Hackaday Links: March 8, 2026

As pointed out by Tom’s Hardware, it’s been 26 years since the introduction of the gigahertz desktop CPU. AMD beat Intel to the punch by dropping the 1 GHz Athlon chip on March 6th of 2000, and partnered with Compaq and Gateway (remember them?) to deliver pre-built machines featuring the speedy silicon just a week later. The archived press release announcing the availability of the chip makes for some interesting reading: AMD compares the accomplishment with Chuck Yeager breaking the sound barrier, and mentions a retail price of $1,299 for the CPU when purchased in 1,000 unit quantities. In response...

Tiny CM0IQ Board Runs Raspberry Pi CM0 Module with HDMI and CSI

The CM0IQ is a compact carrier board designed for the Raspberry Pi CM0 compute module and measures 42 × 36 mm, placing it among the smallest boards built around the platform. The design exposes several interfaces typically associated with larger Raspberry Pi boards while maintaining a minimal footprint. The board is based on the Raspberry […]

How Usable is Windows 98 in 2026?

https://invidious.privacyredirect.com/watch?v=fD4M34xjbAw

With the RAM and storage crisis hitting personal computing very hard – along with new software increasingly suffering the effects of metastasizing ‘AI’ – more people than ever are pining for the ‘good old days’. For example, using that early 2000s desktop PC with Windows 98 SE might now seem to be a viable alternative in 2026, because it couldn’t possibly make things worse. Or could it? As a reality check, [SteelsOfLiquid] over on YouTube gave this setup a whirl.

The computer of choice is a very common Dell Dimension 2100, featuring a zippy 1.1 GHz Intel Celeron, 256 MB  of...

Pironman 5 Pro Max Raspberry Pi 5 case gains 4.3-inch touchscreen, camera mount, speakers, microphone, and more

Pironman 5 Pro Max is the latest Raspberry Pi 5 case by SunFounder. The new enclosure adds a 4.3-inch capacitive touchscreen display, a 5MP camera module, a mount suitable for Raspberry Pi Camera Modules, stereo speakers, a USB microphone, and a 3.5mm audio jack. Besides the new features, its design is close to the Pironman 5 Max we reviewed with a Raspberry Pi 5, an NVMe SSD, and an Hailo-8 AI accelerator last June. That means it keeps black aluminum and semi-transparent black acrylic panels, offers two M.2 PCIe slots, an IR receiver, a power button, and the Tap-to-Wake feature...

F&S FSSM8MP SMARC Module Features NXP i.MX 8M Plus with Dual GbE and Edge AI

The FSSM8MP from F&S Elektronik Systeme is a SMARC 2.2 computer-on-module built around the NXP i.MX 8M Plus processor. The module is designed for embedded and industrial systems requiring multimedia processing, machine vision capability, and edge inference support. The platform integrates four Arm Cortex-A53 cores operating up to 1.8 GHz alongside a Cortex-M7 real-time core […]

GEEKOM A5 Pro 2026 Edition Review – Part 3: Ubuntu 25.10 on an AMD Ryzen 5 7530U mini PC

After checking out the hardware with an unboxing and a teardown of the GEEKOM A5 Pro 2026 Edition mini PC, and testing it with the pre-installed Windows 11 Pro OS in the second part of the review, we will now report our experience with Ubuntu 25.10 to show how the AMD Ryzen 5 7530U mini PC performs under Linux. The Ubuntu 25.10 review includes an overview of the system, benchmarks, storage and networking (2.5GbE and WiFi 6) performance testing, and measurements of CPU temperature under stress, fan noise levels, and power consumption of the mini PC under various workloads. Ubuntu...

A PTP Wall Clock is impractical and a little too precise

After seeing Oliver Ettlin's 39C3 presentation Excuse me, what precise time is It?, I wanted to replicate the PTP (Precision Time Protocol) clock he used live to demonstrate PTP clock sync:

I pinged him on LinkedIn inquiring about the build (I wasn't the only one!), and shortly thereafter, he published Gemini2350/ptp-wallclock, a repository with rough instructions for the build, and his C++ application to display PTP time (if available on the network) on a set of two LED matrix displays, using a Raspberry Pi.

Echo Pyramid enables smart voice interaction applications on M5Stack Atom ESP32 IoT controllers

Designed for M5Stack Atom, AtomS3, and AtomS3R series IoT controllers based on ESP32 or ESP32-S3 wireless SoC, the Echo Pyramid base enables smart voice interaction applications such as far-field voice recognition, voice assistants, voice control, and more. The device features a built-in speaker, a MEMS microphone, an ES8311 HD audio codec for playback and capture, and an STM32 MCU for touch areas and RGB LED management. It’s powered via a USB Type-C port and can be expanded through a 4-pin connector for I2C modules. Echo Pyramid specifications: Supported IoT controllers – M5Stack Atom, AtomS3, and AtomS3R Microcontroller –  STMicro STM32G030F6P6...

Стеклодувное дело. Электровакуумные стёкла, идентификация стекла, экспресс-определение совместимости стёкол

Известно, что сортов стекла превеликое множество, и каждый из них обладает собственным набором характеристик. Среди прочих, каждой марке (рецепту) стекла присущ и такой важный параметр, как коэффициент теплового расширения (КТР)*, показывающий насколько стекло расширится при нагревании или сожмётся при остывании. Понятно, что жёсткое соединение (спаивание) двух стёкол, возможно, только в случае совпадения их КТР или очень близких их значений, в противном случае спай при остывании обзаведётся недопустимыми, коварными и непредсказуемыми, неустранимыми никаким отжигом, внутренними напряжениями, или вовсе разрушится, иногда с разлётом осколков. КТР указан в названии каждой марки электровакуумного стекла на бирках крупных коробок, однако, сами трубки и стержни никак не маркируются, в стеклодувной мастерской их обязательно приходится хранить системно и...

DFRobot launches low-power, low-cost Fermion: BMV080 air quality sensor module

Just last year, we reported on the SparkFun Air Quality PM1/PM2.5/PM10 Sensor, based on the Bosch BMV080 fanless air-quality sensor and priced at around $65. DFRobot has now launched a low-cost alternative, the Fermion: BMV080, which provides the same fanless, laboratory-grade PM1, PM2.5, and PM10 sensing capabilities for just $29.90. The sensor uses laser-based light-scattering technology with fanless optical counting to detect particles as small as 0.5 μm. This avoids fan noise, dust buildup, and mechanical wear, which are common with fan-based PM sensors, and, on top of that, it has a service life of up to 10 years. It measures...