Wiring An SD Card To A Handspring PDA’s 68K Bus With Only Three SOT23s

January 13, 2024 by Maya Posch 13 Comments

In 1998 the founders of Palm had a bit of a falling out with the wildly successful PDA company’s new owners. They set up a new company called Handspring, which enabled them to make PDAs again in the way they preferred, This resulted in the Handspring Visor line of PDAs, which featured a big cartridge slot called the Springboard Expansion slot. Much like a Gameboy, you could put in a range of modules, ranging from games to cameras to memory expansion and more. Since these modules connect directly to the internal Motorola 68k-based microprocessor, you could make a module either to comply with this standard or if you’re like [Dmitry], you’d figure out a way to get an SPI device like an SD card to communicate and expand storage.

Editor note: Dmitry’s design isn’t the first SD/MMC interface for the Visor. Portable Innovation Technology’s SD MemPlug Module supported SD/MMC way back in 2002. However – MemPlug was a commercial product, while Dmitry’s work is open source.

Continue reading “Wiring An SD Card To A Handspring PDA’s 68K Bus With Only Three SOT23s” →

TMS 1000 Microcontroller - By Antonio Martí Campoy - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0

The Early History Of The Microcontroller: It Came From Texas

January 12, 2024 by Maya Posch 17 Comments

Ti’s presentation of the rapid integration of calculator chips.

Although for most generations alive today the era of microcontrollers (MCU) feels like it starts somewhere with the Intel 8051 and AVR MCUs, the history of these self-contained computing marvels that are now found just about anywhere begins long before those were even conceptualized. In a recent article titled Tiny Computers From Texas, [Babbage] goes through this early history of what would ultimately become such an integral part of daily life.

An MCU is defined as a small, self-contained computer, which requires few to no external components to function. This contrasted with the more traditional MPUs, or microprocessor units, where a computer was assembled out of one or more MPUs, I/O chips, memory SRAM and so on. It’s perhaps little surprise that the drive towards MCUs was the result of primarily the calculator market, where competing firms were trying to upstage each other with higher levels of integration into as few chips as possible, while driving down costs and power usage.

Ultimately, the Texas Instruments TMS 1000 was the first true MCU that got produced in large volumes after its release in 1974. Moving beyond calculators, the TMS 1000 found its way into toys, including the Speak & Spell – which uses another Ti chip (TMS 5100) for the voice synthesis – so that today any toy can be interactive in exciting and often noisy ways.

Back in 2020 we took our own affectionate look at this chip.

Bambu Lab To Allow Installing Open Firmware After Signing Waiver

January 12, 2024 by Maya Posch 26 Comments

On January 10th Bambu Lab published a blog post in which they address the issue of installing custom firmware on your Bambu Lab X1 3D printer. This comes hot on the heels of a number of YouTube channels for the first time showing off the X1Plus firmware that a number of X1 users have been working on as an open source alternative to the closed, proprietary firmware. Per the Bambu Lab blog post, there is good and bad news for those wanting to use X1Plus and similar projects that may pop up in the future.

After Bambu Lab consulted with the people behind X1Plus it was decided that X1 users would be provided with the opportunity to install such firmware without complaints from Bambu Lab. They would however have to sign a waiver that declares that they agree to relinquish their rights to warranty and support with the printer. Although some details are left somewhat vague in the blog post, it appears that after signing this waiver, and with the target X1 printer known to Bambu Lab, it will have a special firmware update (‘Firmware R’) made available for it.

This special firmware then allows for third-party firmware to be installed, with the ability to revert to OEM firmware later on. The original exploit in pre-v1.7.1 firmware will also no longer be used by X1Plus. Hopefully Bambu Lab will soon clarify the remaining questions, as reading the Reddit discussion on the blog post makes it clear that many statements can be interpreted in a variety of ways, including whether or not this ‘Firmware R’ is a one-time offer only, or will remain available forever.

It’s not the first time we’ve seen a 3D printer manufacturer give users this sort of firmware ultimatum. Back in 2019 Prusa added a physical “appendix” to their new 32-bit control board that the user would have to snap off before they could install an unsigned firmware, which the company said signified the user was willing to waive their warranty for the privilege.

Thanks to [Aaron] for the tip.

Faking Bluetooth LE With An NRF24L01+ Module

January 11, 2024 by Maya Posch 11 Comments

Despite the name, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) has very little to do with the original Bluetooth, other than its use of the same 2.4 GHz frequencies. This is where [Dmitry] got the idea to use a 2.4 GHz nRF24L01+ module to implement his very own BLE device, without the typical BLE chipset. This should be easy, since this popular IC supports GFSK modulation, 1 MHz channels and the 1 MBit data rate of BLE.

