more harrowing question is probably just how many papers from potentially less well-known authors were quietly scuttled. If this can happen to [Planck]’s works, it would appear that nobody is safe, including legends like [Bohr], [Einstein] and so many others.

Cramming A Mini-ITX Gaming PC Into A 3D Printed Steam Machine Sized Case

June 27, 2026 by Maya Posch 22 Comments

The recently released Valve Steam Machine is somewhat awkward in that it uses a custom, non-standard PCB and non-standard power supply. This fact apparently has irked some people who decided that it makes perfect sense to try and cram a Mini-ITX board, Small Form Factor (SFF) PSU and full-sized discrete GPU into an enclosure of the same size. Cue the SFF Mini-ITX Steam Machine Case project by [3DCatt] over at Printables.

This is apparently a project done in cooperation with AMD’s [Jacob Terkelsen], who showed off the 3D printed case stuffed full with the aforementioned parts, which includes a GeForce RTX 5060 GPU. Of note is that the Valve Steam Machine uses a different cooling configuration as it has both the CPU and GPU on the same PCB. These share the same massive heatsink, as can be seen in e.g. the [Gamers Nexus] teardown video.

For this angular imitation machine it would have been nice to use a blower-style GPU, to exhaust the hot air rather than dump it all into the case. This is also an issue that was raised by [Jacob], with more ventilation added to mitigate the issue. What the overall performance will be compared to regular compact Mini-ITX cases remains to be seen, but if you really want to live the Steam Machine life and have some parts kicking around along with a 3D printer, it might be worth a shot.

Watch YouTube On A Game Boy Color With A Special Cartridge

June 26, 2026 by Maya Posch 8 Comments

There’s no questioning [Throaty Mumbo]’s uncanny skill at answering questions that nobody ever asked, such as whether it’s possible to watch YouTube videos on a Nintendo Game Boy Color handheld gaming system.

Of course the answer here is a resounding ‘sorta’, loosely defined by what you mean with ‘watch’ and ‘video’ exactly. For the impatient there’s the GitHub project page with the project summary, along with a detailed video containing hijinks and a playback demo on real Game Boy Color hardware with the cobbled-together GBCTube cartridge.

The nice thing about these cartridge-based gaming systems is that you get direct access to the system’s hardware via the cartridge bus, with for systems like the GBC a basic cartridge PCB readily available if you’re feeling that prototyping itch.

Such a cartridge breakout board for the GBC was thus used as the core of this project, with an ESP32-C6 acting solely as Wi-Fi bridge for the RP2350B MCU which handles basic player firmware and bridging duty between the GBC and the streamed video data from the host PC. It’s the latter does the heavy lifting of wrangling the YouTube experience into something that sort of works on the GBC’s amazing, very vibrant, backlight-free 160×144 resolution color LCD.

With the cartridge inserted you can search for a video title on the GBC, select a video which is then downloaded with yt-dlp on the host PC and prepared for streaming. Audio is handled by the RP2350B to free up CPU cycles on the GBC, for which a separate speaker is slapped into the cartridge for high-fidelity mostly-synced audio.

Perhaps the most fascinating question that one is left with is whether a more powerful Espressif MCU like e.g. the ESP32-S31 could combine all these tasks into a single package. Not because there’s a particular reason to do so, but more out of sheer morbid curiosity, perhaps.

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Fixing An Elgato Cam Link’s USB Current Draw Issue

June 26, 2026 by Maya Posch 11 Comments

Recently [Bits und Bolts] found himself in a bit of a pickle, when on boot his PC would complain about a connected USB device drawing too much power, before shutting down again. After unplugging various USB devices, the problem was narrowed down to an Elgato Cam Link 4K video capture device.

Some prodding and poking around with a thermal camera on the disassembled device while powered showed that an onboard IC had sprung a power leak. Sadly, even asking nicely, Elgato support wasn’t going to provide board-level repair help, so this was left as an exercise to the owner.

Although the markings on the chip didn’t offer much help, it turns out that this is a more common issue, with a convenient repair guide by [Uldis Melderis] identifying the part as the TI TLV62585 buck regulator.

