computer hacks

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computer hacks

At Last, A Beagle V In The Wild

July 13, 2023 by 41 Comments

The RISC-V ISA specification contains the recipe for everything from the humblest of microcontrollers to the most accomplished of high-end application processors, but it’s fair to say that at our end of the market it’s mostly been something for the lower end. There are plenty of inexpensive small RISC-V microcontrollers, but so far not much powerful enough for example to run a Linux-based operating system.

It’s a situation that’s slowly changing though, and it looks as though things may have taken a turn for the better as a new BeagleBoard has appeared using a RISC-V chip. The BeagleV-Ahead has a BeagleBone form factor and packs an Alibaba T-Head TH1520 SoC, a 2GHz quad-core part with a GPU and DSP components on-board. They link to a selection of distributors, from which one can seemingly be bought for about $170.

It’s a departure from the ARM chips that have until now powered the BeagleBoard line, but its appearance shouldn’t come as a surprise to seasoned Beagle watchers as they announced their RISC-V developments back in 2021. We’re guessing they too had to contend with the chip shortage which hit other players such as Raspberry Pi, so we’re pleased to see a product on the market. In particular though we’re pleased to see one on a BeagleBoard. because unlike a random no-name single board computer they’re a manufacturer who supports their products.

There’s a page with a good choice of operating systems for the board, and we hope that this means they provide kernel support for this SoC. This is the real benefit of buying a BeagleBoard or a Raspberry Pi, because cheap competitors will typically support only one kernel version compared with their years of support. So while this board is by no means cheap, we’re hoping it heralds a new wave of powerful RISC-V computers. Something to look forward to indeed.

Jenny’s Daily Drivers: Slackware 15

July 10, 2023 by 53 Comments

As a recent emigre from the Ubuntu Linux distribution to Manjaro, I’ve had the chance to survey the field as I chose a new distro, and I realised that there’s a whole world of operating systems out there that we all know about, but which few of us really know. Hence this is the start of what I hope will be a long-running series, in which I try different operating systems in my everyday life as a Hackaday writer, to find out about them and then to see whether they can deliver on the promise of giving me a stable platform on which to earn a living.

For that they need an internet connection and a web browser up-to-date enough to author Hackaday stories, as well as a decent graphics package. In addition to using the OS every day though, I’ll also be taking a look at what makes it different from all the others, what its direction and history is, and how user-friendly it is as an experience. Historical systems such as CP/M are probably out of the question as are extremely esoteric ones such as the famous TempleOS, but this still leaves plenty of choice for an operating system tourist. Join me then, as I try all the operating systems.

A Distro From The 1990s, Today

A desktop mini tower PC with monitor showing the Slackware boot screen
The Hackaday test PC gets its first outing.

When deciding where to start on this road, there was an obvious choice. Slackware was the first Linux-based distribution I tried back in 1995, I’m not sure which version it was , but it came to me via a magazine coverdisk. It was by no means the first OS that captured my attention as I’d been an Amiga user for quite a few years at that point, but at the moment I can’t start with AmigaOS as I don’t have nay up-to-date Amiga-compatible hardware.

July 2023 also marks the 30th anniversary for the distro making it the oldest one still in active development, so this seems the perfect month to start this series with the descendant of my first Linux distro. Slackware 15 comes as a 3.8 GB ISO file download for 64-bit computers, and my target for the distro was an old desktop PC with an AMD processor and a big-enough spinning rust hard disk which had been a high-end gaming system a little over ten years ago. Not the powerhouse it once was, but it cost me nothing and it’s adequate for my needs. Installed on a USB Flash drive the Slackware installer booted, and I was ready to go. Continue reading “Jenny’s Daily Drivers: Slackware 15” →

Clock Runs Computer In Slow-Motion

July 8, 2023 by 27 Comments

At the heart of all computers is a clock, a dedicated timepiece ensuring that all of the parts of the computer are synchronized and can work together to execute the instructions that the computer receives. Clock speeds for most modern off-the-shelf computers and smartphones operate around a billion cycles per second, and even clocks that tick at a human-dizzying speed of a million times per second have been around since at least the 1970s. But there’s no reason a computer can’t run at a much slower speed, as [Greg] demonstrates in this video where he slows down a 6502 processor to a single clock cycle per second.

To reduce the clock speed from the megahertz range down to a single hertz or single clock cycle per second, [Greg] is using the pendulum from an actual clock. He attaches a small magnet to the bottom of the pendulum which is counted by a sensor as it swings past. Feeding that pulse into a monostable conditioner yields a clock signal which is usable for one of his 6502-based computers, and at this extremely slow rate, it’s possible to see the operation of a lot of the computers’ inner workings a step at a time. In fact, he optimized the computer’s operation as this slow speed let him see some inefficiencies in the program he was running.

It helps if your processor is static, of course. Older CPUs with dynamic storage for registers and some with limited-range PLLs would not work with this technique. The 8080A, for example, required a clock of at least 500 kHz.

