Computers & Mobile

The latest DIY ideas, techniques and tools for digital gadgetry, open code, smart hacks, and more. Processing power to the people!

Home-brewed, tenth-scale Cray-1A

Home-brewed, tenth-scale Cray-1A

When NYC Resistor’s Chris Fenton wanted a Cray, he wasn’t talking about a casemodded PC. No, he really wanted his own Cray. His exhaustively-researched machine simulates the functionality of one of the old-school supercomputers, to the point where he’s researching old Cray resources looking for programs to run — apparently you can’t exactly download Centipede […]

How-To:  Watt-style mechanical governor

How-To: Watt-style mechanical governor

Adam Richard Cooper built this hand-cranked model of a classic mechanical governor–which, as MachinistBlog succinctly put it “regulates the speed of steam engines by acting as a negative feedback system”–and made the dimensional drawings and build notes freely available for download at his site. I like the idea of a hand-cranked governor model, particularly, because it provides tactile feedback of the device’s purpose: You crank it faster, it gets harder to crank.