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Teardown: Alcatel Telic 1 Minitel Terminal

February 16, 2022 by 35 Comments

For British teenagers in the 1980s, the delights of 8-bit computers such as the Sinclair Spectrum, Commodore 64, or BBC Micro were firmly restricted to the offline arena. We would read about the BBS scene on the other side of the Atlantic, but without cheap local calls and with a modem costing a small fortune, the chances of us ever experiencing one was zero. When we took the British school rite of passage of a trip to France though, we were astounded to see that every French person was not merely online, but that they were doing so with a neat little all-in-one terminal. We’d just been introduced to the French Minitel system, and in that minute shared a glimpse of the future.

Un Réseau Trés Français

The Minitel terminal is a small CRT monitor with a fold-down alphanumeric keyboard.
My Alcatel Minitel terminal

In the 1970s and 1980s, so-called videotext systems, terminal-based phoneline access to information services on central computers, were seen as an obvious next step for telephone network operators with an interest in profitable new products. In most countries this resulted in services such as the UK’s Prestel, a subscription service relying on costly hardware, but France Télécom instead pursued the bold path of making the terminals free to subscribers with free access to phone listings and yellow pages, but a business model based on pay-to-use premium services.

Thus, through the 1980s all French households had a Minitel terminal beside the phone, and the service became a runaway success. Ever since seeing Minitel terminals as a tourist I’d been fascinated by the service, so here in the 2020s when a friend was visiting their family in France I asked whether he could pick up an old Minitel terminal for me. Thus I found myself parting with around $25 and being rewarded with a slightly battered Minitel cardboard box containing one of the familiar brown Alcatel terminals. I certainly wasn’t expecting one in its original packaging. Continue reading “Teardown: Alcatel Telic 1 Minitel Terminal” →

First Days With A New Microscope

February 15, 2022 by 35 Comments

For big-ticket purchases, I tend to do a lot of research before I open my wallet. I like to at least have the illusion that when I send my money off to a far-away stranger, I’m likely to get back something of equal value in a reasonable timeframe that does what I want it to do. So I tend more toward the “analysis paralysis” end of the spectrum, where I pore over so many specs and reviews that I end up buying nothing.

While that sounds like a bad thing, and sometimes is, I find that it tends to help me avoid rashly spending money on things that aren’t going to work for me. This is especially true in the area of tools, where while I’m trapped in my analysis loop, I often find a workaround or substitute that’s good enough to get the job done.

For some things, though, there is no substitute, and when you start working with SMD components that you’d have a hard time telling from a grain of salt, you’re probably going to need a microscope. I recently determined that this was where I was in my electronics journey, and now that I’ve worked my way through the analysis and procurement phase of the process, I thought I’d share my first impressions of my microscope, and what it’s like to get used to working with one.

Continue reading “First Days With A New Microscope” →

Predicting The Future: How’s That Working Out?

February 14, 2022 by 73 Comments

With 2022 off to a good start, it is about time to let go of all those New Year’s resolutions that didn’t quite work out. The scale’s needle didn’t reverse, our nails are still bitten, and we are still binge-watching Breaking Bad instead of reading the classics. But, of course, there’s always the future where we just know we’re going to stick to our resolutions. Besides, the future will be replete with fat-eating nanobots, 3D printed nails every morning, and a pill you can take that will make you remember reading Ulysses.

Predicting the future is fraught with peril, which is why launching a new company or product is so risky. However, there have been a few prognosticators that have made some impressive forecasts. For example, in 1922 popular (if not critically acclaimed) author W. L. George wrote a piece for The New York Herald titled “What the World Will be Like In a Hundred Years.” Since May will see that piece’s 100th anniversary, let’s see how he did.

