When A Record Player Doesn’t Work Due To Solid State Grease

July 20, 2025 by 24 Comments

Normally, mechanical devices like record players move smoothly, with well-greased contact surfaces enabling the tone arm to automatically move, the multi-record mechanism to drop down a fresh disc, and the listener to have a generally good time. Unfortunately, the 1972-era ITT KP821 record player that [Mark] got recently handed by a friend wasn’t doing a lot of moving, with every part of the mechanism seemingly frozen in place, though the current owner wasn’t certain that they were doing something wrong.

Fortunately, this record player was in exceptionally good condition.. The primary failure was that the BSR record player mechanism, with its many touching metal surfaces, was suffering from a bad case of solidified grease. Although this is easily fixed with some IPA and a lot of elbow grease, the biggest trick with these mechanisms is putting it back together after cleaning, with many seemingly randomly shaped parts and every single E-clip that the manufacturer could design for and source at the time.

With that complete, this just left some pot cleaning and replacing a busted fuse in the amplifier section. The selenium rectifier was still functional, as were the SGS TAA621AX1 audio amplifier ICs. Despite the age of this ‘portable’ record player, both its BSR mechanism and the twin speakers that are part of the record player are in remarkably good condition. Much like with a car, it seems that you just have to swap out the liquid-y elements before they turn into a solid.

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8 Bit Mechanical Computer Built From Knex

July 20, 2025 by 24 Comments

Long before electricity was a common household utility, humanity had been building machines to do many tasks that we’d now just strap a motor or set of batteries onto and think nothing of it. Transportation, manufacturing, agriculture, and essentially everything had non-electric analogs, and perhaps surprisingly, there were mechanical computers as well. Electronics-based computers are far superior in essentially every way, but the aesthetics of a mechanical computer are still unmatched, like this 8-bit machine built from K’nex.

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Engine Data Displayed Live On Dash

July 20, 2025 by 12 Comments

In the auto world, there are lots of overarching standards that all automakers comply with. There are also lots of proprietary technologies that each automaker creates and uses for its own benefit. [Shehriyar Qureshi] has recently been diving into Suzuki’s Serial Data Line standard, and has created a digital dash using the data gained.

The project started with Python-based scanner code designed to decode Suzuki’s SDL protocol. Armed with the ability to read the protocol, [Shehriyar] wanted to be able to do so without having to haul a laptop around in the car. Thus, the project was ported to Rust, or “oxidized” if you will.

More after the break…

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Project Scribe thermal printer printing out a receipt

Project Scribe: Receipts For Life

July 20, 2025 by 16 Comments

Here’s a fun project. Over on their YouTube page [Urban Circles] introduces Project Scribe.

The idea behind this project is that you can print out little life “receipts”. Notes, jokes, thoughts, anecdotes, memories. These little paper mementos have a physical reality that goes beyond their informational content. You can cut them up, organize them, scribble on them, highlight them, stick them on the wall, or in a scrapbook. The whole idea of the project is to help you make easier and better decisions every day by nudging you in the direction of being more mindful of where you’ve been and where you’re going.

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A long, rectangular electronic device is shown in front of a book of colour swatches. A small LCD display on the electronic device says “PANTONE 3005 C,” with additional color information given in smaller font below this.

A Spectrophotometer Jailbreak To Resolve Colorful Disputes

July 19, 2025 by 22 Comments

The human eye’s color perception is notoriously variable (see, for example, the famous dress), which makes it difficult to standardize colours. This is where spectrophotometers come in: they measure colours reliably and repeatably, and can match them against a library of standard colors. Unfortunately, they tend to be expensive, so when Hackaday’s own [Adam Zeloof] ran across two astonishingly cheap X-Rite/Pantone RM200 spectrophotometers on eBay, he took the chance that they might still be working.

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One ROM to rule them all.

Software Defined Retro ROMs

July 19, 2025 by 6 Comments

Here’s something fun from our hacker [Piers]: Software Defined ROMs.

In this series of three videos, [Piers] runs us through what a software defined ROM is, how to make them, and then how to use them.

As [Piers] explains, one frustration a retro technician will face is a failed ROM chip. In the era he’s interested in, there are basically three relevant kinds of ROM chip, all 24-pin Dual Inline Package (DIP):

  • 2364 ROM chip: 8KB; 1x chip-select line
  • 2332 ROM chip: 4KB; 2x chip-select lines
  • 2316 ROM chip: 2KB; 3x chip-select lines

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SymbOS Is A Funhouse Mirror Look At A Future That Never Was

July 19, 2025 by 64 Comments

The Z80 might be decades obsolete and a few years out of production, but it’s absolutely a case of “gone but not forgotten” in the hacker world. Case in point is SymbOS, a multitasking OS for Z80 machines by Amstrad, Sinclair, and the MSX2 family of computers that updated to version 4.0 earlier this year.

The best way to describe SymbOS is like looking at an alternate reality where Microsoft created Windows 95 ten years early to put on the MSX instead of the BASIC they were paid to provide. SymbOS 4.0 comes even further into alignment with that design language, with a new file explorer that looks a lot like Windows Explorer replacing (or supplementing) the earlier Midnight Commander style utility in version 3.

Thanks to the preemptive multitasking, you can listen to tracker music while organizing files and writing documents, and even play a port of DOOM. Chat with your friends on IRC while watching (low res) videos on SymboVid. If you’re looking for productivity, all the old business software written for CP/M can run in a virtual machine. There’s even an IDE if you can stand the compile times on what is, we have to remember, an 8-bit, 1980s machine. It’s hard to remember that while watching the demo video embedded below.

The operating system supports up to 1024 KB of RAM (in 64 KB chunks, of course) and file systems up to 2 TB, which is an absolutely bonkers amount of space for this era’s machines.  One enterprising dev has even got his CPC talking to ChatGPT, if that’s your jam. You can try SymbOS for free online on an MSX emulator, or toss it onto a spare Raspberry Pi.  If you’re feeling adventurous, there’s a port in the works for the Isetta TLL retrocomputer.

This isn’t the first modern OS we’ve featured for the Z80, the processor which will live forever in our hearts and tapeouts.

Thanks to [Manuel] for the tip.

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