Behind RadioShack’s Cheapest Computer

June 30, 2025 by 30 Comments

In the 1980s, there was a truly staggering amount of choice for a consumer looking to purchase a home computer. On the high end, something like an Apple Lisa, a business-class IBM PC, or a workstation from Sun Microsystems could easily range from $6,000 to $20,000 (not adjusted for inflation). For the time, these mind-blowing prices might have been worth the cost, but for those not willing to mortgage their homes for their computing needs, there were also some entry-level options. One of these was the Sinclair ZX-80, which was priced at an astounding $100, which caused RadioShack to have a bit of a panic and release this version of the TRS-80 computer to compete with it.

As [David] explains in his deep dive into this somewhat obscure machine, the TRS-80 MC-10 was a commercial failure, although not for want of features. It had a color display, a chicklet keyboard, and 4K of RAM, which were all things that the ZX-80 lacked.

Unfortunately, it also had a number of drawbacks compared to some of its other contemporaries that made consumers turn away. Other offerings by Commodore, Atari, Texas Instruments, and even RadioShack themselves were only marginally more expensive and had many more features, including larger memory and better storage and peripheral options, so most people chose these options instead.

The TRS-80 MC-10 is largely a relic of the saturated 80s home computer market. It’s drop in price to below $50, and the price competition between other PC manufacturers at the time was part of the reason for the video game crash of the 1980s, and even led to Steve Jobs getting fired from Apple. There’s not a huge retro scene for these machines either, although there is at least one game developer you can see in the video below from [Spriteworx]. If you want to experiment with some of the standard TRS-80 software, there are emulators that have everything you need.

Thanks to [Stephen] for the tip!

A clear acrylic cylinder is shown, inside of which plants are visible. There is mist inside the tube, and LEDs light it from above. A black plastic cap to the tube is visible.

Preserve Your Plants With An Automated Terrarium

June 30, 2025 by 1 Comment

For those of us who aren’t blessed with a green thumb and who are perhaps a bit forgetful, plants can be surprisingly difficult to keep alive. In those cases, some kind of automation, such as [Justin Buchanan]’s Oasis smart terrarium, is a good way to keep our plants from suffering too much.

The Oasis has an ultrasonic mister to water the plants from a built-in tank, LED grow lights, fans to control airflow, and a temperature and humidity sensor. It connects to the local WiFi network and can set up recurring watering and lighting schedules based on network time. Most of the terrarium is 3D-printed, with a section of acrylic tubing providing the clear walls. Before installing the electronics, it’s a good idea to waterproof the printed parts with low-viscosity epoxy, particularly since the water tank is located at the top of the terrarium, where a leak would drip directly onto the control electronics.

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Switching From Desktop Linux To FreeBSD

June 29, 2025 by 44 Comments

People have been talking about switching from Windows to Linux since the 1990s, but in the world of open-source operating systems, there is much more variety than just the hundreds of flavors of Linux-based operating systems today. Take FreeBSD, for example. In a recent [GNULectures] video, we get to see a user’s attempt to switch from desktop Linux to desktop FreeBSD.

The interesting thing here is that both are similar and yet very different, mainly owing to their very different histories, with FreeBSD being a direct derivative of the original UNIX and its BSD derivative. One of the most significant differences is probably that Linux is just a kernel, with (usually) the GNU/Hurd userland glued on top of it to create GNU/Linux. GNU and BSD userland are similar, and yet different, with varying levels of POSIX support. This effectively means that FreeBSD is a singular OS with rather nice documentation (the FreeBSD handbook).

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Break The Air Gap With Ultrasound

June 29, 2025 by 15 Comments

In the world of information security, much thought goes into ensuring that no information can leave computer networks without expressly being permitted to do so. Conversely, a lot of effort is expended on the part of would-be attackers to break through whatever layers are present. [Halcy] has a way to share data between computers, whether they are networked or not, and it uses ultrasound.

To be fair, this is more of a fun toy than an elite exploit, because it involves a web interface that encodes text as ultrasonic frequency shift keying. Your computer speakers and microphone can handle it, but it’s way above the human hearing range. Testing it here, we were able to send text mostly without errors over a short distance, but at least on this laptop, we wouldn’t call it reliable.