Despite of how simple BLE seems to implement, [Dmitry] quickly came across a range of issues due to limitations of the nRF24L01+. These include no support for a 24-bit CRC, a too sluggish PLL cycling for BLE’s frequency hopping, and as the coup de grâce, a lack for incoming data packets larger than 32 bytes — which destroyed any hope of accepting incoming connections.

Unperturbed, [Dmitry] set to work implementing what would work on this IC: broadcasting BLE packets. In the article he covers the entire code (in C) that allows the nRF24L01+ to send broadcast packets and any BLE-supporting device that’s listening to receive them. Admittedly not as useful as having a fully functional BLE stack, but good enough for broadcasting something like sensor data. It also raises the question of which alternative released in the intervening decade to the venerable nRF24L01+ might fill in the missing features, without making a dedicated BLE IC (or ESP32 variant) look more cost-effective.

It’s always a good day when a new project from [Dmitry] hits the tip line. We’ve previously covered his impressive efforts to add more RAM to the RP2040, and his business card that can boot Linux on an ATSAMD21.

The Hobbes OS/2 Archive Will Shut Down In April

January 10, 2024 by Maya Posch 27 Comments

The Hobbes OS/2 Archive is a large collection of OS/2 software that has been publicly available for many years, even as OS/2 itself has mostly faded into obscurity. Yet now it would appear that the entity behind the Hobbes OS/2 Archive, the Information & Communication Technologies department at the New Mexico State University, has decided to call it quits — with the site going permanently offline on April 15th, 2024.

Fortunately, from a cursory glance around the comment sections over at Hacker News and other places, it seems that backup efforts have already been made, and the preservation of the archive’s contents should be secure at this point in time. Regardless, it is always a shame to lose such a central repository, especially since IBM’s OS/2 operating system is still anything but dead. Whether for hobbyist, industrial or commercial use, there is still a vibrant community around today, as we noted in 2019 already in relation to the NYC’s subway system.

Beyond downloaded copies and boxed CDs bought on EBay, you can even get a modernized version of OS/2 called ArcaOS, which even comes with commercial support. Whatever the fate is of the Hobbes OS/2 Archive’s data, we hope it finds a loving new home somewhere.

Not Dead Yet: Microsoft Peripherals Get Licensed To Onward Brands

January 10, 2024 by Maya Posch 33 Comments

After Microsoft announced in April of 2023 that they’d cease selling branded peripherals – including keyboards and mice – as part of its refocusing on Surface computers and accessories, there was an internet-wide outcry about this demise. Yet now it would seem that Microsoft has licensed the manufacturing of these peripherals to Incase, who will be selling a range of ‘Designed By Microsoft’ peripherals starting in 2024. Incase itself is a brand owned by Onward Brands, which is the portfolio manager for Incase and other brands.

Although Microsoft has been selling peripherals since the 1980s (with the Microsoft Mouse appearing in 1983), it seems that we now have to rely on this new company that is said to use the same suppliers as Microsoft did. As for what we can expect to see return with Incase, it’s effectively the same assortment of items that Microsoft was selling at the beginning of 2023, so we will likely not see the return of the Natural 4000 or other peripherals that saw their life cut short before this.

If Incase does manage to relaunch these products this year, which items would you be most interested in purchasing, and how many dozens of those did you manage to stock up on in April when the news broke?

How To Build A Fully Offline Smart Home, Or Why You Should Not

January 9, 2024 by Maya Posch 91 Comments

So-called ‘smart home’ appliances and gadgets have become an ever-more present thing the past years, with nary a coffeemaker, AC unit or light bulb for sale today that doesn’t have an associated smartphone app, cloud service and/or subscription to enable you to control it from the beach during your vacation, or just set up automation routines to take tedium out of your busy schedule. Yet as much as [Calvin Wankhede] loves home automation, he’d very much like for it to not stop working the moment his internet connection goes down, or the company running the service goes bankrupt. This is where his journey to create an off-line alternative smart home based around Home Assistant and other (open) software began.

Although Home Assistant (HA) itself has become significantly easier to use, what becomes readily apparent from [Calvin]’s journey is that setting up and managing your own smart home infrastructure is a never-ending project. A project that involves finding compatible hardware that can tie into HA, whether or not without reflashing the firmware, resolving configuration issues and other assorted fun. If you are into this kind of thing, it is of course a blast, and it’s a good feeling when it finally all works.

Unfortunately, interoperability across smart home and similar IoT devices is still a far-off dream, even with the introduction of Thread and Matter (which incidentally are among the worst product names to search for, period), as Matter’s uptake is pretty abysmal. This thus leaves off-line smart homes mostly as the domain of the tech-inclined in search of a hobby.