Webtagr - Technology News Summarizer

Fujifilm X Half: A Family-Friendly Camera or a Disappointment?

2025-06-17

A decade-long Fujifilm user, transitioning from the X-T1 to the Leica M11, shares their experience with the Fujifilm X Half. While the X Half's compact size and simplified controls make it ideal for families, particularly children, its high price and limited features have drawn criticism. The author argues that for casual users, the X Half's ease of use outweighs its functional shortcomings, making it a great choice for family photography, though the $850 price tag feels steep.

(arslan.io)

Hardware Fujifilm family camera

AMD Trinity's Compromised Interconnect: A Decade of iGPU Integration

2025-06-17

This article delves into the memory interconnect architecture of AMD's Trinity APU (released in 2012). Unlike the later Infinity Fabric, Trinity uses two distinct links, "Onion" and "Garlic," to connect the CPU and iGPU. "Onion" guarantees cache coherency but is bandwidth-limited, while "Garlic" offers high bandwidth but lacks coherency. This design reflects a compromise based on the then-current Athlon 64 architecture, resulting in performance penalties when the CPU and GPU access each other's memory. While performing adequately for graphics workloads like gaming, Trinity's architecture lacks the elegance and efficiency of Intel's Sandy Bridge/Ivy Bridge integrated iGPUs. The author uses tests and data analysis to detail the functionality, advantages, and disadvantages of both links, demonstrating Trinity's memory bandwidth usage with various games and image processing programs.

(chipsandcheese.com)

Hardware Interconnect

Hacking a Dummy Plug's EDID with a Raspberry Pi

2025-06-15

The author cleverly used a Raspberry Pi and I2C tools to modify the EDID information of a cheap HDMI dummy plug. By reading and writing new EDID data, the dummy plug was disguised as a 1080p capture device, solving the incompatibility problem with 4K resolution. The whole process details the steps and reminds readers to be careful to avoid damaging the equipment.

(www.downtowndougbrown.com)

Hardware

WT32-ETH01: A Cheap ESP32 Ethernet Development Board

2025-06-15

The WT32-ETH01 is a small, inexpensive ESP32 development board featuring Ethernet, WiFi, and GPIO pins. Its low cost and the relative scarcity of ESP32 boards with Ethernet make it a compelling option for projects requiring reliable wired network connectivity. While lacking extensive manufacturer support, its ease of use and compatibility with popular programming environments like the Arduino IDE and ESP-IDF make it ideal for IoT and embedded systems development. However, users should be aware of limitations on certain pins and exercise caution when selecting power supply voltages.

(github.com)

Hardware

Hacking Your Starlink Mini: Removing the Internal WiFi Router

2025-06-15

This guide details how to remove the integrated Wi-Fi router from a Starlink Mini 1 terminal, enabling Ethernet-only operation. This modification unlocks greater flexibility for advanced users with custom networking needs, embedded installations, or power-constrained environments. The guide provides a step-by-step disassembly process, PCB connector pinouts, a direct Ethernet connection schematic, network configuration instructions, and explanations of gRPC status codes for troubleshooting. Caution: This modification is only for the Starlink Mini 1, and removing the metal plate is strongly discouraged due to potential cooling and EMI issues.

(olegkutkov.me)

Hardware

AMD Doubles Down on AI with Instinct MI350 Series and ROCm 7

2025-06-15

AMD unveiled its next-generation Instinct MI350 series AI accelerators, boasting double the AI performance of its predecessor, the MI300X, thanks to the new CDNA 4 architecture. The MI350 series supports FP6 and FP4 formats for increased throughput and features 288GB of HBM3E memory with 8TB/s bandwidth. Complementing the hardware is ROCm 7, delivering performance improvements and day-0 support. AMD also announced turnkey rack-scale AI solutions integrating AMD CPUs, GPUs, and networking, and laid out a roadmap targeting a 20x increase in rack-scale energy efficiency by 2030. The MI355X, the flagship model, offers up to 5 PFLOPS of FP16 performance.

