Webtagr - Technology News Summarizer

Revisited: JTAG 'Hacking' of the Original Xbox After 20 Years

2025-01-20

This blog post details the author's successful attempt to 'hack' the original Xbox using its Intel Pentium III CPU's JTAG interface. The original Xbox's security relied on a 512-byte secret bootrom hidden within the NVIDIA MCPX Southbridge. While early researchers considered using the CPU's JTAG capabilities, it was deemed impractical due to the TRST# pin being grounded. The author designed a custom CPU interposer PCB to circumvent this, and using a vintage CodeTAP debugger, successfully dumped the secret bootrom via JTAG, proving a 20-year-old theory. This work is historically significant and provides valuable experience and resources for x86 JTAG research.

(blog.ret2.io)

Hardware Original Xbox

Hacking the Yamaha DX9 to Mimic the DX7

2025-01-19

A vintage synth enthusiast reverse-engineered and rewrote the firmware ROM of the Yamaha DX9, significantly enhancing its functionality to closely match the DX7. By cleverly overcoming hardware limitations and restoring missing features like two additional operators, the hacker enabled the DX9 to load and play DX7 patches. Fixes included improved MIDI handling and a pitch envelope generator. The project's source code is publicly available, showcasing impressive technical skill and passion for vintage synthesizers, even if the target audience is small. This unexpected feat delighted the retro synth community.

(ajxs.me)

Hardware firmware hacking vintage synthesizer

Calculator Forensics: Uncovering Chip Design Secrets

2025-01-19

This article introduces 'calculator forensics,' a technique that analyzes the results of embedded algorithms in calculators to identify the origins and evolution of different calculator chip designs. The author devised a standardized algorithm and compiled results from numerous calculators, creating comparison tables to trace the design history and technological lineage of calculator chips. This technique is significant for studying calculator history and chip design, particularly useful when official documentation is scarce, enabling researchers to understand the relationships between different calculators.

(www.rskey.org)

Hardware chip design

ThinkPad's Iconic TrackPoint is Gone (From Some Models)

2025-01-19

Lenovo has removed the iconic TrackPoint from its new ThinkPad X9 Aura Edition laptops. While the TrackPoint will remain in other ThinkPad models, this decision marks a significant shift. Lenovo argues the TrackPoint, a legacy design, doesn't resonate with all demographics in a predominantly touchpad world. The new Aura Edition laptops boast Intel's Lunar Lake processors, premium OLED displays, and local AI powered by Meta's Llama 3.0, aiming for broader market appeal.

(www.pcworld.com)

Hardware

Reverse Engineering VanMoof's E-Shifter: Decoding the Mystery

2025-01-19

A hacker successfully reverse-engineered the communication protocol of VanMoof's e-bike shifter. Using a logic analyzer and PulseView, they determined a 9600bps data rate and identified the use of Modbus RTU. Analysis of request and response packets revealed the bike sends register read commands, with the shifter returning data. While the exact register meanings remain unclear, this work provides a crucial foundation for building a replacement module to address the shifter's notorious unreliability, a major factor in VanMoof's bankruptcy.

(mikecoats.com)

Hardware e-shifter

AMD Instinct™ MI300X Boosts Ansys Fluent CFD Performance

2025-01-19

AMD released a blog post showcasing the impressive performance of its Instinct™ MI300X accelerator in Ansys Fluent computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations. Benchmarks using four benchmark models (sedan car, aircraft wing, exhaust system, and F1 race car) on both AMD MI300X and NVIDIA H100 platforms showed up to a 10% improvement in time-to-solution for the MI300X. This is attributed to the MI300X's 192GB HBM3 memory capacity and high memory bandwidth, along with AMD Infinity Cache™. The blog details the testing methodology, system configurations, and a step-by-step guide to installing and running the benchmarks. The MI300X proves to be an excellent choice for applications requiring steady-state analysis.

(rocm.blogs.amd.com)

Hardware

Intel's Skymont: A Deep Dive into the E-Core Architecture

2025-01-18

Intel's latest mobile chip, Lunar Lake, features Skymont, a new E-core architecture replacing Meteor Lake's Crestmont. Skymont significantly improves both multi-threaded performance and low-power background task handling. This article provides an in-depth analysis of Skymont's architecture, covering branch prediction, instruction fetch and decode, out-of-order execution engine, integer execution, floating-point and vector execution, load/store, and cache and memory access. While Skymont excels in some benchmarks, its advantages over Meteor Lake's Crestmont cores and AMD's Zen 5c cores aren't always clear-cut. This highlights the crucial role of cache architecture in CPU performance and the challenges of designing a single core architecture to handle both low-power and high-performance multi-threaded workloads.