Not only can this computer use a pendulum clock as the basis for its internal clock, but [Greg] also rigged up a mechanism to use a heartbeat. Getting in a little bit of exercise to increase his heart rate first will noticeably increase the computer’s speed. And, if you’re looking to get a deeper glimpse into the inner workings of a computer, we’d recommend looking at one which forgoes transistors in favor of relays.

Continue reading “Clock Runs Computer In Slow-Motion” →

Retro-Inspired Computer Case Hosts Mechanical Keyboard

June 24, 2023 by 5 Comments

During the time in the 1980s when the personal computer was gaining steam as a household fixture, plenty of models shipped with the keyboard built in to the machine itself. This helped reduce costs, lower the physical footprint of the device, and arguably improved aesthetics. But as technology progressed, this type of design fell by the wayside as computers became more modular and configurable. That’s not to say there aren’t any benefits to building a computer like this, though. [jit] is here to show off this Amiga-inspired computer with its own modern built-in mechanical keyboard.

Like the Raspberry Pi 400 which is built into its own case, modern computers like this are extremely portable, relatively simple, and space-efficient. But [jit] did not like the uninspired design of the Pi so he was looking to make some improvements. Starting with the keyboard, it boasts a 60% size board with mechanical keys which are backlit by LEDs. Inside the machine is a Odroid XU4 which has a little bit more power (and is often easier to find) than a comparable Raspberry Pi. The case is 3D printed and includes ventilation and support for the addition of various cooling fans, I/O ports, status LEDs, and switches for the computer inside.

Additionally, some modification of the Odroid itself was needed in order to move the various switches to the case, and the build also includes a somewhat customized power supply internally as well. It’s a well-rounded build that captures the spirit of the old computer cases, but takes advantage of a lot of modern technology at the same time. If you want to go all-out with a build like this, though, take a look at this retro-inspired case (with keyboard included) that manages to get most of a Framework laptop inside.

Continue reading “Retro-Inspired Computer Case Hosts Mechanical Keyboard” →

Ecological System Dynamics For Computing

June 23, 2023 by 3 Comments

Some of you may remember that the ship’s computer on Star Trek: Voyager contained bioneural gel packs. Researchers have taken us one step closer to a biocomputing future with a study on the potential of ecological systems for computing.

Neural networks are a big deal in the world of machine learning, and it turns out that ecological dynamics exhibit many of the same properties. Reservoir Computing (RC) is a special type of Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) that feeds inputs into a fixed-dynamics reservoir black box with training only occurring on the outputs, drastically reducing the computational requirements of the system. With some research now embodying these reservoirs into physical objects like robot arms, the researchers wanted to see if biological systems could be used as computing resources.

Using both simulated and real bacterial populations (Tetrahymena thermophila) to respond to temperature stimuli, the researchers showed that ecological system dynamics has the “necessary conditions for computing (e.g. synchronized dynamics in response to the same input sequences) and can make near-future predictions of empirical time series.” Performance is currently lower than other forms of RC, but the researchers believe this will open up an exciting new area of research.

If you’re interested in some other experiments in biocomputing, checkout these RNA-based logic gates, this DNA-based calculator, or this fourteen-legged state machine.

A Simple Guide To Bit Banged I2C On The 6502

June 18, 2023 by 5 Comments

We covered [Anders Nielsen]’s 65duino project a short while ago, and now he’s back with an update video showing some more details of bit-banging I2C using plain old 6502 assembly language.

Obviously, with such a simple system, there is no dedicated I2C interface hardware, so the programmer must take care of all the details of the I2C protocol in software, bit-banging it out to the peripheral and reading back the response one bit at a time.

The first detail to concern us will be the I2C addresses of the devices being connected to the bus and how low-level bit manipulation is used to turn the 7-bit I2C address into the byte being bit-banged. As [Anders] shows, setting a bit is simply a logical-OR operation, and resetting a bit is a simple logical-AND operation using the inversion (or one’s complement) bit to reset to form a bitmask. As many will already know, this process is necessary to code for a read or a write I2C operation. A further detail is that I2C uses an open-collector connection scheme, which means that no device on the bus may drive the bus to logical high; instead, they must release the drive by going to the high impedance state, and an external pull-up resistor will pull the bus high. The 6532 RIOT chip (used for I/O on the 65unio) does not have tristate control but instead uses a data direction register (DDR) to allow a pin to be an input. This will do the job just fine, albeit with slightly odd-looking code, until you know what’s going on.

From there, it’s a straightforward matter to write subroutines that generate the I2C start, stop, and NACK conditions that are required to write to the SSD1306-based OLED to get it to do something we can observe. From these basic roots, through higher-level subroutines, a complete OLED library in assembly can be constructed. We shall sit tight and await where [Anders] goes next with this!

We see I2C-connected things all the time, like this neat ATtiny85-based I2C peripheral, and whilst we’re talking about the SSD1306 OLED display controller, here’s a hack that shows just how much you can push your luck with the I2C spec and get some crazy frame rates.

Continue reading “A Simple Guide To Bit Banged I2C On The 6502” →