Hackerboards: Making Finding The Right Single-Board Computer Easy

December 2, 2022 by Maya Posch 18 Comments

The great thing about the wide availability of single-board computers (SBCs) is that it offers such a large selection of options, in terms of CPU performance, GPU features, RAM size, I/O options and much more. This is however also the largest issue, especially with the annual surge of new boards with new feature sets. Trying to make sense of all these offerings is the recently overhauled Board-DB, also known as Hackerboards.

As [Martijn Braam] explains in the blog post on the changes, a major upgrade over the old Hackerboards (which we covered in 2016) is a far more extensive set of parameters that can be filtered against. This makes a fine-grained selection of detailed features significantly easier, which is also reflected in the technical specifications comparison feature. With over 450 active entries there are a lot of boards that can already be filtered on, but manufacturers are invited to take up contact to add further entries, which should keep the list up to date.

Incidentally, if you’d like to know how [Martijn] gets those gorgeous PCB photographs, he wrote a whole a separate write-up that goes over his camera setup.

Thanks to [Vlad] for the tip.

A grey keyboard with orange and dark grey accents is angled away from the camera. The keys nearby are clearly distinguishable in the foreground but blurry toward the back/right. The keyboard is quite thick as it also contains a computer motherboard.

Mechanical Keyboard With A Framework Inside

November 30, 2022 by Navarre Bartz 31 Comments

Like the Commodore 64 and other keyboard computers of yore, the [Elevated Systems]’s CJ64 fits all of its processing and I/O into a single keyboard-shaped package.

This iteration of the project takes it to the next level with an enclosure milled out of aluminum instead of the mere 3D printed enclosure of the previous versions. With a Framework mainboard, the ports are configurable via the Framework expansion card system giving you even more options to customize this build. To round it out, this keyboard PC doesn’t scrimp on the keyboard part either with mechanical switches and MT3 profile keycaps.

If you’d like to build one of these for yourself, [Elevated Systems] has uploaded the 3D printed enclosure files to his GitHub repository. The files for machining are available as well, but only to patrons.

For some more Framework-based mods, check out this Framework Tablet, the Framedeck, or this other retro-inspired Framework build. If you want an all-in-keyboard slabtop, then maybe check out Are Slabtops the Future of Computing?

Continue reading “Mechanical Keyboard With A Framework Inside” →

The bottom half of a MacBook Air on a purple and pink background has severed wires drawn out of its back to indicate its lack of a screen.

Are Slabtops The Future Of Computing?

November 25, 2022 by Navarre Bartz 114 Comments

The most popular computer ever was the Commodore 64 with its computer-in-a-keyboard form factor. If you have a longing for a keyboard computer with more modern internals, one of the easiest solutions today is to pull the screen off a laptop.

[Umar Shakir] wanted to see what the fuss was about regarding a recent Apple patent and took the top lid off of his M1 Macbook Air and turned it into a “slabtop.” The computer works great wired to a monitor but can also be used wirelessly via AirPlay. The approach doesn’t come without its downsides, of course. Newer MacBooks can’t access recovery mode without the built-in screen, and some older models had their WiFi antennas in the top lid, so making one into a slabtop will leave you desk-bound.

While [Shakir] focuses on MacBooks, this approach should work with any laptop. Apparently, it’s a cottage industry in China already. Back in the day, my own daily driver was a Pentium-powered laptop with its broken LCD (and lid) removed. It worked great with whatever CRT was nearby.

If you’re looking for an off-the-shelf keyboard computer of your own, you might want to check out the Raspberry Pi 400.

When Pi Supply Falls Short, Thin Clients Stand Tall For Home Automation And Low Power Computing

November 25, 2022 by Ryan Flowers 80 Comments

Do you need a cheap, small computer for a low power computing project? Historically, many of us would reach straight for a Raspberry Pi, even if we didn’t absolutely need the GPIO. But with prices elevated and supplies in the dumps, [Andreas Spiess] decided that it was time to look for alternatives to now-expensive Pi’s which you can see in the video below the break.

Many simply use the Pi for its software ecosystem, its lower power requirements, and diminutive size. [Andreas] has searched eBay, looking for thin PC clients that can be had for as little as $10-15. A few slightly more expensive units were also chosen, and in the video some comparisons are made. How do these thin clients compare to a Pi for power consumption, computing power, and cost? The results may surprise you!

