Very happy to announce the winners of our demoscene competition! 🏆

We had some amazing entries - check out what can be done in just a few square microns of silicon!

tinytapeout.com/competitions...

Thanks again to our judges and participants!

#silicon #demoscene #ASIC

I found the old 35mm slide for the cover for Neuromancer and had it scanned in for your pleasure. Enjoy!

PicoIDE An open source IDE/ATAPI drive emulator for vintage computers

The PicoIDE Crowd Supply campaign is now live! Back the project to be among the first to get yours! PicoIDE is an open IDE/ATAPI drive emulator for retro systems. www.crowdsupply.com/polpotronics...

Motto for this year: do more stuff. I’ll be at FOSDEM if anyone wants to say hi. (Brussels 30/1-1/2)

Got tired of this project but I finished the important piece of the puzzle. Should I just publish my nasty code as is, or try to keep working on it?

Did a last minute tapeout because why not 😅 (resubmission/port of an older design). Ahh now I really want to finish some other asic projects I haven’t touched in a while. This winter will be fun.

Yeah this will be the journey to discover. I hope to start simple and take it step by step. I don’t have to be an ibm compatible pc from the start, maybe just run some instructions and see activity on the bus initially.

Yes but don’t expect too much :). Will take weeks and months to get anywhere. I also have a discord where I post more small updates on my projects. If you’re curious discord.com/invite/CGTjx...

Tbh I’d be happy to make it run a couple of instructions, talk a bit on the bus and see it come to life like a MCU. Being able to run the original doom or quake exe would be like a final goal but I realize that it’s tons of work to get there. And yes, learning is what it’s all about.

321 pin PGA ZIF Socket-7: Phoenix Enterprises -PE- Connectors IC Sockets Tools Cable Wire PGA-CPU SOCKET-7321 PIN ZIF PGAGOLD PLATED CONTACTSTIN PLATED TAILSTHROUGH HOLE PCB MOUNT

I’ve been trying to source Socket 7 ZIF sockets and found 2 US vendors that sell them for about $3.5 which is reasonable. Would be nice to find a EU vendor but so far no luck.
Any EU suggestions?
US:
1. www.peconnectors.com/sockets-pga-...
2. www.componentonline.com/product/425C...

For the FPGA, I'm thinking of ECP5 or Artix-7 or something like that. But I will need to interface with a ton of pins which can be a bit cumbersome. Need to think a bit about this.

Then of course comes the gateware. But I'm thinking I should prioritise geting the "bringup platform" up.

First step is probably to find some Socket-7 sockets, make a proper PCB footprint and document the accurate pinout. This should be very doable.

Then design a breakout board. Thinking of using IDE/PATA connectors. Fastest signals are 66 MHz so should be okay.

Then pick a good FPGA and interface.

So I found an old Pentium (probably 133) which sparked an idea for a project. Stupid but fun? Doesn't matter!

I want to build a breakout board that lets me bring up the CPU with an FPGA. Emulate the Northbridge, interface with some external RAM, implement PCI peripherals.

Yeah I’ve tried that but idk. I think I’ll try faster filters. I have a Eureka Mignon Perfetto for my espresso machine, and it produces a nice grind at coarse settings without too much fines. Maybe it’s just my pour-over technique that sucks 😅. Drawdown time is about 2 minutes for 300ml

[coffee nerd talk]
I feel a bit like a failure - been dialing in a V60 brew with an 1Zpresso Q grinder and Hario filters but it keeps tasting a bit bitter no matter what I do.
Gave up, brewed with a Moccamaster with standard Melitta filters and it tastes amazing. Hnggg. Should I try faster filters?

A photo of the KeebDeck Keyboard keypad and dome sheet. The dome sheet has many domes visible through the white plastic, and 8 black pieces of tape to cover where the backlight LEDs would be. The Keyboard has 69 keys with the usual PC layout, and a few extra ones color symbols and colors.

A photo of a device composed of two PCBs sandwiched together with a silicone keypad in the middle and poking through the front PCB. The keypad has an ortho layout with most keys of a PC keyboard. It also has some extra colorful macro keys at the top. There is a Solder Party logo on the Meta key as well as in the middle of the top row. The silkscreen reads "KeebDeck Basic, arturo182, Solder Party". The two PCBs are held together by four Phillips-head screws.

The wait is finally over, we're happy to announce that the KeebDeck Keyboard and our first product using it, the KeebDeck Basic, are now available for sale from our @lectronz.com store! ⌨️

lectronz.com/stores/solde...

Absolutely. That sounds amazing.

Jobs Employee Profile: Synthesis or Formal Verification Developer at YosysHQ You might know YosysHQ from our many Open Source EDA Projects. We are the maintainers of Yosys and the accompanying Open Source ...

We are hiring! Both technical and admin, please take a look at our jobs page!

www.yosyshq.com/jobs

#jobs #hire

What happens when one of the main providers that enables #opensource #silicon to thrive...shuts down? Companies like @mith.ro's new wafer.space jump in and offer an even more compelling option. $7K for 1000 chips on the GlobalFoundries GF180MCU process. Learn more:

theamphour.com/703-building...

PSA: i now consider grebedoc.dev (and the underlying git-pages server software) feature-complete and production-ready, feel free to use it for all your "not supporting Microsoft-nee-GitHub" needs (or whatever other reasons you might have)!

YouTube video by DirectorFeng [ASMR] Can iPhone 17 Pro Max be successfully upgraded from 256GB to 2TB?

Disassembling a new iPhone 7 pro Max and using a CNC mill to decap Friggin amazing.

youtu.be/7M60g09HB1M?...

the Ilford HP5 Plus film branding, except the words have been replaced with their respective typefaces, "Futura Extra Bold & Futura Book"

GitHub - STMicroelectronics/st-mems-rust-drivers: Platform-independent drivers for STMicroelectronics MEMS motion and environmental sensors, based on Rust Programming Language Platform-independent drivers for STMicroelectronics MEMS motion and environmental sensors, based on Rust Programming Language - STMicroelectronics/st-mems-rust-drivers

Oh hey, STMicro publishing drivers in Rust in the open: github.com/STMicroelect...

That’s a good rule to have! But it’s also kind of retail therapy to buy devkits on a whim 🙃

ECP5 is awesome and the open source toolchain combination yosys/nextpnr/trellis works really well. What kind of issues did you have and which board are you using?

Friend: Do you have an FPGA board I could borrow?
Me: Let me check…

(Hurts a bit that I never did anything cool with the more powerful boards)

Cool!

Looks like a fun project! Sounds like there’s just some details left. Is this captured from hardware or some sort of software solution?

I gotchu
bsky.app/profile/kbec...

Bare NDSL motherboard with its top screen flex connected to a breakout-board connected to a @solder.party RP2xxx Stamp Carrier XL with a RP2350 Stamp XL mounted, with a HDMI cable and USB-C cable connected.

...And the beautiful setup