Continue reading “Predicting The Future: How’s That Working Out?” →

NASA Taps Lockheed To Bring Back A Piece Of Mars

February 14, 2022 by 36 Comments

Since NASA’s Mariner spacecraft made the first up-close observations of Mars in 1964, humanity has lobbed a long line of orbiters, landers, and rovers towards the Red Planet. Of course, it hasn’t all been smooth sailing. History, to say nothing of the planet’s surface, is littered with Martian missions that didn’t quite make the grade. But we’ve steadily been getting better, and have even started to push the envelope of what’s possible with interplanetary robotics through ambitious craft like the Ingenuity helicopter.

Yet, after nearly 60 years of studying our frigid neighbor, all we have to show for our work boils down to so many 1s and 0s. That’s not to say the data we’ve collected, both from orbit and on the surface, hasn’t been extremely valuable. But scientists on Earth could do more with a single Martian rock than any robotic rover could ever hope to accomplish. Even still, not so much as a grain of sand has ever been returned from the planet’s dusty surface.

But if everything goes according to plan, that’s about to change. Within the next decade, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) hope to bring the first samples of Martian rocks, soil, and atmospheric gases back to Earth using a series of robotic vehicles. While it’s still unclear when terrestrial scientists should expect delivery of this interplanetary bounty, the first stage of the program is already well underway. The Perseverance rover has started collecting samples and storing them in special tubes for their eventual trip back to Earth. By 2028, another rover will be deployed to collect these samples and load them into a miniature rocket for their trip to space.

Launching the Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV).

Just last week NASA decided to award the nearly $200 million contract to build that rocket, known officially as the Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV), to aerospace giant Lockheed Martin. The MAV will not only make history as the first rocket to lift off from a celestial body other than the Earth, but it’s arguably the most critical component of the sample return mission; as any failure during launch will mean the irrevocable loss of all the samples painstakingly recovered by Perseverance over the previous seven years.

To say this mission constitutes a considerable technical challenge would be an understatement. Not only has humanity never flown a rocket on another planet, but we’ve never even attempted it. No matter what the outcome, once the MAV points its nose to the sky and lights its engines, history is going to be made. But while it will be the first vehicle to make the attempt, engineers and scientists have been floating plans for a potential Martian sample return mission for decades. Continue reading “NASA Taps Lockheed To Bring Back A Piece Of Mars” →

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Hackaday Links: February 13, 2022

February 13, 2022 by 31 Comments

If you need evidence that our outwardly peaceful little neck of the solar system is actually a dangerous place, look no further than the 40 newly launched Starlink satellites that were just clobbered out of orbit. It seems that the SpaceX launch on February 3 was ill-timed, as it coincided with the arrival of energetic plasma from a solar storm that occurred a few days before. The coronal mass ejection followed an M-class flare on the Sun, which was aimed just right to hit just as the 49-satellite addition to the Starlink constellation was being released. This resulted in an expansion of the upper atmosphere sufficient to increase drag on the newborn satellites — up to 50% more drag than previous launches had encountered. Operators put the satellites into safe mode, but it appears that 40 of them have already met a fiery demise, or soon will. Space is a tough place to make a living.

Continue reading “Hackaday Links: February 13, 2022” →

Pick and place reels

Pick And Place Hack Chat Reveals Assembly Secrets

February 11, 2022 by 9 Comments

These days we’ve got powerful free tools to do CAD and circuit design, cheap desktop 3D printers that can knock out bespoke enclosures, and convenient services that will spin up a stack of your PCBs and send them hurtling towards your front door for far less than anyone could have imagined. In short, if you want to build your own professional-looking gadgets, the only limit is your time and ambition. Well, assuming you only want to build a few of them, anyway.

Once you start adding some zeros to the number of units you’re looking to produce, hand assembling PCBs quickly becomes a non-starter. Enter the pick and place machine. This wonder of modern technology can drop all those microscopic components on your board in a fraction of the time it would take a human, and never needs to take a bathroom break. This week Chris Denney stopped by the Hack Chat to talk about these incredible machines and all the minutiae of turning your circuit board design into a finished product.