(morethanmoore.substack.com)

Hardware AI Accelerators

Reverse Engineering the Commodore 64 Freezer Cartridge: A Deep Dive

2025-06-14

This article delves into the reverse engineering of Commodore 64 freezer cartridges, such as the Final Cartridge III. These cartridges leverage the C64's Ultimax mode and NMI interrupts to achieve functionalities like freezing programs, applying cheat codes, and saving game states. The article meticulously explains the technical challenges of the freezing process, such as coordinating 6502 CPU instruction cycles with Ultimax mode activation, and how limited memory resources are utilized for displaying menus and managing state backups. The author also analyzes the cartridge's backup mechanisms and game trainer functionality, praising the developers' deep understanding of the C64 hardware and their masterful coding skills.

(www.pagetable.com)

Hardware Freezer Cartridge

PCIe 7.0 Spec Finalized, PCIe 8.0 Pathfinding Underway

2025-06-12

PCI-SIG announced the completion of the PCIe 7.0 specification, boasting a per-lane data transfer rate of 128 GT/s—double that of PCIe 6.0 and quadruple that of PCIe 5.0. A 16-lane PCIe 7.0 device can transfer up to 256 GB/s in each direction. Furthermore, pathfinding for PCIe 8.0 has begun, targeting a 2030+ release with potentially double the performance of PCIe 7.0, reaching 1 TB/s bandwidth. Expect PCIe 7.0 devices to hit the market around 2028-2029.

(www.tomshardware.com)

Hardware

Reverse-Engineering a Sony PS1 Motherboard: The nsOne Project

2025-06-12

Lorentio Brodesco reverse-engineered an original PlayStation 1 motherboard, painstakingly recreating its complete schematic. This wasn't just a repair job; it's a preservation effort to save the PS1's hardware architecture and ultimately produce a functional motherboard, nsOne. He's open-sourcing the design files, a tribute to the PS1 and a testament to the power of retro hardware preservation.

(arstechnica.com)

Hardware

Anker Recalls PowerCore 10000 Power Bank Due to Fire Risk

2025-06-12

Anker has issued a recall for its PowerCore 10000 power bank (model A1263) due to a potential fire hazard stemming from its lithium-ion battery. The USCPSC received 19 reports of fires and explosions causing minor injuries and over $60,700 in property damage. Approximately 1,158,000 units sold between June 2016 and December 2022 are affected. Anker offers a $30 gift card or a replacement power bank. Consumers need to submit photos and serial numbers for verification and safely dispose of the recalled units. This recall highlights the potential dangers of aging lithium-ion batteries and the benefits of upgrading to safer solid-state alternatives.

(www.theverge.com)

Hardware Power Bank Recall Fire Safety

Amiga 4000T: The Last Hurrah of a Legend

2025-06-12

The Amiga 4000T, a tower-format Amiga produced by Escom, is widely considered the pinnacle of the classic Amiga line. Its exceptional expandability, featuring both SCSI and IDE interfaces and numerous Zorro III slots, made it a powerhouse for professional video, music, and graphics work. Though its release came too late to stem the tide of the rising PC, its robust build, modular design, and impressive performance have secured its place as a collector's item and a testament to Amiga's legacy. This article details a deep dive into its history and unique features.

(forgottencomputer.com)

Hardware

DeskHog: Tiny Console, Big Potential

2025-06-11

DeskHog is a miniature game console powered by an ESP32-S3 Reverse TFT Feather. Featuring a 240x135 color TFT display, 10-hour battery life, WiFi, and a cute LED, it plays Pong and Flappy Bird, with Doom support in development. Beyond gaming, it functions as a desktop terminal for PostHog data and includes an I²C expansion port for added functionality. It's a surprisingly versatile handheld device.