We doubt that many sensitive servers have a sound card and speakers installed where you can overhear them, but by contrast, there are doubtless many laptops containing valuable information, so we could imagine it as a possible attack vector. The code is on the linked page, should you be interested, and if you want more ultrasonic goodness, this definitely isn’t the first time we have touched upon it. While a sound card might be exotic on a server, a hard drive LED isn’t.

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Hackaday Links: June 29, 2025

June 29, 2025 by 16 Comments

In today’s episode of “AI Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things,” we feature the Hertz Corporation and its new AI-powered rental car damage scanners. Gone are the days when an overworked human in a snappy windbreaker would give your rental return a once-over with the old Mark Ones to make sure you hadn’t messed the car up too badly. Instead, Hertz is fielding up to 100 of these “MRI scanners for cars.” The “damage discovery tool” uses cameras to capture images of the car and compares them to a model that’s apparently been trained on nothing but showroom cars. Redditors who’ve had the displeasure of being subjected to this thing report being charged egregiously high damage fees for non-existent damage. To add insult to injury, if renters want to appeal those charges, they have to argue with a chatbot first, one that offers no path to speaking with a human. While this is likely to be quite a tidy profit center for Hertz, their customers still have a vote here, and backlash will likely lead the company to adjust the model to be a bit more lenient, if not outright scrapping the system.

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Windows 95 On PlayStation 2 Works As Well As You Expected

June 29, 2025 by 21 Comments

When you hear “PS2” and “Windows 95,” you probably think someone forgot a slash and are talking about peripherals, but no — this hack is very much about the Sony PlayStation 2, the best-selling game console of all time. [MeraByte] walks us through the possibly ridiculous task of installing Windows 95 on the last hardware anyone at Microsoft would ever endorse in a video you can watch below.

Obviously, the MIPS-based Emotion Engine at the heart of the PS2 is not going to be able to handle x86 instructions Win95 is expecting, but that’s all solved by the magic of emulation. [MeraByte] is running a version of Bochs, an x86 emulator that has been built for PS/2 after trying and failing to install Windows (both 3.1 and 95) to an experimental DOSBox build.

As expected, it is not a smooth journey for [MeraByte], but the flailing about and troubleshooting make for entertaining viewing. Once loaded, it works surprisingly well, in that anything works at all. Unfortunately, neither the mouse nor Ultimate Doom 95 worked. We suppose that ultimately means that this hack fails since even Doom can run Doom. The mouse thing is also important, probably.

If you have a PlayStation 2, maybe skip Windows 95 and try running GoLang.  If you do have DOOM running on the PlayStation 2, send us a tip. There was never an official release for PS2, but after 26 years, someone must have done it by now. Continue reading “Windows 95 On PlayStation 2 Works As Well As You Expected” →

The underside of the scanner is shown. Four power supply units are visible on the lower side, and assorted electronics are visible on the top side. In the middle, two linear tracks adapted from a 3D printer run along the length of the scanner, and several motors can be seen mounted between the rails.

A Scanner For Arduino-Powered Book Archiving

June 29, 2025 by 4 Comments

Scanners for loose papers have become so commonplace that almost every printer includes one, but book scanners have remained frustratingly rare for non-librarians and archivists. [Brad Mattson] had some books to scan, but couldn’t find an affordable scanner that met his needs, so he took the obvious hacker solution and built his own.

The scanning process starts when a conveyor belt removes a book from a stack and drops it onto the scanner’s bed. Prods mounted on a rail beneath the bed straighten the book and move it into position for the overhead camera to take a picture of the cover. Next, an arm with a pneumatic gripper opens the cover, and a metal bar comes down to hold it in place.

The page-turning mechanism uses two fans: one fan blows from the side of the book to ruffle the pages and separate them, while the other is mounted on a swiveling arm. This fan blows away from the page, providing a gentle suction that holds the page to the arm as it turns the page over. Finally, a glass plate descends over the book to hold the pages flat, the camera takes a picture, the glass plate retracts, and the scanner moves on to the next page.

It is hard to imagine, but have a look at the video in the post if you really want to see it in action.

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