The first transistors were point contact devices, not far from the cats-whiskers of early radio receivers. They were fragile and expensive, and their performance was not very high. The transistor w…

USB power has become ubiquitous — everything from phones to laptops all use it  — so why not your lab bench? This is what [EEEngineer4Ever] set out to do with the BenchVolt PD USB adjus…

Discord had a data breach back on September 20th, via an outsourced support contractor. It seems it was a Zendesk instance that was accessed for 58 hours through a compromised contractor user accou…

Everyone knows that Weird Al lampooned computers in a famous parody song (It’s All About the Pentiums). But if you want more hardcore (including more hardcore language, so if you are offended…

The nights are drawing in for Europeans, and Elliot Williams is joined this week by Jenny List for an evening podcast looking at the past week in all things Hackaday. After reminding listeners of t…

It’s always a pleasure to find a hardware hacker who you haven’t seen before, and page back through their work. [Bettina Neumryr]’s niche comes in building projects from old elect…

Back when the IBM PC was new, laying out an ISA board was a daunting task. You probably didn’t have a very fast ‘scope, if you had one at all. Board layout was almost certainly done on …

Anyone who has ever snapped a chain or a crank knows how much torque a bicycle’s power train has to absorb on a daily basis; it’s really more than one might naively expect. For that rea…

Researchers call it “hallucination”; you might more accurately refer to it as confabulation, hornswaggle, hogwash, or just plain BS. Anyone who has used an LLM has encountered it; some …

In this video our hacker [Inkbox] shows us how to create a computer game that runs directly on computer hardware, without an operating system! [Inkbox] briefly explains what BIOS is, then covers ho…

Electret capsules can be found in some of the highest quality microphones for studio use, as well as in some of the very cheapest microphone capsules on the market. More care and attention has gone…

[JohnAudioTech] noticed there was no bass on the TV at his parents’ house. That led to the discovery of a blown fuse and a corresponding repair. When he opened it up, he could smell that some…

Last week, we were talking about how glad we are to be the type who by-and-large understands technology, and how it’s becoming more and more difficult to simply get along otherwise. We thought we h…

There is likely to be more than one of you who has eyed up a child’s toy synthesizer in a second hand store, and considered making something more impressive with it. In many cases these instr…

As Ethernet became the world-wide standard for wired networking, there was one nagging problem. You already have to plug in the network cable. But then you have to also plug in a power cable. That …

CRT monitors: there’s nothing quite like ’em. But did you know that video projectors used to use CRTs? A trio of monochrome CRTs, in fact: one for each color; red, green, and blue. By t…

Bose SoundTouch speakers were introduced in 2013, offering the ability to connect to online streaming services and play back audio on multiple speakers simultaneously using the accompanying mobile …

USB-C as the “One Cable To Rule Them All” has certainly been a success. While USB-A is still around for now, most of us have breathed a hefty sigh of relief with the passing of micro-US…

Typeface (such as Times New Roman) refers to the design that gives a set of letters, numbers, and symbols their signature “look”. Font, on the other hand, is a specific implementation o…

When it comes to FDM 3D prints and making them stronger, most of the focus is on the outer walls and factors like their layer adhesion. However, paying some attention to the often-ignored insides o…

Every time we check in on [Project326], he’s doing something different with X-rays. This week, he has a passive X-ray imager. On paper, it looks great. No special tube is required and no high…