Hardware Archive

Anyone who has turned on a shortwave radio in the past decade knows it's a wasteland out there, to the chagrin of nostalgic old geeks like me. But this technology sector is also one poised to explode with innovation thanks to software-defined radio. From H-Online: "Software-defined radio promises to the complexity in radio systems a software problem. The principle is simple and, in the ideal setup, an antenna is connected directly to analogue-to-digital converters for receiving signals and digital-to-analogue converters for transmitting them, with software running on an attached processor taking care of everything else." Your computer is about to become more useful than ever.

"With fond memories of educational titles like 'Granny's Garden', and less educational ones like 'Pole Position' and 'Boffin', the BBC B seemed like a worthy machine to bring back to life inside an FPGA." The Hacker News thread has links to more FPGA implementations of older home computers.

"One of the world's oldest commercial computers has been brought back to life by two enthusiasts in a barn in Kent. The ICT1301 computer, known as Flossie, was restored to working order on its 50th anniversary by engineers Roger Holmes and Rod Brown in Bethersden."

"We've seen a profusion of relatively low-cost PCs and tablets over the last few years, but Taiwanese electronics company Via's APC is cheap even by these standards: it's a $49 low-power desktop computer running a modified version of Android 2.3. Announced today, the APC is meant as a simple way to connect to the internet, so you won't get a great deal of computing power. It contains an 800MHz processor, 512MB of DDR3 memory, 2GB of flash storage, and can connect to a monitor or TV to output a resolution of up to 720p. It also consumes a fraction of a standard desktop's power: 13.5 watts at maximum and only 4 watts when idle."

"Efforts are split between models in which keyboards detach from screens, ones in which the keys remain attached but can be hidden behind displays, and traditional fixed clamshell designs." None of these really float my boat. They work with clunky connectors and weird hinges, while I'd much rather have Surface's nice magnetic connection. On top of that, Surface just looks way better than this stuff. Pretty clear why Microsoft felt the need to make their own hardware.

"Multi-touch technologies have a long history. To put it in perspective, my group at the University of Toronto was working on multi-touch in 1984, the same year that the first Macintosh computer was released, and we were not the first. Furthermore, during the development of the iPhone, Apple was very much aware of the history of multi-touch, dating at least back to 1982, and the use of the pinch gesture, dating back to 1983. This is clearly demonstrated by the bibliography of the PhD thesis of Wayne Westerman, co-founder of FingerWorks, a company that Apple acquired early in 2005, and now an Apple employee. In making this statement about their awareness of past work, I am not criticizing Westerman, the iPhone, or Apple. It is simply good practice and good scholarship to know the literature and do one's homework when embarking on a new product. What I am pointing out, however, is that 'new' technologies - like multi-touch - do not grow out of a vacuum. While marketing tends to like the 'great invention' story, real innovation rarely works that way. In short, the evolution of multi-touch is a text-book example of what I call 'the long-nose of innovation'." If we lived in a just and science-based world, this detailed history alone would be enough for judges the world over to throw all of a certain company's patent aggression out the window. Sadly, we live in an unjust and money-based world.