Fixing The Damage Of A Botched SNES SuperCIC Mod

February 26, 2026 by Maya Posch 13 Comments

Not what you want to see when testing that 'repaired' SNES. (Credit: Skawo, YouTube) — Not what you want to see when testing that ‘repaired’ SNES. (Credit: Skawo, YouTube)

The good part about older game consoles like the Super Nintendo is that they have rather rudimentary region locks, but unfortunately this also gives some people the idea that installing something like the SuperCIC mod chip to make a SNES region-free is easy. The patient that arrived on [Skawo]’s surgery table was one such victim, with the patient requiring immediate surgery to remove the botched installation before assessing the damage.

Here the good news was that the patient features the revision B CPU, making it a good console to rescue. The bad news was that the pads of the old CIC chip had been ripped up, there was a solder bridge on S-PPU1 between two pins and both the installed wiring and soldering were atrocious, requiring plenty of touch-ups.

With the CIC pads already a loss, finishing the SuperCIC mod seemed like a good plan, also since this would make for a nice region-free console. This mod involves a PIC16F630 with special firmware that works with the corresponding CIC IC in each cartridge, while also switching between 50/60 Hz mode to fit the cartridge’s region. After an initial test with PAL and NTSC cartridges everything seemed all right. Then [Skawo] ran the SuperNES Burn-In test from its cartridge, which gave dire news.

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The Curse Of The Everything Device

February 26, 2026 by Maya Posch 101 Comments

In theory having a single device that combines the features of multiple dedicated devices is a great idea, saving a lot of space, time and money. However, in reality it mostly means that these features now conflict with each other, force us to deal with more complex devices that don’t last nearly as long, and become veritable vampires for your precious attention.

Whereas in the olden days a phone was just used for phone calls, now it’s also a video and photo camera, multimedia computer, pager, and more, but at any point an incoming phone call can interrupt what you are doing. There’s also always the temptation of doom scrolling on one of the infinite ‘social media’ apps. Even appliances like televisions and refrigerators are like that now, adding ‘smarts’ that also vie for your attention, whether it’s with advertisements, notifications, or worse.

Meanwhile trying to simply do some writing work on your PC is a battle against easy distractions, leading people to flee to the digital equivalent of typewriters out of sheer desperation. Similarly, we increasingly see ‘dumb’ phones, and other single-task devices making a comeback, both as commercial options and as DIY projects by the community.

Are we seeing the end of the ‘everything device’ and the return to a more simple time?

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Restoring A Yamaha DX7 Synthesizer

February 25, 2026 by Maya Posch 4 Comments

The Yamaha DX7 is one of the most iconic synthesizers that emerged in the early 1980s, and is still very popular today. That said, with even the newest of these having left the factory back in 1989, the average DX7 can use a bit of tender love and care. In particular the battered DX7 that [Drygol] recently got handed to ‘just fix the PSU voltage switch’. As it turned out, this poor DX7 had a few more issues than just a busted voltage selector.

Just a hint of cosmetic damage on this Yamaha DX7. (Credit: Drygol) — Just a hint of cosmetic damage on this Yamaha DX7.

In addition to missing slider caps and a vanished key, the paint of the case also had clearly lost a fight with various hard surfaces in addition to a thick coating of unidentifiable dust and grime inside the synthesizer. Feeling a pang of sympathy, [Drygol] thus decided to give the old girl a complete restoration.

After taking the synthesizer apart for a good scrub-down, the parts were assessed for further damage. This turned out to include the plastic stubs on some keys to hold a spring for which a replacement was modelled and 3D printed, along with replacements for the missing slider caps.

Next the case was painted, with a brand new Yamaha DX7 vinyl logo rather than trying to fix up the old paint and logo. With the outside fixed up, the broken and dodgy controls, audio jacks and potentiometers were addressed, followed by the busted onboard battery, leaving just the original voltage selector. This one got replaced by an IEC 60320 C13 jack, with the transformer hardwired for 230 VAC input, out of convenience grounds.

We’re always excited when [Drygol] sends in another restoration project — from a glowing Amiga 500 to vacuum-formed keycap covers, they’re always remarkable displays of ingenuity.

Railguns: Making Metal Go Fast Using The Lorentz Force

February 24, 2026 by Maya Posch 45 Comments

In science fiction, the use of gunpowder-based weapons is generally portrayed as something from a savage past, with technology having long since moved on to more civilized types of destructive weaponry, involving lasers, microwaves, and electromagnetism. Instead of messy detonating powder, energy-weapons are used to near-instantly deposit significant amounts of energy into the target, and railguns enable the delivery of projectiles at many times the speed of sound using nothing but the raw power of electricity and some creative physics.

