Intel 486 Support Likely To Be Removed In Linux 7.1

April 7, 2026 by 28 Comments

Although everyone’s favorite Linux overlord [Linus Torvalds] has been musing on dropping Intel 486 support for a while now, it would seem that this time now has finally come. In a Linux patch submitted by [Ingo Molnar] the first concrete step is taken by removing support for i486 in the build system. With this patch now accepted into the ‘tip’ branch, this means that no i486-compatible image can be built any more as it works its way into the release branches, starting with kernel 7.1.

No mainstream Linux distribution currently supports the 486 CPU, so the impact should be minimal, and there has been plenty of warning. We covered the topic back in 2022 when [Linus] first floated the idea, as well as in 2025 when more mutterings from the side of [Linus] were heard, but no exact date was offered until now.

It remains to be seen whether 2026 is really the year when Linux says farewell to the Intel 486 after doing so for the Intel 386 back in 2012. We cannot really imagine that there’s a lot of interest in running modern Linux kernels on CPUs that are probably older than the average Hackaday reader, but we could be mistaken.

Meanwhile, we got people modding Windows XP to be able to run on the Intel 486, opening the prospect that modern Windows might make it onto these systems instead of Linux in the ultimate twist of irony.

Hear Ye, Hear Ye! The Magic Of The Scroll-Like Phone Which Wast Not!

April 7, 2026 by 8 Comments

When LG left the smartphone market, quite a number of strange devices were left behind. While some, like the Wing, made it to consumers, others did not. The strangest of these would have to be their rollable phone concept; a device which would expand by unrolling a portion of the screen like a scroll. This never made it to market, but one managed to make its way to [JerryRigEverything’s] workbench, and we are fortunate enough to see the insides of this strange device. 

There are a few interesting tidbits about the device before even entering the device. Very clearly this phone was ready to be sold, with a tidy user interface for expanding the display, and even animated wallpapers which expand with it. The display, when rolled onto the back of the device, sits behind a glass cover to keep it protected from debris, and can be used to take selfies with the larger sensors of the rear facing cameras. You can also see a bit of the track that the screen rolls on, hinting at what lies inside.

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TinyGo Boldly Goes Where No Go Ever Did Go Before

April 7, 2026 by 19 Comments

When you’re programming microcontrollers, you’re likely to think in C if you’re old-school, Rust if you’re trendy, or Python if you want it done quick and have resources to spare. What about Go? The programming language, not the game. That’s an option, too, with TinyGo now supporting over 100 different dev boards, along with webASM.

We covered TinyGo back in 2019, but they were just getting started at that point, targeting the Arduino and BBC:micro boards. They’ve grown that list to include everything from most of Adafruit’s fruitful suite of offerings, ESP32s, and even the Nintendo Game Boy Advance. So now you can go program go in Go so you can play go on the go.

The biggest drawback–which is going to be an absolute dealkiller for a lot of applications–is a lack of wireless connectivity support. Claiming to support the ESP8266 while not allowing one to use wifi is a bit of a stretch, considering that’s the whole raison d’être of that particular chip, but it’s usable as a regular microcontroller at least.

They’ve now implemented garbage collection, a selling point for those who like Go, but admit it’s slower in TinyGo compared to its larger cousin and won’t work on AVR chips or in WebAssembly. It’s still not complete Go, however, so just as we reported in 2019, you won’t be able to compile all the standard library packages you might be used to. There are more of them than there were, so progress has been made!

Still, knowing how people get about programming languages, this will please the Go fanatics out there. Others might prefer to go FORTH and program their Arduinos, or to wear out their parentheses keys with LISP. The more the merrier, we say!

Magnetic Levitation Using An Induction Cooktop

April 7, 2026 by 6 Comments

Adding another item on the list of things you probably shouldn’t be trying at home, we got [Brainiac75] giving magnetic levitation a shot using an unmodified induction cooktop and aluminium foil. Although not ferromagnetic, it turns out that aluminium can be made to do interesting things in the magnetic field created by the powerful electromagnet that underlies the induction principle.

Interestingly, although there’s a detection circuit in these units that should detect the presence of an appropriate (ferromagnetic) object, it appears that even a thin sheet of aluminium foil can completely deceive it. The effect is that of a force pushing the foil away from the cooktop’s surface, with foil areas that remain close enough to the ferrite bars on the electromagnet even heating up enough to begin melting the aluminium.