Software is another issue, since many Pi projects rely on Raspbian, a Pi-specific ARM64 Linux distribution. Since Raspbian is based on Debian, [Andreas] chose it as a basis for experimentation. He thoughtfully included such powerful software as Proxmox for virtualization, IOTstack, and Home Assistant, walking the viewer through each step of running Home Assistant on x86-64 hardware and noting the differences between the Linux distributions.

All in all, if you’ve ever considered stepping out of the Pi ecosystem and into general Linux computing, this tutorial will be an excellent starting point. Of course [Andreas] isn’t the first to bark up this tree, and we featured another thin client running Klipper for your 3D printer earlier this month. Have you found your own perfect Pi replacement in these Pi-less times? Let us know in the comments below.

Continue reading “When Pi Supply Falls Short, Thin Clients Stand Tall For Home Automation And Low Power Computing” →

It’s MacOS. On An Unmodified Wii!

November 24, 2022 by Jenny List 16 Comments

We’re used to the so-called “Hackintoshes”, non-Apple hardware running MacOS. One we featured recently was even built into the case of a Nintendo Wii. But [Dandu] has gone one better than that, by running MacOS on an unmodified Wii, original Nintendo hardware (French, Google Translate link).

How has this seemingly impossible task been achieved? Seasoned Mac enthusiasts will remember the days when Apple machines used PowerPC processors, and the Wii uses a PowerPC chip that’s a close cousin of those used in the Mac G3 series of computers. Since the Wii can run a Linux-based OS, it can therefore run Mac-on-Linux, providing in theory an environment in which it can host one of the PowerPC versions of MacOS.

The installation sequence has more than its share of difficulties, but eventually he was able to get the Wii running MacOS 9, the last classic MacOS. It runs DOOM, Internet Explorer 5, and iTunes even on these limited resources, though the last package had display and sound issues. He then tries a MacOS X build, but without success.

It’s fair to say that this is not exactly a way to get your hands on a cheap Mac, and remains more of an exercise in pushing a console beyond its original function. But it’s still an interesting diversion, and maybe someone will in time make a MacOS X version work on the Wii too. If you’re curious about the Mac-in-a-Wii that inspired this work, you can see it here.

The 13.5 Million Core Computer

November 23, 2022 by Al Williams 55 Comments

Having a dual- or quad-core CPU is not very exotic these days and CPUs with 12 or even 16 cores aren’t that rare. The Andromeda from Cerebras is a supercomputer with 13.5 million cores. The company claims it is one of the largest AI supercomputers ever built (but not the largest) and can perform 120 Petaflops of “dense compute.”

We aren’t sure about the methodology, but they also claim more than one exaflop of “AI computing.” The computer has a fabric backplane that can handle 96.8 terabits per second between nodes. According to a post on Extreme Tech, the core technology is a 3-plane wafer processor, WSE-2. One plane is for communications, one holds 40 GB of static RAM, and the math plane has 850,000 independent cores and 3.4 million floating point units.

The data is sent to the cores and collected by a bank of 64-core AMD EPYC 3 processors. Andromeda is optimized to handle sparse matrix computations. The company claims that the performance scales “almost linearly.” That is, as you double the number of cores used, you roughly half the total run time.

The machine is available for remote use and cost about $35 million to build. Since it uses 500 kW at peak run times, it isn’t free to operate, either. Extreme Tech notes that the Frontier computer at Oak Ridge National Labs is both larger and more precise, but it cost $600 million, so you’d expect it to be more capable.

Most homebrew “supercomputers” we see are more for learning how to work with clusters than trying to hit this sort of performance. Of course, if you have a modern graphics card, OpenCL and CUDA will let you do some of this, too, but at a much lesser scale.

Home-Built CPU Runs With Home-Built Toolchain

November 22, 2022 by Dave Rowntree 14 Comments

A few years ago [Takaya Saeki] and fellow students of the University of Tokyo, were given a very limited instruction during their ‘CPU exercise’ class, along the lines of:

Take this ray-tracing program written in OCaml and run it on your CPU implemented on an FPGA

Splitting into groups to cover the CPU, FPU, simulator tool, and compiler toolchain, the students started with designing a RISC ISA, then designed a CPU around that. You can follow along with the retrospective writeup of the class, then dive into the GitHub pages for each of the components of the system, although the commentary is mainly in Japanese. Hey, you can google translate right? Continue reading “Home-Built CPU Runs With Home-Built Toolchain” →