The Yamaha DX7 digital synthesizer was released in 1983 and became “one of the most important advances in the history of modern popular music”1. It defined the sound of 1980s pop music, used by bands from A-ha and Michael Jackson … Read more
The vintage IBM circuit board below has a large metal block on it that caught my attention, so I investigated it in detail. It turns out that the board is part of a modem, and the large metal box is … Read more
For a while now I have wanted to write a simple dictionary app for the Apple Watch. The goal was to be able to quickly look up words from paper books, by storing the book on the watch to be … Read more
I recently did a PC power supply teardown so I figured it would be interesting to go deeper and see what happens inside the power supply’s control IC. The die photo below shows the UC3842 chip, which was very popular … Read more
2021-03-21 in emulation Tetris for the NES is one of my favourite versions of Tetris. My only complaint is that it lacks the ability to “hard drop” – instantly dropping the current piece and locking it into place. Let’s change … Read more