After a bit of fun with various shapes and types of aluminium objects, the video moves on to a scientific explanation of what’s going on. The surface resistivity of the foil is similar enough to ferromagnetic cookware that it fools the sensor, after which the skin effect of aluminium induces a current. This then does the typical Lorentz force things.

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2026 Hackaday Europe: First Round Of Speakers Announced!

April 7, 2026 by 2 Comments

Hackaday Europe is the continental version of the Ultimate Hardware Conference, taking place May 16th and 17th, and you need to be there! We’ll continue to announce speakers and workshops over the next couple weeks, because we got so many more great talks than we had anticipated that we’re negotiating for extra time.

This year, we’re moving to a new venue in Lecco, Italy, and it’s sure to be fantastic. Get your tickets now before it’s too late. And stay tuned for another round of talk reveals next week!

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Thermostat? Do It With A 555!

April 7, 2026 by 18 Comments

It is a running gag around here that whenever a project posts, someone will inevitably point out that it could have been done with a 555 timer IC. [Stephen Woodward] went the opposite way and built a simple thermostat using the ubiquitous chip.

To be fair, this isn’t some sophisticated PID controller — it’s basically a bang-bang controller. Since the device has a comparator and the circuits use a thermistor, it seems like a clever but simple idea on the surface. However, there are some neat tricks. For example, if you tie the 555 threshold pin to Vdd, then the trigger pin acts as an inverting analog comparator. Another nice feature: the setpoint depends on a resistance ratio, so there is no need for a precise input voltage reference.

A simple circuit change can switch the circuit to power a heater or a cooler. The chip can handle a surprising amount of power, but for some applications, you may need some output drive circuitry. The simple circuit even has hysteresis, which you can set with a different resistor. Pretty impressive for a cheap chip, two resistors, a thermistor, and a battery.

We’ve seen a lot of strange 555 circuits in our contests. We even had a 555 Timer Contest.

CCA Ethernet Cables: Not Up To Scratch, But Are They Dangerous?

April 7, 2026 by 40 Comments

If you’ve ever bought a suspiciously cheap Ethernet cable from an online listing, there’s a decent chance you’ve encountered Copper Clad Aluminum. Better known as CCA, it’s exactly what it sounds like—an aluminium conductor with a thin skin of copper deposited on the outside. Externally, cables made with this material look largely like any other, with perhaps the only obvious tell being that they feel somewhat lighter in the hand.

CCA is cheaper than proper copper cabling, and it conducts signals well enough to function in an Ethernet cable. And yet, it’s a prime example of corner-cutting that keeps standards bodies and professional installers up at night. But just how dangerous is this silent scourge, found lurking in so many network cabinets around the world?

Not Up To Scratch

CCA wire is typically made by wrapping an aluminium core with copper strip and then extruding it through a die. Credit: USPTO

Everything you need to know about CCA is in the name—it refers to an aluminium wire with a thin copper cladding, typically applied through a die extrusion process. The reasoning behind this exploits a real physical phenomenon called the skin effect, wherein higher-frequency AC signals tend to travel along the outer surface of a conductor. The idea goes that since most of the current moves through the outer copper skin layer anyway, the less-conductive aluminium core doesn’t unduly impact the wire’s performance. Using copper-clad aluminium wiring is, in theory, desirable because aluminium is much cheaper than copper, which can really add up over long cable runs. Imagine you’re wiring a building with with hundreds of miles of Ethernet cabling, all with eight conductors each—the savings add up pretty quickly.

There’s a problem with CCA cabling in these contexts, though. Due to prevailing cabling standards, any cable made with CCA is technically not even a real Ethernet cable at all. The relevant documents are unambiguous.

ANSI/TIA-568.2-D requires conductors in Category-rated cable to be solid or stranded copper. No other materials are acceptable, and thus CCA is explicitly excluded from use in Category cable applications. A cable with CCA conductors cannot legitimately carry a Cat5e, Cat6, or any related designation under any circumstances. Similarly, ISO/IEC 11801 has the same requirement. The U.S. National Electrical Code also states that conductors in communications cables, other than coaxial cable, shall be copper. This isn’t a suggestion or a best practice; it’s the letter of the code. Anything lesser is simply not allowed. Continue reading “CCA Ethernet Cables: Not Up To Scratch, But Are They Dangerous?” →