Hackaday Links: April 14, 2024

April 14, 2024 by Dan Maloney 10 Comments

The Great American Eclipse v2.0 has come and gone, sadly without our traveling to the path of totality as planned; family stuff. We did get a report from friends in Texas that it was just as spectacular there as expected, with the bonus of seeing a solar flare off the southwest limb of the disk at totality. Many people reported seeing the same thing, which makes us a bit jealous — OK, a lot jealous. Of course, this presented an opportunity to the “Well, ackchyually” crowd to point out that there were no solar flares or coronal mass ejections at the time, so what people saw wasn’t an exquisitely timed and well-positioned solar flare but rather a well-timed and exquisitely positioned solar prominence. Glad we cleared that up. Either way, people in the path of totality saw the Sun belching out gigatons of plasma while we had to settle for 27% totality.

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The World’s First Microprocessor: F-14 Central Air Data Computer

January 30, 2024 by Maya Posch 33 Comments

When the Grumman F-14 Tomcat first flew in 1970, it was a marvel. With its variable-sweep wing, twin tail, and sleek lines, it quickly became one of the most iconic jet fighters of the era — and that was before a little movie called Top Gun hit theaters.

A recent video by [Alexander the ok] details something that was far less well-documented about the plane, namely its avionics. The Tomcat was the first aircraft to use a microprocessor-driven flight system, as well as the first microprocessor unit (MPU) ever demonstrated, beating the Intel 4004 by a year. In 1971, one of the designers of the F-14’s Central Air Data Computer (CADC) – [Ray Holt] – wrote an article for Computer Design magazine that was naturally immediately classified by the Navy until released to the public in 1998.

The MPU in the CADC is called the Garrett AiResearch MP944, and consists of a number of ICs that together form a full computer. These were combined in the CADC with additional electronics to control many elements of the airplane automatically, including the weapons system and the variable-sweep wing configuration. This was considered to be essential based on experiences with the F-111 and its very complex electromechanical flight computer, which was an evolution of the 1950s-era Bendix CADC.

The video goes through the differences between the 4-bit Intel 4004 and the 20-bit MP944, questioning whether the 4004 is even really an MPU, the capabilities of the MP944 and its system architecture. Ultimately the question of ‘first’ and that of ‘what is an MPU’ will always be somewhat fuzzy depending on your definitions, but there is no denying that the MP944 was a marvel of large-scale integration.

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Hackaday Links: January 14, 2024

January 14, 2024 by Dan Maloney 1 Comment

How long does it take a team of rocket scientists to remove two screws? When the screws they’re working on are keeping a priceless sample of asteroid safe, it’s about three months. That’s how long NASA has been working on the OSIRIS-REx sample return canister, which came back to Earth from asteroid Bennu back in September. The container was crammed full of asteroid bits, thanks in part to an overly energetic impact between the sample-collecting boom and Bennu. There was so much stuff that planetary scientists were able to recover about 70 grams of material that was covering the outside of the sealed container; this must have been a boon to the engineers, who got to figure out how to open the jammed cover of the container without anyone breathing down their necks for samples to study. The problem was a pair of stuck fasteners out of the 35 holding the lid on the container; the solution was far more complicated than a spritz of WD-40 and a little bit of heating with an oxy-acetylene torch. Engineers had to design two “clamp-like tools” and test them on a mock-up to make sure they wouldn’t contaminate the sample. We’d love to know more about these tools; trust us, we’ll be looking into this closely. If we find anything, a full article will be forthcoming.

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Teardown Of FGM-148 Javelin Missile’s Guidance Computer

December 21, 2023 by Maya Posch 45 Comments

You know it’s a good teardown when [Michel] starts off by saying to not ask him where exactly he got the guidance section of an FGM-148 Javelin from. This shoulder-launched anti-tank guided missile (ATGM) is a true marvel of engineering that has shown its chops during recent world events. As a fire-and-forget type guided missile it is designed to use the internal IR tracker to maintain a constant lock on the target, using its guidance system to stay exactly on track.

