Sir Clive Sinclair and his company were notorious for pushing the limits of electronic parts in search of a low price, and his ZX series 8-bit computers were fine examples …read more
If you used a scientific calculator in the 1970s or 1980s, there was a fair chance that it worked differently from almost every calculator you see today. Instead of typing: …read more
[Scott Baker] bought a TRS-80 Color Computer off eBay some five years ago. He’d always intended to add a CoCoVGA or CoCoDV upgrade to hook it up to a monitor, …read more
Despite the wide variety of fabrics used for our clothing, they all share the property of not being living tissues. This could be due to them never having been part …read more
Disk Defragmenter was a wonderful utility that Microsoft included with Windows back in the day. Back then, you’d use it to theoretically speed up disk access. Today, you can run …read more
After just a little over 25 years of the Haiku project trying to keep the BeOS spirit alive, the team has now released Beta 6. The spicy details of what …read more
The Claymore mine is a rather fearsome weapon of war, using explosives to blast a cone of shrapnel towards advancing enemies. It’s not really something you should try and build …read more
In a recent video [Sqwerks] does a deep-dive into the problem of disintegrating plastic enclosures of Nintendo DS consoles. These original NDS handheld consoles have a metallic-like coating that appears …read more
Want to feel the heat of nearby fire, explosions, or radiation? Or even just the gentle warmth and breeze of a sunny day in the wasteland? If you said yes, …read more
There are many ways to detect stress in an individual. You can use self-reporting checklists, you could try and measure various vital signs like respiratory rate and pulse and infer …read more
Old-school teletext with its pixelated text and block graphics may now be largely a thing of the past, but that doesn’t mean it’s without enthusiasts or there’s no more life …read more
A typical response to the previous article on why PLA filament is so darn brittle. This has led some people to not use PLA filament at all, while others promote …read more
If you’ve heard the high-pitched whine or buzz from an electronic device when a current-carrying inductor is vibrating, you’ll know how unpleasant it can be. It’s common in all kinds …read more
A few years ago Dyson released a desk lamp that could slide up and down, in and out, balancing itself at every position. [Steven Bennett] saw that lamp and wanted …read more
Modern heat pumps, of which air conditioners are a subset, seem like simple machines in theory. They just move heat from one place to another. But in order to operate …read more
A perennial in the esoteric operating system space is ReactOS, a project with its roots in the 1990s which is doing a pretty good job of creating an open source …read more
Perhaps the most annoying kinds of faults are those that involve expensive equipment that just sit around in a cupboard, only for them to just stop working at all. Such …read more
The hope is always that a good business card will leave a good impression. For those in the electronics field, they also serve as an opportunity to showcase creative design …read more
When it comes to building real-world flying vehicles, testing can be arduous and expensive. You have to find somewhere to fly, then you have to contend with environmental conditions and …read more
The average hot water is a relatively simple appliance to understand. It uses gas or electricity to dump energy into water in the form of heat, keeping it at a …read more