(chipsandcheese.com)

Hardware E-core

Reverse-Engineering a Pentium's Carry-Lookahead Adder

2025-01-18

Ken Shirriff's blog post details the reverse engineering of an 8-bit adder within the Pentium's floating-point unit. This adder, a Kogge-Stone carry-lookahead adder, accelerates addition by calculating carry bits in parallel. The post meticulously explains the carry-lookahead adder's principle, showcasing the Pentium's hardware implementation—a four-layer circuit structure employing the Kogge-Stone algorithm. It also discusses the adder's role in the Pentium's floating-point division unit and its connection to the infamous Pentium FDIV bug.

(www.righto.com)

Hardware carry-lookahead adder

Laser Fault Injection on a Budget: RP2350 Edition

2025-01-18

This article details how a custom-built, low-cost laser fault injection platform was used to successfully bypass the secure boot mechanism of Raspberry Pi's RP2350 microcontroller. Using an infrared laser, the platform cleverly circumvented the RP2350's glitch detectors. A single laser pulse injected a fault, altering the boot ROM's instruction flow, ultimately revealing hidden data. The author provides detailed explanations of the platform's hardware design, software architecture, and the attack process, including manufacturing files and source code.

(courk.cc)

Hardware Laser Fault Injection

ESP32 Rainbow: A Colorful DIY Project

2025-01-18

Want to create your own personalized ambient lighting? The ESP32 Rainbow light project offers a simple and easy way to do just that. By controlling an ESP32 chip, you can easily achieve various color gradients and transitions, creating stunning lighting effects. This project is suitable for both electronics enthusiasts and beginners interested in DIY. With simple programming and circuit connections, you can experience the fun of programming and the satisfaction of creation. Whether it's a romantic candlelit dinner or a vibrant party atmosphere, the ESP32 rainbow light can easily handle it, adding a splash of color to your life.

(www.esp32rainbow.com)

Hardware Rainbow Light

TCL's NXTPAPER 4.0: A Paper-Like Screen That Actually Works?

2025-01-18

At CES 2025, TCL unveiled NXTPAPER 4.0, a screen technology aiming to mimic the feel of paper to reduce eye strain. This new iteration boasts a significant brightness improvement over previous versions, reaching 550 nits, and is featured in a new tablet and phone. A unique "Max Ink Mode" further reduces brightness and promises up to 7 days of reading time and 26 days on standby. While pricing and release dates remain undisclosed, NXTPAPER 4.0 offers a compelling alternative for users seeking a more eye-friendly screen experience.

(notes.ghed.in)

Hardware Eye-friendly screen

AMD Radeon Instinct MI300A: A Deep Dive into its Massive APU Architecture

2025-01-18

The AMD Radeon Instinct MI300A is a colossal APU integrating 24 Zen 4 cores and 228 CDNA3 compute units. This article delves into its massive Infinity Fabric interconnect, highlighting its high-bandwidth, low-latency characteristics and efficient CPU-GPU data sharing. While its high-bandwidth memory subsystem excels for the GPU, it impacts CPU latency, resulting in single-threaded integer performance comparable to the Ryzen 9 3950X from years ago. Despite this, MI300A has achieved significant success in supercomputing, notably powering LLNL's El Capitan system and topping the TOP500 list.

(chipsandcheese.com)

Hardware

Real-Time Location with Ultra-Wideband (UWB): A Python-Driven Test Framework

2025-01-17

This article presents a Python test framework for a Real-Time Location System (RTLS) based on Ultra-Wideband (UWB) technology. The author uses Decawave DW1000 modules and Raspberry Pis, implementing two-way ranging with custom Python code and testing system accuracy and stability. The article details the Asymmetric Two-Way Ranging technique and discusses hardware selection, software architecture, and potential problems such as power supply, interrupt handling, and RF performance. Test results show that the system offers high accuracy and stability under good line-of-sight conditions and maintains a degree of accuracy even with obstacles.

(iosoft.blog)

Hardware Real-time Location

Project Mini Rack: Compact, Portable Homelabs

2025-01-17

Jeff Geerling announces Project MINI RACK, an open-source project for building compact 10" homelabs. The project provides resources for hardware and software, showcasing three example mini-racks: a battery-backed solar-powered rack, a low-cost Raspberry Pi cluster, and a high-performance compute-dense rack. A build showcase encourages community contributions and sharing of designs. This addresses the need for smaller, more portable homelab solutions.

(www.jeffgeerling.com)

Hardware homelab mini rack open source hardware

Playing the NES with a Family BASIC Keyboard: A Retro Hardware Hack

2025-01-17

Linus Akesson connected a Family BASIC keyboard to an NES using a custom adapter to play its unique triangle waveform live. He details the adapter's creation, covering the Family BASIC keyboard's matrix layout, the NES controller port's signal characteristics, and the use of an ATtiny85 microcontroller for multiplexing and serializing the signals. The result? A successful performance of a tune called "Platform Hopping," showcasing impressive retro hardware hacking skills.