Chris is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Worthington Assembly, a quick turn electronics manufacturer in South Deerfield, Massachusetts that has been building and shipping custom circuit boards since 1974. He knows a thing or two about PCB production, and looking to help junior and mid-level engineers create easier to manufacture designs, he started the “Pick, Place, Podcast” when COVID hit and in-person tours of the facility were no longer possible. Now he says he can tell when a board comes from a regular listener by how many of his tips make it into the design.

So what should you be doing to make sure your board assembly goes as smoothly as possible? Chris says a lot of it is pretty common sense stuff, like including clear polarity indicators, having a legible silkscreen, and the use of fiducial markers. But some of the tips might come as something of a surprise, such as his advice to stick with the classic green solder mask. While modern board houses might let you select from a rainbow of colors, the fact is that green is what most equipment has been historically designed to work with.

That black PCB might look slick, but can confuse older pick and place machines or conveyors which were designed with the reflectivity of the classic green PCB in mind. It also makes automated optical inspection (AOI) much more difficult, especially with smaller component packages. That said, other colors such as white and red are less of a problem and often just require some fine tuning of the equipment.

He also pulled back the curtain a bit on how the contract manufacturing (CM) world works. While many might have the impression that the PCB game has moved overseas, Chris says orders of less than 10,000 units are still largely handheld by domestic CMs to minimize turnaround time. He also notes that many assembly houses are supported almost entirely by a few key accounts, so while they may be juggling 50 customers, there’s usually just two or three “big fish” that provide 80% of their business. With such a tight-knit group, he cautions CMs can be a bit selective; so if a customer is difficult to work with they can easily find themselves on the short end of the stick.

While the Hack Chat is officially only scheduled for an hour, Chris hung out for closer to three, chatting with community members about everything and anything to do with electronic design and production. His knowledge and passion for the subject was readily apparent, and we’re glad he was able to make time in his schedule to join us.

The Hack Chat is a weekly online chat session hosted by leading experts from all corners of the hardware hacking universe. It’s a great way for hackers connect in a fun and informal way, but if you can’t make it live, these overview posts as well as the transcripts posted to Hackaday.io make sure you don’t miss out.

This Week In Security: Zimbra, Lockbit 2, And Hacking NK

February 11, 2022 by 9 Comments

Unknown attackers have been exploiting a 0-day attack against the Zimbra e-mail suite. Researchers at Volexity first discovered the attack back in December of last year, detected by their monitoring infrastructure. It’s a cross-site scripting (XSS) exploit, such that when opening a malicious link, the JavaScript running on the malicious page can access a logged-in Zimbra instance. The attack campaign uses this exploit to grab emails and attachments and upload them to the attackers. Researchers haven’t been able to positively identify what group is behind the attacks, but a bit of circumstantial evidence points to a Chinese group. That evidence? Time zones. The attacker requests all use the Asia/Hong_Kong time zone, and the timing of all the phishing emails sent lines up nicely with a work-day in that time zone.

Zimbra has responded, confirming the vulnerability and publishing a hotfix for it. The campaign seems to have been targeted specifically against European governments, and various media outlets. If you’re running a Zimbra instance, make sure you’re running at least 8.8.15.1643980846.p30-1.

LockBit 2.0

Because security professionals needed something else to keep us occupied, the LockBit ransomware campaign is back for a round two. This is another ransomware campaign run in the as-a-Service pattern — RAAS. LockBit 2 has caught enough attention, that the FBI has published a FLASH message (PDF) about it. That’s the FBI Liaison Alert System, in the running for the worst acronym. (Help them figure out what the “H” stands for in the comments below!)

Like many other ransomware campaigns, LockBit has a list of language codes that trigger a bail on execution — the Eastern European languages you would expect. Ransomware operators have long tried not to poison their own wells by hitting targets in their own back yards. This one is being reported as also having a Linux module, but it appears that is limited to VMWare ESXi virtual machines. A series of IoCs have been published, and the FBI are requesting any logs, ransom notes, or other evidence possibly related to this campaign to be sent to them if possible. Continue reading “This Week In Security: Zimbra, Lockbit 2, And Hacking NK” →