After purchasing a couple of spares, the defective IC could then be replaced. Following this a quick test showing decidedly less angry electrons. From there it was a matter of reassembling the device in its plastic case and seeing whether the PC was happier with the now hopefully fixed device, which fortunately turned out to be the case.

Any such analysis and repair obviously raises a number of questions, such as why these buck regulators are dying, and why you’re supposed to just toss out a $100 device instead of doing a repair involving a $0.20 part and a few minutes with a hot air gun.

Increasing Photon Upconversion Efficiency With Structural Exciton Localization

June 25, 2026 by Maya Posch 13 Comments

In structures like photovoltaic cells there is only a limited spectrum of wavelengths that can perform useful work, with the remaining wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation effectively wasted. If the energy of such wavelengths could be coaxed into this useful spectrum, this could then correspondingly boost the performance of the devices, but doing so is not straightforward. Going from lower-energy photons to higher-energy photons is very inefficient, with a recent study by [Thilini Ishwara] et al. demonstrating a liquid triplet medium that has a conversion efficiency of about 8.2%.

Generally the absorption and emission of electromagnetic radiation involves a shift to a lower energy state, the Stokes shift, but the inverse anti-Stokes shift – the goal of photon upconversion – is decidedly less common, even if it finds uses today in for example industrial pigments that can absorb in the near-infrared and re-emit in the visible spectrum. This is practical in luminescent displays and anti-counterfeiting measures, where details like conversion efficiency aren’t paramount.

Unlike the Stokes shift, the mechanisms that underlie the anti-Stokes shift either require cooperation from the material’s lattice, or – in the case of organic molecules – what is termed triplet-triplet annihilation (TTA), also known as photochemical upconversion (PUC). This involves an absorbing species, a sensitizer and an emitting species, allowing for the summing of multiple lower-energy photons into a higher-energy photon, with this 2023 review article by [Jiale Feng] et al. providing a good primer.

In the study by [Ishwara] et al. this triplet medium is 9,10-bis(n-octyl-diisopropylsilylethynyl)anthracene (NODIPS-An), affixed to a nanostructured alumina scaffold (see top image). After characterizing the assembled device and taking internal losses due to e.g. reabsorption into account, the final conversion efficiency of 8.2% was established.

Of course, TTA isn’t the only way to do PUC, with SOMET (singlet oxygen mediated energy transfer) being an alternative approach, with [Roslyn Forecast] et al. comparing the two in a 2023 article. As noted in its conclusion SOMET is currently most suited to PUC to the red and infrared regions of the spectrum. For now research continues with no clear path to commercialization visible yet.

Fixing A Warped Paperback Spine With Gentle Heating

June 25, 2026 by Maya Posch 9 Comments

Although paperbacks are a much-loved aspect of the literary world, they are not really intended to last the decades the way that hardcover books are. Beyond the typical ravaged covers, paperbacks also tend to suffer from a warped spine, where the formally flat spine gets a definite inwards curve due to the ravages of moisture, temperature, failing glue and the passing of time in general. If this bothers you, then [Book Care Studio] shows a simple technique using which these spines can be flattened again.

All that you need for this approach are two cutting boards and two clamps to provide some clamping force on the book, along with a heat gun and some patience.

The book is clamped between the two boards with the spine sticking out. By putting said spine flat on e.g. a table and pushing on the opposite side while alternatingly briefly releasing the clamps, the spine can be forced into a flatter state. Without forcing this and then flipping the paperback sandwich around to heat the spine with the heat gun, the glue of the binding in the spine can then be softened sufficiently that a few of these push-heat cycles should be enough to straighten the spine.

Other than rebinding the book as for example public libraries are wont to do with a hardcover conversion of flimsy paperbacks, this simple approach should clean up a ratty-looking paperback collection. While one can definitely argue that half the charm of old paperbacks are the wrinkles, curves and intense smell of acidifying paper, it’s always good to have options like this at one’s disposal.

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