Palm IIIc LED backlight
Sunday, May 15, 2022 in Computing
What is it? A replacement LED backlight for the popular Palm IIIc handheld computers (“PDAs”) of the early 00s. The original CCFL backlight (high voltage fluorescent tubes in a portable device!) uses a lot of power for very little …
IrDA to RS232
Tuesday, March 22, 2022 in Retrocomputing
What is it? A small PCB, which can receive RS232 over IrDA/IrCOMM (for example from Palm PDAs, Nokia phones, old laptops) and relay it to a RS232 device. Modded ISDN terminal adapter This ELSA MicroLink ISDN terminal adapter was modified to include …
RGB LED nametag
Wednesday, December 29, 2021 in Art
Your browser does not support the video tag. Hardware Specs 1x STM32F7 taking care of power management, USB and display multiplexing 1x ESP32 Pico D4 providing a web interface to build and store animations 20x HC595 shift registers for row and …
Five meter LED wall
Saturday, September 11, 2021 in Art
What is it? At the Hacken Open Air 2021 (Gifhorn, Germany) event, this 5m by 3m large LED display was built. It consists of 50 individual LED strings with 50 WS2812 LEDs each (50x50 pixels). A central Raspberry Pi feeds 3 seperate STM32F722 via …
ATAPI Audio-CD player
Monday, July 26, 2021 in Hacks
What is it? ATAPIMega is a hardware project which allows regular (P)ATA CD/DVD drives to be used as a standalone Audio-CD player. The PCB accepts (regulated!) 12V DC power via a 5.5mm/2.1mm barrel jack and outputs 12V/5V for the CD drive. The …
TCP/IP for Casio calculators
Monday, July 12, 2021 in Hacks
What is it? fxIP is a port of uIP 1.0 to Casio fx-9750/fx-9860 calculators. It requires calculators with a SuperH SH4a CPU, needs quite a bit of SRAM. fxIP connects to IP networks via SLIP encapsulation over the 3-pin 2.5mm 5V serial port/UART. …
eMMC (micro)SD card
Monday, December 21, 2020 in Computing
What is it? These PCBs contain eMMC storage ICs, which are electrically compatible with SD and microSD interfaces. They use a different protocol and (depending on the type of eMMC IC used) can be more reliable and faster. Many (but not all!) SD card …
ISA8019 NIC
Thursday, November 12, 2020 in Retrocomputing
What is it? ISA NE2000-compatible network card Using RTL8019 chipset, 10Base-T full duplex ethernet Can be configured via jumpers, EEPROM or full ISA PnP. Compatible with 8-bit XT machines. Optimized for automated assembly at JLC. Plug & Play …
Programmable logic in PHP
Sunday, November 08, 2020 in Hacks
What is it? Parallel ROMs (OTP-ROMs, EPROMs, EEPROMs, NOR flash, etc.) can be used as simple, programmable logic devices. They can be programmed to hold a lookup-table / bit stream, which will emulate logic functions (like 74-series logic) by …
ISA-over-USB
Wednesday, October 14, 2020 in Retrocomputing
What is it? This project allows the use of ISA extension cards on a modern computer over a USB interface. The main project goal was to learn about the ISA bus, not to build a polished product. USB limitations USB has inherent limits to the minimum …