Remembering The BBC Computer Literacy Project

May 9, 2026 by Jenny List 1 Comment

There comes a point in everybody’s life when things that they were a part of are presented as history, and for the 8-bit generation, that time is now. It’s interesting to see the early history of 8-bit home computers presented as history, not from a 2026 perspective but from the early 1990s. The BBC archive has recently posted a retrospective from 1992 looking at ten years of the Computer Literacy Project, a British government programme intended to equip the young people of the 1980s with the skills they would need to approach the information age. It’s a much more immediate history of something which was largely still in place at the time, making it a time capsule in which this past isn’t quite the other country we see it as today.

The Computer Literacy Project was run by the nation’s broadcaster and included a raft of TV programming about computers, as well as the commissioning of a machine specifically for the project. You know this machine as the Acorn BBC Micro, and aside from eventually providing the genesis of what would become ARM, it remains one of the most high-spec 8-bit machines in terms of built-in hardware. We hear from the luminaries of Acorn about the development of this machine, and then the film moves into some of the wider cultural effects.

If you were there, you’ll doubtless remember some of the TV programmes featured, and you might have used a BBC Micro at school. If you weren’t there, it’s an encapsulation of the promise on offer in that era, an optimism that seems sad when you reflect that educational computing descended into learning Microsoft Word during the following decade. It would be another two decades before the Raspberry Pi and BBC micro:bit picked up that fallen torch.

The Beeb, it seems, has long had an interest in home computers. Schools, too.

Continue reading “Remembering The BBC Computer Literacy Project” →

Machining A Two-Stroke Engine Out Of Aluminium

May 9, 2026 by Maya Posch 12 Comments

Recently [Camden Bowen] took a swing at machining a two-stroke engine out of billet aluminium, following adventures in 3D printing such an engine, as well as building one out of parts largely sourced from a hardware store. The sketchiest part here is probably the use of only a basic mill and lathe, making the milling of certain shapes a definite OSHA violation.

Two-stroke internal combustion engines are pretty simple from a mechanical point of view, with designs readily available. Add in a suitable material to machine and a modicum of machining and welding skills, and presto, you got yourself a not too shabby looking engine.

Of course, back in reality things are a bit more hairy. Not only are there many different ways to produce the parts – with some coming with a time penalty, monetary penalty, or both – but there are also myriad ways to hurt yourself and/or others. Fortunately [Camden] scraped by with just some (expensive) lessons learned and a major ruined part.

The final design features a single cylinder, with an initial pressure test showing a solid 150 PSI (10 bar) of compression. With that encouraging sign, a coil pack and contactor were added for some spark and a test run with the usual premixed gasoline-oil fuel.

Boringly, the engine mostly just runs and work as it should. This is of course not unexpected, much like how following the recipe for a pie produces said pie. But it does demonstrate how easy things are when you do not stray off the beaten path. The only significant issue was the flywheel wobbling slightly, likely due to a small manufacturing glitch, but this should not cause too many issues.

Continue reading “Machining A Two-Stroke Engine Out Of Aluminium” →

Copy Or Redesign?

May 9, 2026 by Elliot Williams 3 Comments

We got asked a great question in the mailbag segment on the Podcast this week: are there hacks that we have read about on Hackaday that we use in our everyday life? The answer was absolutely yes, and I loved Tom’s take it often goes the other way – he sees a hack, tests it out, and then writes it up.

But I started looking around the office and I found more examples of projects that were absolutely inspired by projects I had seen on Hackaday, yet weren’t the same. I made a DIY mechanical keyboard because I saw someone else do it. There are a few home-made battery packs that I probably wouldn’t have attempted without having read about someone doing the same thing. I riffed on [Ted Yapo]’s Tritiled project, making a slightly inferior, but workable knockoff, and they’ve been glowing for many years now.

That got me to thinking about reproducing a project versus taking inspiration from it, and though I enjoy both, I’m find myself most often in the “inspiration” mode. I just can’t leave well enough alone, even when I’m fundamentally copying someone. NIH syndrome? Expediency? Probably both, and sometimes with a dose of hubris or feature creep.

Looking back at [Ted]’s TritiLED, though, I found some great examples in both the rebuild and redesign modes on Hackaday.io. [schlion]’s Making Ted Yapo’s TritiLED couldn’t be a clearer example of the former, and it’s great to look over his shoulder and appreciate all the lessons he learned along the way. [Stephan Walter]’s Yet another ultra low power LED is inspired by [Christoph Tack]’s Ultra low power LED, which is in turn inspired by [Ted]’s project, like a conceptual grandchild.

In a way, I look at this like with music: sometimes you play the notes the way they were written down, and sometimes you riff on someone else’s theme. Both are equally valid, and both owe a debt to the upstream source. Is Hackaday the hackers’ jazz club? And which of these modes do you find yourself working in most?

It’s An Apple Lisa, On A FPGA

May 9, 2026 by Jenny List 3 Comments

Most of us will know that Apple’s precursor to the Macintosh series of computers was a machine called the Lisa. Something of a behemoth compared to those early Macs, it had a price to match and wasn’t a commercial success. Working Lisas survive, but unlike a Mac you won’t find many at your local swapmeet. But what if you really must try this early Apple GUI? Never fear, because [AlexElectronics] is here with a much more accessible version on a FPGA.