(www.linusakesson.net)

Hardware

Cerebras' 100x Defect Tolerance: Cracking the Wafer-Scale Challenge

2025-01-15

Cerebras has defied conventional wisdom by building a 50x larger chip than its competitors while achieving comparable yields. The secret? A revolutionary approach to defect tolerance. By designing incredibly small AI cores (1% the size of an H100's core) and implementing a sophisticated routing architecture that bypasses defects, Cerebras achieves a remarkable 93% silicon utilization in its Wafer Scale Engine. This groundbreaking technology makes wafer-scale computing not just feasible, but commercially viable, opening new horizons for AI and high-performance computing.

(cerebras.ai)

Hardware Wafer-scale Integration Fault-Tolerant Computing AI Accelerator

Bling Your Server Rack: A Nostalgic Retro Project with 128 LEDs

2025-01-15

Driven by nostalgia for the blinking lights of old mainframes, the author designed a project to add 128 LEDs to a server rack. Using readily available and inexpensive PIC16F1782 microcontrollers and 74HC595 shift registers, the project uses serial communication to control the LEDs, allowing for custom displays and a random pattern mode. The author shares the PCB design files and C code, encouraging others to build their own or contact him for custom orders. This project is a fun blend of practicality and nostalgia, showcasing the author's electronics and programming skills.

(rodyne.com)

Hardware Retro

Cosmos Keyboard: Design Your Perfect Ergonomic Keyboard

2025-01-14

Cosmos is a revolutionary keyboard design software that lets you create a personalized, ergonomic keyboard by scanning your hand. It supports a wide range of components, including various switches, keycaps, and add-ons like trackballs and OLED displays. Cosmos features error checking and auto-correction for smooth 3D printing, and exports in STL and STEP formats for further modification. With most of its code open-source, it aims to provide everyone with technology to alleviate and prevent typing pain.

(ryanis.cool)

Hardware ergonomics

Apollo Guidance Computer Shrunk to the Size of an Apple Watch

2025-01-14

British startup Apollo Instruments has created a wristwatch, the DSKY Moonwatch, that replicates the interface of the Apollo Guidance Computer. Using original MIT design specs, they shrunk the briefcase-sized computer down to a wearable device. While it doesn't offer navigation capabilities, it features a GPS, digital display, working keyboard, and is programmable via Arduino and Python. Priced at £649, it's a novelty item with expandable functionality, making it a unique conversation starter for tech enthusiasts.

(gizmodo.com)

Hardware wearable tech Apollo program

USB Gets a Much-Needed Logo Overhaul: Speed is King

2025-01-13

The USB Implementor Forum (USB-IF) has unveiled a new labeling scheme for USB docking stations and cables, aiming to simplify the confusing speed designations that plagued consumers. Previously, terms like "USB 3.2 Gen 2" were unhelpful. The new system clearly displays transfer speeds, such as "USB 80Gbps" or "USB 40Gbps." This clarity extends to USB4 and USB4v2, simplifying branding and removing the "USB4v2" designation. The updated logos also appear on cables, specifying data transfer rates and power delivery capabilities. This change promises a more user-friendly experience, making it easier for consumers to select appropriate USB devices and cables.

(www.pcworld.com)

Hardware Speed

Fluid Simulation Pendant: A Hardware Deep Dive from Concept to Production

2025-01-13

This article meticulously documents the author's journey in designing and crafting a fluid simulation pendant. The pendant utilizes an STM32L432KC microcontroller to run a real-time FLIP fluid simulation, cleverly employing diagonal charlieplexing for the LED display to significantly simplify the circuit. The author details the entire process, from initial prototyping and PCB design to metalworking, assembly, testing, and iterative design improvements, sharing challenges and solutions encountered along the way. Multiple pendants were successfully produced, and the article concludes with a discussion on potential mass production.

(mitxela.com)

Hardware fluid simulation

HardBreak: The Open-Source Hardware Hacking Wiki

2025-01-13

HardBreak is an open-source wiki dedicated to hardware hacking and IoT security. It offers comprehensive tutorials ranging from beginner guides to advanced techniques, covering hardware tools, firmware extraction, reverse engineering, network analysis, and radio hacking. The site encourages community contributions and includes disclaimers emphasizing its educational purpose.

(www.hardbreak.wiki)

Hardware open-source wiki

Donut.c on a Chip: Minimalist 3D Rendering with Shifts and Adds

2025-01-12

This project details the porting of the classic donut.c program to a tiny ASIC, achieving 3D donut rendering using only shifts and adds, eliminating the need for multiplication. Leveraging CORDIC and ray marching, a 4-tile design was submitted to Tiny Tapeout 8, resulting in a hardware implementation on a 130nm chip. Resource constraints lead to a rough, polygonal rendering, showcasing the elegance of minimalist hardware design.