(posthog.com)

Hardware Game Console

A $45 Rohde & Schwarz AMIQ: Teardown and Circuit Analysis

2025-06-11

The author acquired a Rohde & Schwarz AMIQ I/Q modulation generator for a mere $45 at an auction. This device, lacking a user interface beyond a power button and three LEDs, presented a significant restoration challenge. The article delves into the AMIQ's functionality, teardown, and internal circuitry, focusing on the analog sections. Key areas explored include the reference clock generation, DAC clock synthesizer, I/Q output skew tuning, variable gain amplifier, and internal diagnostics. The author provides detailed analysis of components like the AD9850 and praises the AMIQ's comprehensive schematics, using images and diagrams to aid explanation.

(tomverbeure.github.io)

Hardware

V4L2 Virtual Display on Orange Pi 5 Plus: Early VR Experiment

2025-06-11

This is an early-stage VR virtual display project running on an Orange Pi 5 Plus. It uses V4L2 and OpenGL to capture video from an HDMI input and render it in real-time onto a textured quad in an OpenGL window. Features include Viture headset IMU integration, test patterns, and plane geometry. The project is still under early development, with performance needing significant improvement. Requires OpenGL, GLUT, libv4l2, and optionally libhidapi libraries. Users can control device, fullscreen mode, Viture IMU integration, test patterns, plane distance, and scale via command-line arguments.

(github.com)

Hardware

Wood Drying: A Deep Dive into Ancient Crafts and Modern Tech

2025-06-11

This article delves into the two primary methods of wood drying: air drying and kiln drying. Tracing the history of wood drying from prehistoric times to modern technological applications, it meticulously compares the advantages and disadvantages of both methods. Air drying, a traditional method reliant on natural conditions, is slow but minimizes wood stress; kiln drying, utilizing modern technology to control temperature and humidity, is faster but can lead to cracking or warping. The article also covers recent advancements in kiln drying technology, such as oscillating drying and continuous drying, along with stress relief techniques. Regardless of the method, controlling wood moisture content is key to avoiding problems during wood usage.

(christopherschwarz.substack.com)

Hardware wood drying kiln drying air drying

Low-Cost 24-Channel Brain-Computer Interface: PiEEG-24

2025-06-11

PiEEG-24 is a low-cost, open-source 24-channel brain-computer interface based on the Raspberry Pi. It measures EEG, EMG, EKG, and EOG data, offering improved spatial resolution, signal quality, and source localization compared to systems with fewer channels. Its advantages include flexibility in electrode placement, manageable computational complexity, cost-effectiveness, and compatibility with various electrode types. An easy-to-use Python SDK is provided. This represents a significant advancement in accessible, high-performance brain-computer interface technology.

(pieeg.com)

Hardware

130-Mile VTOL Drone Built in 90 Days: From Zero to Hero

2025-06-10

A complete beginner in CAD, 3D printing, and aerodynamic modeling built a 130-mile range VTOL drone in just 90 days. The drone boasts a 3-hour flight time on a single charge, making it one of the longest-range and highest-endurance 3D-printed VTOLs in the world. This achievement overcame numerous challenges, including learning CAD design, sourcing components, improving foaming PLA print quality, and extensive power loss troubleshooting. The project even garnered a quote tweet from Reid Hoffman on X, highlighting the accessibility of modern toolchains.

(www.tsungxu.com)

Hardware VTOL Drone

Seagate Unleashes 4TB Xbox Expansion Card, But is it Worth the Price?

2025-06-09

Seagate has launched a 4TB storage expansion card for Xbox Series X|S consoles, its first capacity upgrade since 2021. Priced at $499.99 (with a limited-time discount to $429.99), it caters to players with extensive game libraries. However, the price is steep, especially considering Seagate's 2TB card is currently available for $219.99. Western Digital offers competing cards, but not yet a 4TB option. The Xbox expansion cards remain pricier than PlayStation 5 alternatives, which support a wider range of compatible SSDs.

