Computers

How-To:  Build a heat pipe

How-To: Build a heat pipe

Heat pipes, I am obliged to point out, are awesome. When somebody first explained to me how they work, I was like, “No way. Uh-unh. Don’t believe you.” And yet they persist in existing, and working, in spite of my disbelief. I’m still getting over the pain. Lots of people sell heat pipes to overclockers/PC […]

The first ethernet cable

The first ethernet cable

Lisa Katayama writes on Boing Boing Gadgets: Behind an ordinary door in a nondescript room hosting several printers and copiers at PARC is the world’s first Ethernet cable. In 1973, Bob Metcalfe sent an internal memo to his colleagues at Xerox proposing a local system of interacting workstations, files, and printers. The devices would all […]

25 chips that shook the world

IEEE Spectrum has a great package of articles covering 25 Microchips that shook the world. All of your faves are there: the 555, the 6502, the 8088, the TI TMC0281 (which ET used to phone home), the PIC 16C84, the WD1402A (aka the first UART chip), the Z80, and the Sh-Boom coprocessor. The wha? Here’s […]

Single-finger text input

Here’s a fascinating video demo of Dasher, a single finger interface that allows you to enter text without a keyboard. Single-finger input without a keyboard? Wait, that’s my iPhone. Keyboards are inefficient for two reasons: they do not exploit the redundancy in normal … all » language; and they waste the fine analogue capabilities of […]