This Lisa has a surprisingly large PCB compared to the size of the FPGA, because of the number of connectors. It takes the approach of mixing new and old in interfaces, for example as well as original Lisa keyboard and mouse support, you can also use modern USB versions. There’s also an HDMI output for a modern monitor, and an SD card. Unexpectedly alongside the FPGA there’s a 40-pin DIP, it’s a UART chip because there’s no handy pre-built one for that particular chip. We’re told it will be up on GitHub when finalized.

Keeping old computers alive, especially rare ones, is hard. We like projects like this one, and we hope to see more developments. Meanwhile you can see the machine in the video below.

Continue reading “It’s An Apple Lisa, On A FPGA” →

Getting A Proprietary-Bus GPU Onto PCIe Enables Cheaper Local LLMs, For Now

May 9, 2026 by Tyler August 20 Comments

If you’ve been thinking of getting into self-hosting generative AI, but don’t have a big budget for hardware, you might want to check out [Hardware Haven]’s latest video on an unusually cheap GPU option — but you’ll have to do so quickly, before the market realizes the chance for arbitrage and prices rise accordingly.

He’s gotten a hold of a 16 GB NVidia V100 card for only about a hundred bucks, mostly because it’s not easy to plug in, being on an SXM2 socket rather than the PCIe bus. SXM is a server architecture, and not something you’re likely to get on your motherboard. Another hundred got him an adapter board to fit this enterprise GPU on a consumer motherboard. That’s still a lot less than the PCIe version of the same card, which will likely set you back a thousand or more unless you get very lucky on eBay.

It’s not the newest card, dating back from 2017, but that doesn’t mean it can’t run the latest open models. After 3D printing a fan shroud for the thing so it didn’t cook itself, adding very slightly to the build cost, [Hardware Haven] set to work seeing what it could do. Going head-to-head against an RTX 3060 12 GB, the older V100 delivered more tokens per second at a slightly higher efficiency — but much higher idle power.

Still, it’s nice to see a cheap way to get into local AI, even if it might not still be cheap by the time you read this. Once you have the hardware, you might want some easy software options so you don’t have to spend all day on setup. Of course you only need a hefty GPU to run larger models — you can get into hosting your own AI on a Raspberry Pi, if you’re patient.

Continue reading “Getting A Proprietary-Bus GPU Onto PCIe Enables Cheaper Local LLMs, For Now” →

Reverse-engineering The 1998 Ultima Online Demo Server

May 8, 2026 by Maya Posch 2 Comments

In any MMORPG, the average user will generally only encounter the client side of the system. This makes building a compatible open source version of the proprietary server into a bit of a chore. Of course, sometimes you get a bit of a break, such as with the – still active – MMORPG Ultima Online, when the disc for the 1998 The Second Age expansion contained a stand-alone demo. This also meant a (stripped-down) server which has been gratefully reverse-engineered by the community, with [draxinar] now claiming to have made the most complete server based on this demo server.

To make things extra challenging, the originally written in C++ server binary was reverse-engineered into C99 code, meaning that the use of classes and associated vtables had to be left intact, just without the critter comforts provided by C++.

The total process took about a decade with occasional progress, with the current server binary being mostly identical to a 1998-era Ultima Online server. Some features that were stubbed out or disabled in the demo server had to be re-enabled or reimplemented, including the user account system.

Features that were left out of the final release like the ecology system were also enabled in so far as they were implemented. Although there is probably still a lot more work to be done on the code, [draxinar] reckons that this is a good point for the community to get involved to do some testing and provide feedback. There are also some missing server-related resource files that may still be saved somewhere.

Thanks to [adistuder] for the tip.

Could Your Next House Be Built From Giant Lego By An Inchworm Robot?

May 8, 2026 by Tyler August 12 Comments

Well, it depends when you’re going to be househunting– if it’s anytime soon, Betteridge’s law applies, but if your time horizon is a ways further out, [Miana Smith] at MIT wants to make it happen. She’s got a paper out with an open-source inchworm robot designed to assemble structures from voxels– and what is a voxel but a giant, LEGO-esque brick?

There’s a demo video below, and it’s easier to understand the motion of this thing when you see it in action. The 5 degree-of-freedom MILAbot has actuators on both ends, and no traditional base– that’s the inchworm part. It grabs a brick while anchored to one part of the structure, then stays anchored to the new brick to keep building from that locale, so on and so on.

Note that we’re not talking about concrete bricks here, though conceivably you could use an inchworm-style actuator to assemble those. The ‘voxels’ in the study are engineered space-frame blocks which come together very easily, though admittedly would make for a very drafty home– you’d want to fill them with spray foam as a finishing step. So it’s more of a framing technique than a one-and-done thing. Still it is a technique that has something to recommend it compared to the 3D-printed concrete houses that get so much hype— and are already being torn down.

For instance, the researchers find that weather the voxels are plywood, PLA, or metal, the resulting structure has less embodied energy than any concrete structure, with 3D printed concrete being worst option by that metric– though the balloon-frame stick-build we in North America consider “conventional” is still the lowest of all. On the other hand, that balloon-frame building takes a crew to put together, and labour is expensive compared to robots. At the moment, however, the study admits balloon-framing wins on price, but that doesn’t mean it always will, and it’s a fun hack regardless.

So while your next house might not be made of LEGO by a robot inchworm, we’re still grateful to [Miana] for the tip.

Most building hacks we see here are of the 3D printed variety, but don’t count out plain old dirt. For that matter, as long as someone is willing to live in it, anything can be a house– even an airliner. Continue reading “Could Your Next House Be Built From Giant Lego By An Inchworm Robot?” →