xSDR packs 2×2 MIMO, Artix-7 FPGA, and 3.8 GHz tuning into M.2 2230 form factor

Crowd Supply has featured the xSDR, a compact M.2 2230 A+E-key software-defined radio module that combines a Lime Microsystems LMS7002M RF transceiver with an AMD Artix-7 FPGA. Designed for direct integration into laptops, tablets, embedded PCs, and edge systems, it delivers 2×2 MIMO RX/TX operation across a 30 MHz to 3.8 GHz tuning range. The […]

Vintage Canadian Video Hardware Becomes Homebrew Computer

Are you in the mood for a retrocomputing deep dive into the Scriptovision Super Micro Script? It was a Canadian-made vintage video titler from the 80s, and [Cameron Kaiser] has written up a journey of repair and reverse-engineering for it. But his work is far more than just a refurbish job; [Cameron] transforms the device into something not unlike 8-bit homebrew computers of the era, able to upload and run custom programs with a limited blister keypad for input, and displaying output on a composite video monitor.

Hardware-wise, the Super Micro Script is almost a home computer, so [Cameron] got it...

Instruction decoding in the Intel 8087 floating-point chip

In the 1980s, if you wanted your IBM PC to run faster, you could buy the Intel 8087 floating-point coprocessor chip. With this chip, CAD software, spreadsheets, flight simulators, and other programs were much speedier. The 8087 chip could add, subtract, multiply, and divide, of course, but it could also compute transcendental functions such as tangent and logarithms, as well as provide constants such as π. In total, the 8087 added 62 new instructions to the computer.

But how does a PC decide if an instruction was a floating-point instruction for the 8087 or a regular instruction for the 8086 or 8088 CPU? And how does the 8087 chip interpret instructions...

Android 17 Beta 1 released with H.266/VVC support, camera improvements, and more

Google has just announced the release of Android 17 Beta 1 with performance improvements, H.266/VVC video codec support, smoother camera mode transitions, privacy and security enhancements, and more. The company is not releasing Developer Previews anymore, and instead follows the “continuous Canary channel” announced with the first Android 16 Developer Preview. So, with Android 17, the very first release is the “Beta 1” release. Some of the key changes in Android 17 so far: Developers can’t opt out of orientation and resizability restrictions on large screen devices (sw > 600 dp), so they’ll have to make sure their apps work...

Testing Reachy Mini - Hugging Face's Pi powered robot

When I saw Jensen Huang introduce the Reachy Mini at CES, I thought it was a gimmick. His keynote showed this little robot responding to human input, turning its head to look at a TODO list on the wall, sending emails, and turning drawings into architectural renderings with motion.

HuggingFace and Pollen robotics sent me a Reachy Mini to test, and, well, at least if you're looking to replicate that setup in the keynote, it's not, as Jensen put it, "utterly trivial now."

SMT components are getting smaller — but your precision doesn’t have to

We now offer a professional range of magnifying tools designed specifically for PCB inspection and electronics work MAG-GLASSES magnifying Glasses – High magnification. Hands-free operation. Perfect for precise PCB assembly and repair. MAG-GLASS-10, MAG-GLASS-20, MAG-GLASS-30 Mini Magnifiers (×10 / ×20 / ×30). Compact, powerful, and ideal for spotting even the smallest solder joints and micro […]

STMicroelectronics Stellar P3E quad-core Arm Cortex-R52+ automotive MCU features Neural-ART AI accelerator

STMicroelectronics has introduced the Stellar P3E, the first automotive MCU with an embedded Neural-ART AI accelerator, designed to simplify X-in-1 Electronic Control Units (ECUs) by consolidating powertrain functions like the inverter, on-board charger (OBC), and DC-DC converter into a single module. The MCU enables smart sensing, predictive maintenance, and virtual sensor applications without the cost and complexity of a separate SoC. The microcontroller features four 500 MHz Arm Cortex-R52+ cores with 19.5 MB of xMemory, which is based on phase-change memory (PCM), offering roughly twice the density of embedded flash. The chip integrates multiple ADC channels for precise sensing, high-resolution...

Домашняя лаборатория-мастерская. Реорганизация стеклодувного рабочего места

Теория говорит, а практика подтверждает: разогреть некрупные стеклянные заготовки для формовки и соединения, можно целым рядом способов, однако, стоит стремиться к варианту огневого оснащения классическому — сетевой метан или баллонный пропан + воздушное дутьё с добавкой кислорода из баллона, или, современный «дамский» вариант — медицинского кислородного концентратора. Такая конфигурация позволяет регулировать факел в широких пределах и перекрывает все основные задачи: коптящее мягкое пламя для отжига, широкое горячее, жёсткий узкий факел, паяльная игла. Факел при этом может быть окислительным (работа со свинцовыми стёклами) или восстановительным (металлические впаи). При культурном выполнении газовых трактов и уважительном обращении с баллонами, такая система и наименее...

Знакомство с ретро-ПК. Оживляем раритетный Pentium-200

Приветствую всех!

Бывало ли у вас такое, что какой-то артефакт долгое время лежал у вас в надежде, что когда-нибудь пригодится, и наконец-таки получал своё применение? Именно такой и оказалась судьба данного компьютера.

Когда-то давно именно с этого ПК у меня и началось знакомство со старым компьютерным железом. И вот сейчас мне наконец захотелось показать этот девайс и то, на что он вообще способен.

Avalue EMX-PTLP – A thin mini-ITX motherboard powered by up to an Intel Core Ultra 7 358H Panther Lake-H SoC

Avalue’s EMX-PTLP is an industrial, thin mini-ITX motherboard powered by Intel Panther Lake-H Core Ultra (Series 3) family, up to the 12-core Intel Core Ultra 7 358H SoC delivering up to 180 TOPS for AI and industrial automation deployments. The board supports up to 64GB of DDR5 SoDIMM/CSoDIMM memory, features M.2 PCIe 5.0 and PCIe 4.0 sockets for storage and expansion, M.2 E-Key and B-Key sockets for wireless and cellular connectivity, a PCIe x8 slot, HDMI, DisplayPort, USB-C, and LVDS/eDP display interfaces, GbE and 2.5GbE networking interfaces, a range of USB4, USB 3.2, and USB 2.0 interfaces, and more. Avalue...