Printing From A Famicom Clone Computer

September 30, 2010 by Mike Szczys 14 Comments

This is an 8-bit computer and Famicom clone that [133MHz] bought for $2. It plays Nintendo games and using an 80-in-1 cartridge it has a rudimentary operating system and set of applications. Seeing a standard DB25 port on the back [133MHz] wondered if he could make the system talk to a printer. His first step was to investigate the electronics inside to find that the connector has a couple of chips that map to the data bus of the CPU and use the same control lines as the cartridge. That means it can be setup to do just about anything in software. After a bit of coding he’s got it printing to a dot-matrix. See for yourself after the break.

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Tiny Cray-1 Courtesy Of An FPGA

September 29, 2010 by Mike Szczys 21 Comments

[Chris Fenton] spent a year and a half constructing a 1/10th scale Cray-1 reproduction. The famous supercomputer was meticulously modelled in a field programmable gate array for a “nearly cycle-accurate” reproduction. [Chris’] hardware of choice for the project is a Xilinx Spartan-3E 1600 development board, using 75-80% of the available resources. The finished product runs at 33 MHz and is missing a few functions but it sounds like they don’t affect code execution. We like that he didn’t stop with the processor implementation, but also took the time to produce a case for the development board that looks just like the original.

Unlike the Atari 2600 FPGA project, we’re not quite sure what we’d use this for. But that doesn’t diminish the excellence of his work.

Graffiti Analysis

September 28, 2010 by Mike Szczys 30 Comments

Here’s a fascinating project that started with a great idea and piled on a remarkable amount of innovation. Graffiti Analysis is a project that captures gestures used to create graffiti art and codifies them through a data-type called Graffiti Markup Language (GML). After the break you can watch a video showing the data capture method used in version 2.0 of the project. A marker taped to a light source is used to draw a graffiti tag on a piece of paper. The paper rests on a plexiglass drawing surface with a webcam tracking the underside in order to capture each motion.

The newest iteration, version 3.0, has some unbelievable features. The addition of audio input means that the markup can be projected and animated based on sound, with the example of graffiti interacting with a fireworks show. The 3D tools are quite amazing too, allowing not only for stereoscopic video playback, but for printing out graffiti markup using a 3D printer. The collection of new features is so vast, and produces such amazing results it’s hard to put into words. So we’ve also embedded the demo of the freshly released version after the break.

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New Term For Art: Sculptural Robotics

September 21, 2010 by Jakob Griffith 10 Comments

[Dan Roe] has been working on Sculptural Robotics for quite some time, and most recently presented his newest creation: Solar Flowers 2010. Typically, Sculptural Robotics (coined by [Dan] himself) are stand alone, static art presentations made from electronic components and wire. [Dan] of course has taken it quite a bit further; giving all his sculptures life using solar panels, motors, engine circuits, and more. Making them zero emission, and beautiful at the same time. You can catch four videos after the jump of his moving sculptures. Not that we’re picking favorites, but the dragonfly is pretty amazing if we do say so ourselves.

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Homebrew Firmware Upgrade For VCI-100 Turntable Controller

September 20, 2010 by Mike Szczys 13 Comments

We love hacks that take quality products and make them better. This enhanced firmware for the VCI-100 is a great example of that. In a similar fashion as the Behringer hack, [DaveX] reverse engineer the firmware for the device and figured out a few ways to make it better. It improves the scratch controller and slider accuracy to use 9-bit accuracy from the ADC readings, which in the stock version were being shifted down to 7-bits. There’s also a few LED tricks they call Disco Mode. They’re selling a “chip” that you need to flash the firmware but from what we can see it’s simply an RS232 converter so you might be able to figure out how to work without that part. We’ve embedded a demo of firmware version 1.4 after the break.

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Dead Motor? Think Again

September 16, 2010 by Jakob Griffith 28 Comments

While hobby brush motors are pretty cheap now adays, there’s always that feeling of why replace when you can rebuild and reuse. As such [John Carr] presents how to change the brush position in motors to revive a dead motor. So long as the motor dies from natural causes commutator wear, the idea is the brushes can be moved along the axes and fixed to a new portion of commutator that’s not worn at all. [John] also goes through the details of some tricky reassembly, but we think to make this complete a guide on brush replacement and commutator replacement might be in order hint hint.

Atari 2600 Recreated In An FPGA

September 15, 2010 by Mike Szczys 16 Comments

Behold [Retromaster’s] field programmable gate array implementation of an Atari 2600. The processor and video chip have both been built in the 100,000 gate Spartan-3E FPGA, with connectors for audio, video, and a Sega controller. The output signals are generated using two DACs made from R-2R resistor ladders, much like the project we saw in August. [Retromaster] included functionality for the system switches (difficulty and select) in the controller itself. There is VHDL code and board details available if you want to make one of your own. To help in making that decision we’ve embedded video of it after the break. Continue reading “Atari 2600 Recreated In An FPGA” →