The post discusses the author's experience debugging USB booting on the OMAP3530 BeagleBoard, an older hardware platform. The author encountered a UART bug while working on a Chumby 8 kernel and decided to experiment with USB boot...
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The author provides updates on their previous post about rescuing a recovery partition from an old Macintosh Performa 550. They discuss new findings, including insights from comments by a reader, the discovery of an Apple patent r...
Troubleshooting a Macintosh Performa 450 revealed a RAM failure due to capacitor leakage, which was successfully repaired using Apple's Serial Test Manager diagnostics.
The author discovered a 27-year-old easter egg in the Power Mac G3's ROM, which was previously undocumented. They found a hidden image and a secret code in the ROM, and after disassembling the code, they were able to activate the ...
The author describes the process of modifying an HDMI dummy plug's EDID using a Raspberry Pi. The dummy plug is a small device that tricks a computer into thinking a monitor is connected. The author explains the process of replaci...
The author discusses the issue of shipping vintage Macintosh computers, particularly the big CRT-based Macs, and how they are regularly damaged in transit due to the brittle plastic. They conducted a research project on eBay and f...
The text discusses the author's experience fixing a bug in Basilisk II, a 68k Mac emulator, that caused a black screen when launched on newer Windows versions. The bug was traced to a memory allocation issue in the Windows version...
The post discusses the discovery of a long-lost hidden recovery partition from 1994 on an old 160 MB Conner hard drive. The author shares the process of finding and recovering the partition, including references to Apple's tech no...
The text discusses the issue of old Apple-branded SCSI hard drives made by Quantum and Conner in the 1990s, which are commonly affected by a problem where the drive spins up, but the head doesn't move. The author shares his experi...
The text describes how a mistake in the ROM of the Macintosh Classic II allowed it to boot up successfully. The author used MAME to emulate the Classic II and observed that it booted up fine in 24-bit addressing mode but not in 32...
The author describes a quick and easy repair of a defective NZXT Signal 4K30 HDMI capture device. The device was not detected by the NZXT Cam software, but the author was able to identify and fix the issue with a bad solder joint,...
The text describes the author's experience repairing a Razer Kiyo Pro webcam with focus control issues. The author found a good deal on eBay for two webcams, and discovered that the description was wrong as both cameras powered on...
The text discusses a capacitor being installed backwards in Apple’s Macintosh LC III, causing damage to the circuit. The author provides evidence and comparisons with other Mac models to support the claim. They also highlight pote...
The author describes a hardware repair of an Elgato HD60 S that only worked on Mac. The device was sold as not working, but the author found that it worked fine on Mac and Linux, but not on Windows. After extensive research and te...
The text discusses the drama around the shutdown of the Nintendo Wii U’s online gaming, particularly focusing on the goal of Team 0% to beat every level created in Super Mario Maker. It also details the use of custom hardware mods...
The post discusses the author's experience fixing an Elgato HD60 S HDMI capture device. It includes hardware diagnostics, firmware reverse engineering, and the process of identifying and replacing faulty chips. The author also exp...
0Upgrading my Chumby 8 kernel part 13: the end
2024-08-03 •
The author has completed a project to upgrade the Chumby 8 from a 2011 Linux kernel to a modern 6.x Linux kernel. The project involved working on various subsystems such as clk, etnaviv, ASoC, dma, ARM, pwm, mmc, wifi, serial, pow...
The author discusses fixing cheap Altera USB Blaster clones, including CH552G-based and FTDI+CPLD designs. They found improved open-source firmware and ported it to the clones, fixing bugs in the process. They also experimented wi...
The author discovered a bug in Ubuntu MATE and Xubuntu that prevented the installation of .deb files. After years of ignoring the issue, the author finally decided to fix it. The bug was caused by GDebi using execv() to replace it...