Category Archives: Electronics

800×600 Video Output for Small Systems

Posted on September 2, 2015 by e8johan

The Mesa-Video is a low cost, low power, small open source hardware/software solution for providing graphics from embedded projects. It is, basically, a graphics card with an UART interface. The graphics card side of the solution can display text and … Continue reading →

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NodeIT – stackable IoT

Posted on August 19, 2015 by e8johan

The NodeIT by Sweet Pea’s is an extendable, minimal IoT thing being launched on kickstarter right now. The project has already been funded, but is still open to additional backers. Based on the ESP8266, the core module, called ESP210, provides an … Continue reading →

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Built to Scale

Posted on June 23, 2015 by e8johan

Taking on the most complex, miniaturized part of a computer and going in the other direction takes a special kind of mind. Doing it “because I want to” takes it to the next level. James Newman is building a CPU … Continue reading →

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Transistor level Atari 2600 simulation

Posted on May 18, 2015 by e8johan

Based on the work from visual6502.org, Greg James has put together a transistor level simulation of the Atari 2600 console. The entire project is available from github. The simulator runs slowly, but that is the trick. Everything is simulated at half-clock … Continue reading →

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MEGA65 – a modern 8-bit system

Posted on April 23, 2015 by e8johan

Paul Gardner-Stephen and MEGA, museum of electronic games and art, just announced the MEGA65. It is a modern day 8-bit computer. It is compatible enough with the C64 to run old ROMs and programs, while it supports modern interfaces such as … Continue reading →

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SigRok lets you measure instructions

Posted on March 26, 2015 by e8johan

The SigRok project produces open source software for interfacing various types of measurement devices such as logic analyzers, oscilloscopes and more. The target is to provide cross platform software that words on Linux, OS X Windows, Android and more for … Continue reading →

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Open Source GPGPU

Posted on March 10, 2015 by e8johan

A GPGPU is a graphical processing unit, but with adaptations to make it possible to use it for general purpose computing as well. For those of you who followed Intel’s Larrabee project – that is a GPGPU. Intel’s project was … Continue reading →

Posted in Electronics, FPGA, Programming | 2 Comments

Tiny, open source, M0 board

Posted on February 6, 2015 by e8johan

The ARM PRO MINI is a tiny, open source, board based on a Cortex M0 MCU. The whole project, including schematics and BOM, is available on github. The MCU is an NXP ARM M0 LPC11U35FHI33/501. This means that the Eclipse-based LPCXpresso IDE can … Continue reading →

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Retro Arcade Repairs

Posted on January 31, 2015 by e8johan

A friend of mine, kralleman, is crazy about retro games and their hardware. I mean properly crazy. Crazy enough to appear on national TV, as well as having three episodes of a local retro gaming show dedicated to his own … Continue reading →

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Impressive 6502 Home Computer

Posted on January 27, 2015 by e8johan

Dirk Grappendorf has been working on a serious looking MOS 6502 based computer. Over at his site, you can follow his development diary. The computer was developed between September 2014 and January 2015. Quite impressive, given the outcome! The entire … Continue reading →

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