(www.a1k0n.net)

Hardware Hardware rendering CORDIC algorithm

No More New Computers: A Decade-Long Hardware Plan

2025-01-12

The author reflects on the breakneck pace of computer hardware upgrades in the 90s and 2000s, contrasting it with the current state. He argues that even high-end CPU performance gains are no longer necessary for average users. Using personal experience, the author demonstrates how a 2011 i5 system still meets his needs, and his 2019 Ryzen 5 3600 upgrade remains highly efficient. He concludes that barring unforeseen circumstances, he will no longer buy new computers, instead relying on used, slightly older components from the secondary market, achieving a decade-long hardware plan.

(82mhz.net)

Hardware hardware upgrades computer performance cost-effectiveness

HMD Key: Budget-Friendly Smartphone Without Compromise

2025-01-12

HMD Global launched the HMD Key, a budget-friendly smartphone priced at just £59. This lightweight device boasts Android 14 (Go edition), impressive virtual memory for performance boosts, and an incredible 77-hour battery life. With versatile camera modes and two years of quarterly security updates, the HMD Key delivers a complete smartphone experience without breaking the bank, proving that affordability doesn't mean sacrificing quality.

(www.hmd.com)

Hardware budget smartphone

All-Band Radio Receiver: Listen to Everything at Once

2025-01-12

Ido Roseman built a simple, untuned radio receiver to discreetly monitor air traffic control (ATC) conversations during flights. Rejecting the complexity of traditional radios, it uses a Schottky diode detector and a high-gain audio amplifier to pick up signals across a wide frequency range, from medium wave to VHF. Reception is limited to nearby strong transmitters, but it surprisingly captures pilot-ATC communications. The design includes an LM386 amplifier for standard earbuds and a 3D-printed case for stealth. This clever hack demonstrates that simplicity can yield surprising functionality.

(hackaday.com)

Hardware radio receiver

Hacker News: Lazy Man's Delight! Binary Modding a Water Dispenser for Hands-Free Operation

2025-01-11

Robbe Derks, tired of pressing buttons to get water, reverse-engineered and modified his ION 900 series water dispenser. Using an Arduino and PICkit, he dumped the firmware from the PIC18F6527 and PIC16F630 microcontrollers. With Ghidra, he reverse-engineered the firmware, identifying functions controlling buttons and valves. He then wrote C code to patch the firmware, adding a feature that dispenses 1 liter of cold water when both the 'room temperature' and 'cold water' buttons are pressed simultaneously. This involved overcoming challenges in reverse engineering and embedded programming, ultimately creating a hands-free water dispensing solution.

(practicapp.com)

Hardware

De-smarting a Marshall Uxbridge: A Hacker's Audiophile Journey

2025-01-11

The author found two discarded Marshall Uxbridge smart speakers and, tired of their 'smart' features, decided to transform them into a high-fidelity stereo system. He disassembled the speakers, removed the original smart modules, and designed and built a new analog circuit featuring active filters and linear power amplifiers. The result is a stunning audio system with precise stereo imaging and a wide frequency range. This project is a testament to the author's skills and passion for high-quality audio.

(tomscii.sig7.se)

Hardware DIY audio analog circuit

Reverse Engineering a BIOS Update Fix for an Old Dell XPS 15

2025-01-11

Driven by nostalgia, the author attempted to update the BIOS of their old 2011 Dell XPS 15 L502X. Hardware issues and a dead battery resulted in a failed BIOS update. Using Ghidra, the author reverse-engineered the update program, pinpointing the faulty code. By modifying the code to bypass battery checks, the BIOS update was finally successful. This is a captivating tale of hardware repair and reverse engineering, showcasing the author's persistence and technical skills.

(www.r9c.net)

Hardware BIOS update hardware repair

Kimchi Fridge: A Korean Culinary Innovation

2025-01-10

The Korean love for kimchi has led to the creation of a unique appliance: the kimchi refrigerator. More than simple storage, it's specifically designed to optimize kimchi fermentation and preservation. Starting with GoldStar's (LG's predecessor) first model in 1984, years of development have resulted in a diverse market with various brands and designs, from top-loading models to multi-drawer units. These fridges maintain precise temperatures and humidity levels while minimizing air circulation, creating ideal fermentation conditions. Some even include UV sterilization. A 2004 survey of South Korean homemakers ranked the kimchi refrigerator as the most desired household appliance, highlighting its cultural significance.

(en.wikipedia.org)

Hardware kimchi refrigerator Korean appliance food preservation

Category: Hardware