LED Matrix Built For M.2 Interface

May 24, 2025 by Lewin Day 8 Comments

The M.2 slot is usually used for solid-state storage devices. However, [bitluni] had another fun idea for how to use the interface. He built an M.2 compatible LED matrix that adds a little light to your motherboard.

[bitluni] built a web tool for sending images to the matrix.

[bitluni] noted that the M.2 interface is remarkably flexible, able to offer everything from SATA connections to USB, PCI Express, and more. For this project, he elected to rely on PCI Express communication, using a WCH CH382 chip to translate from that interface to regular old serial communication.

He then hooked up the serial interface to a CH32V208 microcontroller, which was tasked with driving a 12×20 monochrome LED matrix. Even better, he was even able to set the microcontroller up to make it programmable upon first plugging it into a machine, thanks to its bootloader supporting serial programming out of the box. Some teething issues required rework and modification, but soon enough, [bitluni] had the LEDs blinking with the best of them. He then built a web-based drawing tool that could send artwork over serial direct to the matrix.

While most of us are using our M.2 slots for more traditional devices, it’s neat to see this build leverage them for another use. We could imagine displays like this becoming a neat little add-on to a blingy computer build for those with a slot or two to spare. Meanwhile, if you want to learn more about M.2, we’ve dived into the topic before.

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C64 on desk with NFC TeensyROM and game token

TeensyROM NFC Game Loading On The C64

May 23, 2025 by Heidi Ulrich 6 Comments

When retro computing nostalgia meets modern wireless wizardry, you get a near-magical tap-to-load experience. It’ll turn your Commodore 64 into a console-like system, complete with physical game cards. Inspired by TapTo for MiSTer, this latest hack brings NFC magic to real hardware using the TeensyROM. It’s been out there for a while, but it might not have caught your attention as of yet. Developed by [Sensorium] and showcased by YouTuber [StatMat], this project is a tactile, techie love letter to the past.

At the heart of it is the TeensyROM cartridge, which – thanks to some clever firmware modding – now supports reading NFC tags. These are writable NTag215 cards storing the path to game files on the Teensy’s SD card. Tap a tag to the NFC reader, and the TeensyROM boots your game. No need to fumble with LOAD “*”,8,1. That’s not only cool, it’s convenient – especially for retro demo setups.

What truly sets this apart is the reintroduction of physical tokens. Each game lives on its own custom-designed card, styled after PC Engine HuCards or printed with holographic vinyl. It’s a tangible, collectible gimmick that echoes the golden days of floppies and cartridges – but with 2020s tech underneath. Watch it here.

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Running DOOM On An Atari ST

May 22, 2025 by Heidi Ulrich 27 Comments

If you grew up with a beige Atari ST on your desk and a faint feeling of being left out once Doom dropped in 1993, brace yourself — the ST strikes back. Thanks to [indyjonas]’s incredible hack, the world now has a working port of DOOM for the Atari STe, and yes — it runs. It’s called STDOOM, and even though it needs a bit of acceleration or emulation to perform, it’s still an astonishing feat of retro-software necromancy.

[indyjonas] did more than just recompile and run: he stripped out chunks of PC-centric code, bent GCC to his will (cheers to Thorsten Otto’s port), and shoehorned Doom into a machine never meant to handle it. That brings us a version that runs on a stock machine with 4MB RAM, in native ST graphics modes, including a dithered 16-colour mode that looks way cooler than it should. The emotional punch? This is a love letter to the 13-year-old Jonas who watched Doom from the sidelines while his ST chugged along faithfully. A lot of us were that kid.

Sound is still missing, and original 8MHz hardware won’t give you fluid gameplay just yet — but hey, it’s a start. Want to dive in deeper? Read [indyjonas]’ thread on X.

Escaping US Tech Giants Leads European YouTuber To Open Source

May 17, 2025 by Tyler August 113 Comments

The video (embedded below) by [TechAltar] is titled “1 Month without US tech giants“, but it could have been titled “1 Month with Open Source Tools” — because, as it turns out, once you get out of the ecosystem set up by the US tech giants, you’re into the world of open source software (OSS) whether you want to be or not.

From a (German-made) Tuxedo laptop running their own Linux distro to a Fairphone with e/OS (which is French), an open version of Android, [TechAlter] is very keen to point out whenever Europeans are involved, which is how we learned that KDE has a physical headquarters, and that it’s in Berlin. Who knew?

He also gives his experiences with NextCloud (also German), can be used as an OSS alternative Google Workspaces that we’ve written about before, but then admits that he was the sole user on his instance. To which one must question: if you’re the sole user, why do you need a cloud-based collaborative environment? To try it out before getting collaborators involved, presumably.

