Even among ThinkPads, which are nearly universally loved by hardware hackers and Linux tinkerers alike, the 701c is a particularly rare and desirable machine. Best known for it’s “butterfly” slide out keyboard, the IBM-designed subnotebook from the mid-1990s has gained a following all its own, with active efforts to repair and restore any surviving specimens still out in the wild.
[polymatt] has already taken on a number of 701c restoration projects, but the recent release of a 3D printable case for the vintage laptop is arguably the most impressive to date. After spending an untold number of hours with an original case and a pair of calipers, the final design has been released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license — in other words, you’re free to print one to spruce up your 701c, but don’t run off a stack of them and start trying to move them on Etsy.
In the early days of the internet, online conversations were an event. The technology was novel, and it was suddenly possible to socialize with a whole bunch of friends at a distance, all at once. No more calling your friends one by one, you could talk to them all at the same time!
Many of us would spend hours on IRC, or pull all-nighters bantering on MSN Messenger or AIM. But then, something happened, and many of us found ourselves having shorter conversations online, if we were having any at all. Thinking back to my younger days, and comparing them with today, I think I’ve figured out what it is that’s changed.
It’s that time of year again when some parts of our community travel out into the countryside to spend time with each other under canvas in a field somewhere with power and fast internet — it’s hacker camp season. Here in Europe that means it’s the turn of the British hackers to have the year’s large event, in the form of the latest incarnation of Electromagnetic Field. We’ll be there, camera and microphone in hand, and with luck we’ll be able to bring you a flavour of the event.
The atmosphere that comes from being in the company of several thousand like minds is stimulating enough, but what makes these outdoor events special is that the villages become so much more than simply a group of geeks at a table with their laptops. Where else can one find a tea room run by a hackerspace except courtesy of MK Makerspace, or a fully functional pop-up motor racing circuit from Hacky Racers?
This year’s event badge is an interesting one, the ESP32-S3 powered and hexagon-shaped Tildagon. It’s a bold attempt to redefine the event badge away from a one-off trinket into one that lasts across multiple events, with custom “Hexpansions” like the petals on a flower, intended to have new ones appear on an event by event basis.
If you’re going to be at EMF then maybe we can join you for a pint, otherwise we’ll be bringing you the best that we find there. To whet your appetite, here’s something of the last one.
We’ll admit to not fully knowing what [Jay Doscher] has planned for the pair of RTL-SDR Blog V4 software defined radios (SDRs) that are enclosed in the slick 3D printed enclosure he’s designed. But when has that ever stopped us from appreciating a nice design when we see one?
Inside the ventilated enclosure is the aforementioned pair of RTL-SDR Blog V4 (SDRs), as well as a StarTech USB hub that they’re plugged directly into. It seems like it wouldn’t take much to adapt this design to any other pair of USB gadgets, such as flash drives or WiFi adapters.
In fact, if they’re smaller than the RTL-SDR [Jay] has used here, you could probably get away with only needing to modify the one side panel of the case.
The simple modularity of the design, with two end pieces and the top and bottom plates, makes such modifications easy as you don’t need to reprint the whole thing if you just want a different antenna aperture. It also makes it easy to print without support material, and with just a few tweaks, looks like it could be adapted to use laser-cut panels for the sides. This would not only be faster than printing, but depending on the material, could make for a very stout enclosure.
At one point, the Motorola 6809 seemed like a great CPU. At the time it was a modern 8-bit CPU and was capable of hosting position-independent code and re-entrant code. Sure, it was pricey back in 1981 (about four times the price of a Z80), but it did boast many features. However, the price probably prevented it from being in more computers. There were a handful, including the Radio Shack Color Computer, but for the most part, the cheaper Z80 and the even cheaper 6502 ruled the roost. Thanks to the [turbo9team], however, you can now host one of these CPUs — maybe even a better version — in an FPGA using Verilog.
The CPU may be old-fashioned on the outside, but inside, it is a pipeline architecture with a standard Wishbone bus to incorporate other cores to add peripherals. The GitHub page explains that while the 6809 is technically CISC, it’s so simple that it’s possible to translate to a RISC-like architecture internally. There are also a few enhanced instructions not present on the 6809.
In addition to the source code, you’ll find a thesis and some presentations about the CPU in the repository. While the 6809 might not be the most modern choice, it has the advantage of having plenty of development tools available and is easy enough to learn. Code for the 6800 should run on it, too.
Even using through-hole parts, you can make a 6809 computer fit in a tiny space.You can also break out a breadboard.
Images of whole-fruit chocolate formulations after kneading at 31 °C and subsequent heating to 50 °C. The ECP concentration in the sweetening gel and the added gel concentrations in the CM are shown on the X and Y axes, respectively. (Credit: Kim Mishra et al., Nature Food, 2024)
It’s hard to imagine a world without chocolate, and yet it is undeniable that there are problems associated both with its manufacturing and its consumption. Much of this is due to the addition of sugar, as well as the discarding of a significant part of the cacao pod, which harbors the pulp and seeds. According to a study by [Kim Mishra] and colleagues in Nature Food, it might be possible to ditch the sugar and instead use a mixture of cacao pulp juice (CPJC) and endocarp powder (ECP), which are turned into a sweetening gel.
This gel replaces the combination of sugar with an emulsifier (lecithin or something similar) in current chocolate while effectively using all of the cacao pod except for the husk. A lab ran a small-scale production, with two different types of whole-fruit chocolate produced, each with a different level of sweetness, and given to volunteers for sampling. Samples had various ECP ratios in the gel and gel ratios in the chocolate mixture with the cacao mass (CM).
With too much of either, the chocolate becomes crumbly, while with too little, no solid chocolate forms. Eventually, they identified a happy set of ratios, leading to the taste test, which got an overall good score in terms of chocolate taste and sweetness. In addition to being able to skip the refined sugar addition, this manufacturing method also cuts out a whole supply chain while adding significantly more fiber to chocolate. One gotcha here is that this study focused on dark chocolate, but then some chocolate fans would argue vehemently that anything below 50% cacao doesn’t qualify as chocolate anymore, while others scoff at anything below 75%.
Matters of taste aside, this study shows a promising way to make our regular chocolate treat that much healthier and potentially greener. Of course, we want to know how it will print. Barring that, maybe how it engraves.
[Thomas] found an interesting probable millivoltmeter with some Beckman displays. Like many instruments from that time period, this one had a lot of tobacco smoke residue inside. The display unit inside had a sticker that not only showed the company that made it, but also had their Telex number on it, another sign of the times. You can see the device in the video below.
The unit looked like a one-off made by a hobbyist or a technician but the case looked suspiciously like old Bang and Olfusen equipment. Someone in the video comments mentions it was built for the service department.
