Die Casting Comes Home

July 9, 2026 by Tyler August 11 Comments

You don’t normally think of die casting as something to do at home. Pressurized fluids demand respect at all times, which is perhaps in part why we see most projects skipping hydraulics for linear actuators. When the pressurized fluid is molten metal? Well, we’d say don’t try this at home, except that’s exactly what this video by [Know Art] is making us want to do. He’s doing die-cast aluminum, and it looks way easier than we thought it would.

If you’re wondering why anyone would attempt such a thing, it’s for the same reason die-casting has been an industrial powerhouse for the last couple hundred years — you can crank out a lot of parts, very quickly, with excellent detail and dimensional stability. You just need a mold, which in this process is called a die, and a way to squeeze metal into it with some force.

In this case the die was carved on a desktop CNC machine. Depending on how long you want your die to last, you’ll need something hard and heat resistant, like the graphite used in this video. Graphite is also used in constructing the piston for the injector, which is made from a modified hydraulic cylinder and a couple of old trampoline springs.

He first tests the setup with molten wax before moving onto aluminum, as the process is the same regardless: pour the hot liquid in, release the springs to provide the pressure that forces it into the die, and a part is made. It looks easy, if a bit frantic, as you have to work fast before the metal cools in the cylinder.

After CNC milling, EDM machining and all the fun things we’ve learned how to do with lasers and 3D printers, and now this we’ve got to wonder– is there any industrial process you can’t hack onto your desktop? We’ve even seen the chemists get in on the game.

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C64 Finally Gets The SRAM Corporate Wouldn’t Pay For

July 8, 2026 by Tyler August 35 Comments

If you think RAM is expensive now, try putting yourselves in the shoes of a Commodore engineer, circa 1981. RAM was eye-wateringly expensive by modern standards, and Jack Tramiel wanted 64K of the stuff for the next computer — hence the name, Commodore 64 — but he didn’t want to pay for it. The solution was to use cheaper dynamic RAM over the more expensive static RAM that later took over the market in the kilobyte range. That’s a small problem for retrocomputer hobbyists, because while we’re complaining about the price of gigabytes of the stuff, you can’t buy new DRAM chips that fit a Commodore at any price. That’s why [Fabio Battaglia] aka [hkzlab] came up with an adapter board to fit easily-available SRAM chips onto aging C64s.

Nothing lasts forever: not cold September rain, and not DRAM chips. Heat damage? Internal corrosion? There are probably multiple failure modes, but someday the old stock of chips will run out and the retrocomputer community is going to be ready for it. [Keith Olson] sent us a tip on a video by [The Retro Shack] about this very problem that serves as a good demo of what you get when you put SRAM into a C64. (Thanks [Keith]!) That said, the adapter board on offer is only good for C64s with the 250407 motherboard. If yours is different, you may have to modify the board. But hey, it’s open source, so go ye and do that thing. Let us know via the tips line if you do.

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Pi 5 Becomes ALSA-Compatible TOSLINK Sound Card

July 8, 2026 by Tyler August 11 Comments

This is one of those hacks that makes you stop in your tracks and say, “wait, you can do that!?” — before realizing, oh, yes, of course you can do that. With enough computational power, you can do a lot of things, and the Raspberry Pi 5 is a far cry from the single-board computer’s humble beginnings. In this case, the “you can do that!?” is both that [Oliver] was able to get the digital audio TOSLINK working via an LED tied to one GPIO pin on the Pi, but also the larger project that is embedded in: using the Pi as a full featured 8-channel USB sound card called Camilla DSP.

For the first one: the old TOSLink standard is very simple, and all you need to do is blink an LED quickly enough. Considering the clock frequency of the Pi 5 is in the GHz range and the TOSLINK is the same 3.1 Mbit/s S/PDIF signal you could pull off your CD-ROM drive to your Sound Blaster, there’s no problem there. Except, wouldn’t the operating system get in the way? Well, not when you have enough clock cycles to throw at the problem. Using a Pi 5 doesn’t hurt: the RP1 I/O chip included on the board is keeping things smooth with its included PIO while Linux mucks about in the background. There’s a reason we called it the most important product Raspberry Pi ever made.

As for making a USB sound card from an SBC — well, we’re not sure why that got the “you can do that” reaction. The Raspberry Pi family had ‘gadget mode’ for over a decade now, allowing you to present the computer as a USB device, so why not a sound card? That’s a valid class of USB device.

It’s Full Steam Ahead For This Motorized Canoe

July 7, 2026 by Tyler August 10 Comments

In some parts of Canada, you’ll rarely hear someone use the phrase “whatever paddles your canoe” instead of the more usual “whatever floats your boat”– and apparently, at least for one Swede, that’s steam power. The video, linked and embedded below, is a detailed tour of a canoe equipped with a small boiler and an outboard motor that has been converted to run using steam pressure by [Kenneth Karlsson].

The canoe itself appears to be a Grumman of the “prospector” type, wide in body to hold all the gear you’d need for extended wilderness trips– or, in this case, a small boiler. Amidships is the ideal place, as it won’t affect the balance of the boat. Amidships is an odd place to put an outboard– in the North American homeland of the canoe, if you aren’t moving under your own power, it is more common to cut off the curved stern of the canoe and mount the outboard to the newly-made transom. [Karlsson]’s choice to put the outboard off one side will be less maneuverable than a stern mount, but saves the need to modify the canoe and makes for much shorter steam lines. Shorter steam lines means less hose to potentially leak and scald the occupants, as well as fewer losses, so we can’t really argue with the tradeoffs.