Regardless what you think of the politics motivating this video, it’s great to see open source getting greater traction. While [TechAltar] was looking for European alternatives, part of the glory of open source is that it doesn’t matter where you’re from, you can still contribute. (Unless you’re Russian.) Have you found yourself using more open source software (or hardware) of late? Do you think the current political climate could lead to a broadening of its reach? Is this the year of the linux desktop? Let us know what you think in the comments. Continue reading “Escaping US Tech Giants Leads European YouTuber To Open Source” →

Turning A Chromebox Into A Proper Power-Efficient PC

May 14, 2025 by Maya Posch 21 Comments

Google’s ChromeOS and associated hardware get a lot of praise for being easy to manage and for providing affordable hardware for school and other educational settings. It’s also undeniable that their locked-down nature forms a major obstacle and provides limited reusability.

That is unless you don’t mind doing a bit of hacking. The Intel Core i3-8130U based Acer CXI3 Chromebox that the [Hardware Haven] YouTube channel got their mittens on is a perfect example.

The Acer CXI3 in all its 8th-gen Intel Core i3 glory. (Credit: Hardware Haven, YouTube)

This is a nice mini PC, with modular SODIMM RAM, an NVMe storage M.2 slot as well as a slot for the WiFi card (or SATA adapter). After resetting the Chromebox to its default configuration and wiping the previous user, it ran at just a few watts idle at the desktop. As this is just a standard x86_64 PC, the only thing holding it back from booting non-ChromeOS software is the BIOS, which is where [MrChromebox]‘s exceedingly useful replacement BIOSes for supported systems come into play, with easy to follow instructions.

Reflashing the Acer CXI3 unit was as easy as removing the write-protect screw from the mainboard, running the Firmware Utility Script from a VT2 terminal (Ctrl+Alt+F2 on boot and chronos as login) and flashing either the RW_LEGACY or UEFI ROM depending on what is supported and desired. This particular Chromebox got the full UEFI treatment, and after upgrading the NVMe SSD, Debian-based Proxmox installed without a hitch. Interestingly, idle power dropped from 2.6 watts under ChromeOS to 1.6 watts under Proxmox.

If you have a Chromebox that’s supported by [MrChromebox], it’s worth taking a poke at, with some solutions allowing you to even dualboot ChromeOS and another OS if that’s your thing.

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Printable Pegboard PC Shows Off The RGB

May 1, 2025 by Tyler August 19 Comments

Sometimes it seems odd that we would spend hundreds (or thousands) on PC components that demand oodles of airflow, and stick them in a little box, out of sight. The fine folks at Corsair apparently agree, because they’ve released files for an open-frame pegboard PC case on Printables.

According to the write-up on their blog, these prints have held up just fine with ordinary PLA– apparently there’s enough airflow around the parts that heat sagging isn’t the issue we would have suspected. ATX and ITX motherboards are both supported, along with a few power supply form factors. If your printer is smaller, the ATX mount is per-sectioned for your convenience. Their GPU brackets can accommodate beefy dual- and triple-slot models. It’s all there, if you want to unbox and show off your PC build like the work of engineering art it truly is.

Of course, these files weren’t released from the kindness of Corsair’s corporate heart– they’re meant to be used with fancy pegboard desks the company also sells. Still to their credit, they did release the files under a CC4.0-Attribution-ShareAlike license. That means there’s nothing stopping an enterprising hacker from remixing this design for the ubiquitous SKÅDIS or any other perfboard should they so desire.

We’ve covered artful open-cases before here on Hackaday, but if you prefer to hide the expensive bits from dust and cats, this mid-century box might be more your style. If you’d rather no one know you own a computer at all, you can always do the exact opposite of this build, and hide everything inside the desk.

ASUS GPU Uses Gyroscope To Warn For Sagging Cards

April 28, 2025 by Maya Posch 51 Comments

It’s not really an understatement to say that over the years videocards (GPUs) — much like CPU coolers — have become rather chonky. Unfortunately, the PCIe slots they plug into were never designed with multi-kilogram cards in mind. All this extra weight is of course happily affected by gravity.

The problem has gotten to the point that the ASUS ROG Astral RTX 5090 card added a Bosch Sensortec BMI323 inertial measurement unit (IMU) to provide an accelerometer and angular rate (gyroscope) measurements, as reported by [Uniko’s Hardware] (in Chinese, see English [Videocardz] article).

There are so-called anti-sag brackets that provide structural support to the top of the GPU where it isn’t normally secured. But since this card weighs in at over 6 pounds (3 kilograms) for the air cooled model, it appears the bracket wasn’t enough, and active monitoring was necessary.

The software allows you to set a sag angle at which you receive a notification, which would presumably either allow you to turn off the system and readjust the GPU, or be forewarned when it is about to rip itself loose from the PCIe slot and crash to the bottom of the case.