(Updated) OrangePi RV SBC Gains JH7110 RISC-V Processor and PCIe 2.0 Interface

The OrangePi RV is a development board based on the open-source RISC-V architecture, designed to offer high performance with low power consumption. This single-board computer features a JH7110 quad-core RISC-V processor, an M.2 M-key 2280 PCIe slot for SSD expansion, and supports up to 8GB of RAM. The new Orange Pi board is equipped with […]

Notes on the Pentium's microcode circuitry

Most people think of machine instructions as the fundamental steps that a computer performs. However, many processors have another layer of software underneath: microcode. With microcode, instead of building the processor's control circuitry from complex logic gates, the control logic is implemented with code known as microcode, stored in the microcode ROM. To execute a machine instruction, the computer internally executes several simpler micro-instructions, specified by the microcode. In this post, I examine the microcode ROM in the original Pentium, looking at the low-level circuitry.

The photo below shows the Pentium's thumbnail-sized silicon die under a microscope. I've labeled the main functional blocks. The microcode ROM is highlighted...

Orange Pi RV RISC-V SBC with StarFive JH7110 SoC launched for $30 and up

The Orange Pi RV SBC powered by a StarFive JH7110 RISC-V SoC was first introduced at the Orange Pi Development Conference 2024, a little over one year ago. But somehow, the company first launched the Orange Pi RV2 SBC based on Ky X1 SoC (rebranded Spacemit K1) earlier this month, and has only started taking orders for the Orange Pi RV board. The credit card-sized SBC ships with 2GB to 8GB RAM, supports M.2 NVMe SSD storage, provides gigabit Ethernet, built-in WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 5.0, four USB 3.0 ports, HDMI and MIPI DSI video interface, a MIPI CSI camera...

Link – Rendering light-trail geometries

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Link is a series of 28 generative stop-motion loops, with each sequence comprising between 32 and 224 individual long-exposure photographs. Each frame of the sequence is obtained through a long-exposure capture (~30 seconds) of a vertical LED array in motion, resulting in precise, three-dimensional light-trail geometries.

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Name that Ware, March 2025

The Ware for March 2025 is shown below.

I was just taking this thing apart to see what went wrong, and thought it had some merit as a name that ware. But perhaps more interestingly, I was also experimenting with my cross-polarized imaging setup.

This is a technique a friend of mine told me about where you put a polarizer on the light source, and then put another polarizer 90 degrees from the light source in front of your imaging lens. As you can see from the comparison above, the contrast on the part numbers is greatly enhanced — at the expense...

Winner, Name that Ware February 2025

The Ware from last month is the main board from a Lego Duplo Steam Train. As predicted, this was a much easier one to guess. Congrats to MJS for naming it (with a margin of just half an hour ahead of Will), email me for your prize! And again, thanks to spida for contributing yet another ware.

ESP32-S3 Smart Audio devkit integrates 1.8-inch round touch LCD, microphone, optional battery and speaker box

Waveshare ESP32-S3-Touch-LCD-1.85C is an ESP32-S3 development kit with a 1.85-inch round touchscreen display with 360×360 resolution, support for Wi-Fi & Bluetooth BLE 5, and a built-in microphone. There’s also the ESP32-S3-Touch-LCD-1.85C-BOX with the same specifications, but an additional box with a speaker and a 3.7V battery. Both versions come with 16MB SPI flash, a microSD card slot, a USB-C port, a few buttons, GPIO and I2C expansion headers, and can be used as music players, smart speakers, HMI solutions,  etc… It’s not quite the first ESP32-S3 audio + display devkit we’ve covered, as Waveshare introduced the ESP32-S3-Touch-AMOLED-1.8 earlier this year...

Geniatech APC680 Edge AI and TV Box is powered by Synaptics VS680 AI SoC with 7.9 TOPS NPU

Geniatech APC680 is described as an “AI-powered TV box” powered by Synaptics VS680 quad-core Cortex-A73 SoC with a built-in 7.9 TOPS NPU and designed for smart entertainment and edge computing. The system comes with 4GB RAM and 16GB eMMC flash by default, 4K capable HDMI output and input ports, gigabit Ethernet, WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 5.0,  a few USB ports, and a range of wireless options including 4G LTE, Zigbee, Z-Wave, and LoRa. Besides being just an AI-powered TV box, it could also be used as a Smart Home gateway in more ways than one. Geniatech APC680 specifications: SoC –...

SparkFun Air Quality PM1/PM2.5/PM10 Sensor features Bosch’s BMV080, the world’s smallest particulate matter sensor

SparkFun’s “Air Quality PM1/PM2.5/PM10 Sensor – BMV080 (Qwiic)” is breakout board for the Bosch Sensortec BMV080 particulate matter sensor which the German company claims is the world’s smallest and 450 times smaller in volume than any comparable device on the market. It’s summer in Thailand right now, and besides scorching temperatures of over 40°C during the day, it’s also smog season with high PM 2.5 values and frequent alerts not to exercise outdoors. We usually get the Air Quality Index (AQI) from apps like IQAir AirVisual, or people can install air quality monitors in fixed locations to get local readings....

Radxa Orion O6 Preview – Part 2: Debian 12 – What works, what doesn’t

I went through an unboxing and Debian 12 installation on the Radxa Orion O6 at the end of January, but decided to work on other reviews since software support still needed to be worked on. Since then, there’s been some work done, but no new image released. After waiting for almost two months, I’ve decided to carry on with the review by testing the Debian 12 image in a way similar to the Rock 5B SBC preview I did with Debian 11 in 2022 to check what works and what doesn’t on the Orion O6 at the time of the...