The engine is an old two-stroke outboard that has a single steam cylinder retrofitted to it, along with a heat exchanger to warm up lake water with exhaust steam before it heads the boiler. The water is filtered first, of course, but we do hope the new owner– who posts on YouTube with channel “Steam Canoe” is diligent about cleaning the boiler. It doesn’t look like super high pressure steam, but the vapour phase of water is always something to be respected.

If the potential of scalding steam leaks and boiler explosions put you off, but you still won’t pick up a paddle, canoes can be rigged with sails— or you can just hand the paddle to a robot arm. Though given this is Hackaday, maybe you’d rather skip the canoe and climb aboard the good ship Benchy instead. Continue reading “It’s Full Steam Ahead For This Motorized Canoe” →

SB Mini II Is A Homebrew Apple II Clone

July 7, 2026 by Tyler August 17 Comments

On the one hand, the original Apple II has been copied over and over again since at least the early 80s, so maybe this hack is old hat to the greybeards around here. On the other hand, this is the year 2026. When Apple released it back in 1977, who could have predicted people would still be building these things nearly five decades later?

In that sense, a homebrew Apple II in the current year is pretty remarkable. It’s a really well done project by [simonboak], nicely open sourced with a case to match, so is worth looking at on its own merits.

It doesn’t run *DOOM*, but neither did the original. *Oregon Trail* is more this unit’s speed.

Unlike the later models, the original Apple II only used commercially available ICs, making it an easy target for recreation. No FPGAs required, just good old-fashioned DIPs. OK, these are modern CMOS versions of the chips, but other than that, the biggest concession to modernity is space on the board for a Raspberry Pi Pico to allow for connecting a USB keyboard.

The accompanying blog post lists some other differences from 1977’s favorite home computer: SRAM vs DRAM — because you know the Woz would have used it if he could — and omitting the composite video circuitry in favor a late-model VGA card. There’s no need for the composite output since he’s eschewing the period-appropriate CRT for a retro-styled LCD monitor, which is also 3D printed and available on Printables. It’s crazy to think that the Apple II family lived long enough not only to see the dawn of VGA but also well into its sunset.

If a homebuilt Apple ][ doesn’t impress, what about a PC-compatible circa 1995?

Belt Fed Potato Cannon Spits Spuds

July 6, 2026 by Tyler August 26 Comments

Spud guns are a staple of summertime fun for the maker set, especially on the Eagleland side of the pond, combining as they do two of our favorite things: firearms and calories. Nine out of ten Canadians agree that there’s nothing quite like a high-speed poutine — but judging by accent [Current Concept] is an American and so his potato cannon needed a little something extra that even the second amendment doesn’t protect: fully automatic firing, with a belt feed.

Like many spud guns, this one is powered by compressed air and uses PVC for both the barrel and air reservoir; unlike most spud guns, it has a steel frame holding it together, and a 3D-printed belt-feed mechanism to bring the spuds into position, with a beefy stepper motor pulling the potatoes. Of course just sticking an extra length of pipe between reservoir and barrel would just result in 80 PSI potato-scented flatulence as the air escaped betwixt the gap, so a pair of piston-actuated, 3D printed fittings slides over the plastic casings in the belt that hold the spuds. It’s not a perfect seal, but video evidence suggests it’s tight enough to get the tubers flying.

Now, there are some caveats — the air reservoir is only good for one shot, so it needs to stay hooked to an air compressor to take advantage of the repeated firings. Since it has to recharge, it’s also only firing a spud every six seconds, so while the mechanism could do “full auto”, it’s actually semiautomatic in practice as nobody’s going to sit and hold the trigger that long. Finally, we must warn you that the YouTuber behind this is trying to be funny for much of the video. Some may find his delivery leaves them in stitches; others will be left cold. There is, of course, no accounting for taste.

Oddly enough, this isn’t the first automatic air gun to grace these pages. It’s also one of the weaker potato propellers, especially compared to this MAPP-gas powered monster. Hopefully [Current Concept] doesn’t see that and get any ideas for the promised revision of his belt-fed tuber tosser, or he may get a visit from the ATF — that’s the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, who are way less fun to deal with than the name might imply.

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The Bit79 Was A Famicom Clone That Took The “Family Computer” Name Seriously

July 6, 2026 by Tyler August 10 Comments

While the original name of what much of the world knows as the NES was the Nintendo Family Computer, or Famicom for short, it was very rarely used as a family computer. Sure, there was a basic cartridge and an add-on keyboard sold in Japan, but it was always a sideshow to the games.

Nintendo recognized that when they brought their Entertainment System overseas. Most of the various famiclones — which date back to the mid-80s — are the same. BIT in Taiwan had a different idea: their Bit 79 would be a full home computer. Picture a C=64 that plays Nintendo games, and you might not be too far off. [Inkbox] tells the full story in his latest YouTube video, and it’s a must-watch for anyone interested in the history of 8-bit machines that are totally unknown in the West.

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