(www.theverge.com)

Hardware Storage Expansion Card

Microsoft and ASUS ROG Team Up for Xbox Ally Handheld: Expanding the Gaming Ecosystem

2025-06-08

Microsoft officially unveiled two new handheld gaming consoles in partnership with ASUS ROG during the Xbox Games Showcase at Summer Game Fest: the Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X. Launching this holiday season, these devices will play Xbox games natively, via cloud gaming, or by remotely accessing an Xbox console. They also support games from Battle.net and other leading PC storefronts, along with Game Pass and Xbox Play Anywhere. The Xbox Ally features an AMD Ryzen Z2 A processor, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD; the Ally X boasts a more powerful AMD Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme processor, 24GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD. Both handhelds sport a 7-inch 1080p 120Hz display with FreeSync Premium. Microsoft has designed a full-screen Xbox UI and Game Bar overlay, and optimized Windows 11 for the devices.

(www.engadget.com)

Hardware Xbox Handheld Gaming Hardware

Treadmill Transformed: Mega 3D Printer Builds a Kayak

2025-06-07

Five years ago, "belt" 3D printers started gaining traction, using a conveyor belt for seemingly infinite Y-axis printing. However, most remain desktop-sized, limiting X and Z dimensions. Ivan Miranda and Jón Schone took a different approach, repurposing a treadmill into a massive belt 3D printer. They ingeniously adapted the treadmill's structure, designing custom steel uprights, heavy-duty linear rails, large stepper motors, and custom heatsinks. Overcoming numerous challenges, they successfully printed a full-size kayak, launching it at Maker Faire Prague.

(www.hackster.io)

Hardware belt printer large-scale printing

Phoronix Benchmarks AMD Ryzen AI Max PRO 390 & Radeon 8050S Integrated Graphics

2025-06-06

Phoronix published a comprehensive Linux benchmark review of AMD's Ryzen AI Max PRO 390 processor and its integrated Radeon 8050S graphics. The Radeon 8050S, featuring 32 cores at 2.8GHz, slots between the Radeon 8060S and 890M in performance. Supporting resolutions up to 8K@60Hz, the review includes various game and benchmark tests, comparing it against other integrated graphics from AMD and Intel. The Radeon 8050S showed excellent out-of-the-box performance on Ubuntu 25.04 and Fedora 42.

(www.phoronix.com)

Hardware Integrated Graphics

Building a $1300 AI Server from Scratch: A Detailed Walkthrough

2025-06-06

This post details the author's journey of building a personal AI server for under $1300. The process is meticulously documented, from procuring hardware (including an Nvidia RTX 4070 GPU) and assembly, to installing Ubuntu Server and configuring software such as Nvidia drivers, the CUDA toolkit, and Python. The author outlines their hardware selection rationale, provides diagnostic commands, and explains how to set up remote management. The advantages of an on-premise server are highlighted: unrestricted learning, hands-on operational experience, and long-term cost savings. While limited in scale, this setup proves useful for smaller AI experiments.

(www.informationga.in)

Hardware AI Server Hardware Build

SkyRoof: Ham Satellite Tracking and SDR Receiver Software

2025-06-05

VE3NEA recently released SkyRoof, a Windows program combining satellite tracking and SDR receiver functionalities. Supporting RTL-SDR, Airspy, and SDRplay, it tracks and receives ham radio satellites, offering real-time tracking, pass prediction, a sky map, and an SDR waterfall display. It demodulates SSB/CW/FM, automatically compensates for Doppler shift, and interfaces with hamlib-compatible antenna rotators. Johnson's Techworld on YouTube features a SkyRoof test video.

(www.rtl-sdr.com)

Hardware Amateur Radio Satellite Tracking SDR Receiver

CircuitHub: $20M Series A, Revolutionizing Electronics Prototyping with Automated Factory

2025-06-05

CircuitHub, backed by $20M in funding from top investors like Y Combinator and Google Ventures, is revolutionizing rapid electronics prototyping. Their automated electronics factory, "The Grid," boasts a 10x throughput improvement, serving clients such as Tesla, Meta, and Zipline. They're hiring full-stack robotics engineers to maintain and enhance The Grid's operations, offering a high-impact role shaping the future of automated manufacturing. This is a hands-on position requiring experience building complete robotic systems.