Of course, the reason that we don’t see sci-fi weapons deployed everywhere has arguably less to do with today’s levels of savagery in geopolitics and more with the fact that physical reality is a very harsh mistress, who strongly frowns upon such flights of fancy.

Similarly, the Lorentz force that underlies railguns is extremely simple and effective, but scaled up to weapons-grade dimensions results in highly destructive forces that demolish the metal rails and other components of the railgun after only a few firings. Will we ever be able to fix these problems, or are railguns and similar sci-fi weapons forever beyond our grasp?

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The Challenges Of Simulating A Human Brain On A Supercomputer

February 24, 2026 by Maya Posch 35 Comments

It’s quite the understatement to say that at this point in time we don’t quite understand how even the tiniest brain works exactly. Much of this is due to the sheer complexity and scale of these little biological marvels: with the human brain packing billions of neurons and their associated supportive scaffolding into a few kilograms of gooey pink-white mass, the sheer connectivity density is more than we can reasonably hope to measure in-situ. Ergo attempts to recreate digital simulations of small sections of such brains, a process that’s making gradual progress.

Most recently we have been doing mapping of neurons and their connections in the brain of the humble fruitfly, D. melanogaster. Despite their brains being minuscule, with only about 140,000 neurons and 50 million connections, we’re not quite at the level where we can have a simulated fruitfly brain spark to life. This should probably give us some hints as to the sheer complexity of mapping the human brain, never mind simulating even a small part like a cubic millimeter of the temporal cortex with about 57,000 cells and 150 million synapses.

Even once you have all the connectome data of such a bit of brain, it’s not like you can just toss it onto a supercomputer and expect a meaningful simulation. All supercomputers today are massively parallel, meaning thousands of networked computers that require the computing task to be split up and all communication between nodes restricted as much as possible to not starve nodes.

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How To Restore Your 19th-Century Lancashire Boiler To Hold 120 PSI

February 23, 2026 by Maya Posch 13 Comments

The Industrial Revolution was powered by steam, with boilers being a crucial part of each steam engine, yet also one of the most dangerous elements due to the high pressures involved. The five Lancashire boilers at the Claymills Pumping Station are relatively benign in this regard, as they operate at a mere 80 PSI unlike e.g. high-pressure steam locomotives that can push 200 – 300 PSI. This doesn’t mean that refurbishing one of these boilers is an easy task and doesn’t involve plugging a lot of leaks, as the volunteers at this pumping station found out.

At this Victorian-era pumping station there are a total of five of these twin-flue Lancashire boilers, all about 90 years old after a 1930s-era replacement, with them all gradually being brought back into service. The subject of the video is boiler 1, which was last used in 1971 before the pumping station was decommissioned. Boilers 2 and 3 were known to be in a pretty bad condition, and they needed a replacement for boiler 5 as it was about to go down for maintenance soon.

Although the basic idea behind a Lancashire boiler is still to boil water to create steam, it’s engineered to do this as efficiently as possible to save fuel. This is why it has two flues where the burning coal deposits its thermal energy, which then goes on to heat the surrounding water. The resulting pressure from the steam also means that there are a lot of safeties to ensure that things do not get too spicy.

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Testing The Pressure Limits For Glass In Water Cooling Blocks

February 22, 2026 by Maya Posch 18 Comments

Many people who use water cooling in their computer systems like to go full-bore with ‘aquarium’ aesthetic, which includes adding a window to their cooling blocks so that they see the water flowing through the window from behind the case’s window. Traditionally PMMA acrylic is used for these windows, as it’s quite durable and easy to handle.

Using glass offers some advantages over acrylic, but has its own disadvantages, most of all that it’s hard to process, but also that it’s known for shattering quite easily if pushed beyond its limits.

This is why [der8auer] as a manufacturer of such water blocks has now spent a few years investigating the viability of using glass for this purpose. First and foremost is safety, with an early prototype glass water block suddenly shattering without clear cause.

Although normally the water cooling loop is only expected to experience pressures of about 600 mbar, the new glass windows that are now entering mass-production had to be tested to their breaking point. This involves pumping water into a few test blocks until they fail, using the test rig that you can see above.

First the big GPU water block was tested, with the acrylic version breaking at around 8-9 bar, while the glass plate shattered at around 5 bar. The failure mode was also interesting, with the glass plate shattering into fragments, while the two acrylic plates tested failed in a completely different location and manner.

A smaller water block with glass window failed at about 10 bar, demonstrating mostly that smaller glass windows are a lot sturdier. Effectively glass windows in water cooling loops are viable, and they also do not suffer from e.g. discoloration, but you do give up a big chunk of your safety margin if your water cooling loop suffers a major pressurization event. Which of course should never happen, but we’re definitely looking forward to the upcoming field trials of these new water blocks.

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