FGM-148 Javelin schematic overview. (Source: U.S. Army, FM 3-22.37)

Initially designed in 1989 and introduced into service in 1996, it has all the ceramic-and-gold styling which one would expect from a military avionics package from the era. Tasked with processing the information from the IR sensor, and continuously adjusting the fins to keep it on course, the two sandwiched, 3 mm thick PCBs that form the main section of the guidance computer are complemented by what looks like a milled aluminium section which holds a sensor and a number of opamps, all retained within the carbon-fiber shell of the missile.

In the video [Michel] looks at the main components, finding datasheets for many commercially available parts, with the date codes on the parts confirming that it’s a late 80s to early 90s version, using presumably a TMS34010 as the main CPU on the DSP board for its additional graphics-related instructions. Even though current production FGM-148s are likely to use far more modern parts, this is a fun look at what was high-end military gear in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

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5Ghoul: The 14 Shambling 5G Flaws Used For Disruptive Attacks On Smartphones

December 13, 2023 by Maya Posch 5 Comments

A team of researchers from the ASSET Research Group in Singapore have published the details of a collection of vulnerabilities in the fifth generation mobile communication system (5G) used with smartphones and many other devices. These fourteen vulnerabilities are detailed in this paper and a PoC detailing an attack using a software defined radio (SDR) is provided on GitHub. The core of the PoC attack involves creating a malicious 5G base station (gNB), which nearby 5G modems will seek to communicate with, only for these vulnerabilities to be exploited, to the point where a hard reset (e.g. removal of SIM card) of the affected device may be required.

Hardware Setup for 5Ghoul PoC testing and fuzzer evaluation. (Credit: Matheus E. Garbelini et al., 2023)

Another attack mode seeks to downgrade the target device’s wireless connection, effectively denying the connection to a 5G network and forcing them to connect to an alternative network (2G, 3G, 4G, etc.). Based on the affected 5G modems, the researchers estimate that about 714 smartphone models are at risk of these attacks. Naturally, not just smartphones use these 5G modem chipsets, but also various wireless routers, IoT devices, IP cameras and so on, all of which require the software these modems to be patched.

Most of the vulnerabilities concern the radio resource control (RCC) procedure, caused by flaws in the modem firmware. Android smartphones (where supported) should receive patches for 5Ghoul later this month, but when iPhone devices get patched is still unknown.

Hackaday Links: May 14, 2023

May 14, 2023 by Dan Maloney 13 Comments

It’s been a while since we heard from Dmitry Rogozin, the always-entertaining former director of Roscosmos, the Russian space agency. Not content with sending mixed messages about the future of the ISS amid the ongoing war in Ukraine, or attempting to hack a mothballed German space telescope back into action, Rogozin is now spouting off that the Apollo moon landings never happened. His doubts about NASA’s seminal accomplishment apparently started while he was still head of Roscosmos when he tasked a group with looking into the Apollo landings. Rogozin’s conclusion from the data his team came back with isn’t especially creative; whereas some Apollo deniers go to great lengths to find “scientific proof” that we were never there, Rogozin just concluded that because NASA hasn’t ever repeated the feat, it must never have happened.

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Hackaday Podcast 214: Jet Engine Hair Dryer, Comic Sans Type Balls, And Belief In Graphene

April 14, 2023 by Kristina Panos 4 Comments

This week, Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Contributor Emeritus Kristina Panos gushed about all the best hacks of the previous week. But first, a contest! That’s right — hot on the heels of the Low Power Challenge comes the Op Amp Challenge, sponsored by Digi-Key. You have between now and June 6th to dip your toes into the warm waters of analog and show us what you’ve got. Will it be a musical hack? Will you seek high analog precision? We can’t wait to see.

Kristina definitely did not get What’s That Sound this week, which honestly reminded her of a cartoon character getting a piano dropped on them, except the sounds were in reverse order. Then it’s on to the hacks, beginning with a way to make an IBM Selectric typewriter use Comic Sans, a project that’s sure to make you a believer in graphene, and a miniature MNT for every (cargo) pocket.

From there we take a look at a really cool indicator from a 1960s RAF aeroplane and investigate why your multimeter might be lying to you. Finally, we discuss the gargantuan task of building an AR system to rival Google Glass, and the merits of taking a lot of pictures as you go about your hacks.

Check out the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

Download and savor at your leisure.