(www.workatastartup.com)

Hardware Automated Manufacturing Electronics Prototyping

Retro Macintosh Platinum Color 3D Printer Filament Now Available

2025-06-05

Classic computer collector Joe Strosnider has announced a new 3D printer filament that replicates the iconic "Platinum" color scheme of classic Macintosh computers from the late 1980s and 1990s. This PLA filament allows hobbyists to 3D print nostalgic items, replacement parts, and accessories matching the original color. Strosnider spent around $900 developing the color and purchasing an initial 25kg supply, but instead of keeping it proprietary, he partnered with Polar Filament to make it publicly available for anyone to use.

(arstechnica.com)

Hardware

OP-1 Field Price: A Bold Experiment in Crowdsourced Pricing

2025-06-04

Teenage Engineering is conducting a bold experiment: letting users decide the price of their OP-1 Field synthesizer. They aim to better understand the market and explore how to truly satisfy customer needs. This reflects the current uncertain world, encouraging trying new things and engaging customers in pricing in a novel way. The final price will be revealed later this year, or until the world is a bit more stable.

(teenage.engineering)

Hardware product pricing

Beyond RISC-V: A Revolution in Distance-Based Instruction Set Architectures

2025-06-04

CPU core instruction decoding and execution widths have significantly increased in recent years, but the cost of register renaming limits further scaling. This article introduces a distance-based instruction set architecture that eliminates register renaming by specifying operands based on the distance from the instruction's result, thus reducing hardware complexity and power consumption. Researchers have developed three distance-based instruction sets (STRAIGHT, Clockhands, and TURBULENCE) and successfully fabricated a chip based on the STRAIGHT instruction set. This innovation promises significant performance improvements for both CPUs and GPUs, especially for GPUs due to their flexible intermediate representation, making adoption easier.

(www.sigarch.org)

Hardware

Retro Tech: The Pianocorder Player Piano System

2025-06-02

In the late 1970s, Superscope introduced the Pianocorder, a solenoid-driven player piano system using cassette tapes as its storage medium. Streaming data at 35 frames per second, it directly plays from the tape without needing memory. While lacking true polyphonic expression, it cleverly simulates it by splitting the keyboard into treble and bass halves. Boasting a vast library of recordings, including performances by famous pianists, the Pianocorder continues to fascinate enthusiasts, with ongoing efforts to maintain and upgrade the system, even including PC control plugins.

(www.pianocorder.info)

Hardware player piano

FPGA Forth Interpreter CPU using an LFSR

2025-06-02

This project details an FPGA CPU implemented in VHDL that utilizes a Linear Feedback Shift Register (LFSR) instead of a program counter. This approach, while traditionally space-saving, offers minimal benefits on FPGAs. The CPU, running a fully functional Forth interpreter, achieves 151.768MHz on a Spartan-6 FPGA. Remarkably compact, the core consumes only 27 slices. The project includes VHDL code, GHDL simulation instructions, and build instructions for Xilinx ISE 14.7. It showcases the potential of LFSRs for resource-constrained designs and presents a highly efficient Forth interpreter implementation.

(github.com)

Hardware

Atari Mega ST: A High-End Flop?

2025-06-01

Atari's Mega ST, announced at CES 1987, aimed to be a professional workstation, upgrading their ST line. Featuring a low-profile design, integrated floppy drive, and a detachable keyboard with Cherry MX switches, it had some appealing aspects. However, the Mega ST fell short. Its compact case hampered expandability, and the 8MHz processor offered no speed advantage over cheaper predecessors. High pricing, coupled with a lack of significant performance improvements beyond increased RAM (2MB or 4MB) and a graphics blitter, hindered its success. Despite a nice keyboard and some technical advancements, the Mega ST ultimately failed to capture the market.

(www.goto10retro.com)

Hardware workstation

Category: Hardware