Refurbishing a Tektronix TDS7104 oscilloscope

A Tektronix TDS7104 oscilloscope picked up for $300 at the Silicon Valley Flea Market was the starting point for a detailed refurbishment. The scope is a 4-channel, 1 GHz instrument with a 10 Gs/s maximum sample rate on one channel, running Windows 2000 Pro Embedded on a RadiSys NLX motherboard with an 850 MHz Celeron.

It powered up on arrival, then hung at the BIOS with a CMOS battery error.

Replacing the CR2032 fixed the boot. The dim screen turned out to be gamma settings in Windows, not a failing backlight. The 6 GB IBM Travelstar drive had corrupt sectors, so it was imaged immediately and swapped for a 32 GB mSATA SSD on an IDE adapter. Cloning the image to the SSD failed with a registry error, so Windows 2000 was reinstalled from scratch.

That meant a replacement CD-ROM drive, a bootable USB stick made with WinSetupFromUSB, and Plop Boot Manager loaded from the scope’s own floppy drive. Boot time to first waveform dropped from 2m50s to 1m35s. The post also covers driver extraction, firmware v2.5.5, and the license key scheme.

See the video below and more on tomverbeure.github.io and content on GitHub.

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Raspberry Pi 5 Cyberdeck – DIY Handheld with Powerbank #3DThursday #3DPrinting

MadHias shares:

A DIY handheld cyberdeck designed by the maker specifically for their own Raspberry Pi 5 (not based on Compute Modules, which are more expensive). High-resolution display for actual work capability. Powerbank battery (5V 3A) with the option to swap in the official Pi power supply for heavy loads (no unscrewing required). Free access to Mini HDMI ports for external monitor connection. Used for network analysis, software deployment, and programming. By MadHias

download the files on: https://makerworld.com/en/models/2599635-raspberry-pi5-cyberdeck

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Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!

Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!

LIVE CHAT IS HERE! http://adafru.it/discord

Adafruit on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adafruit

Shop for parts to build your own DIY projects http://adafru.it/3dprinting

3D Printing Projects Playlist:

3D Hangout Show Playlist:

Layer by Layer CAD Tutorials Playlist:

Timelapse Tuesday Playlist:

Connect with Noe and Pedro on Social Media:

Noe’s Twitter / Instagram: http://instagram.com/ecken

Pedro’s Twitter / Instagram: http://instagram.com/videopixil

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ESP32 38-Pin WLED Case – Snap-Fit for ESP32-WROOM DevKit #3DThursday #3DPrinting

Shared by drathbone on MakerWorld:

Snug snap-fit case for an ESP32-WROOM 38-Pin devkit USB-C. Hole at the back for a cable (can easily fit a 5mm wide 3-core or anything similar).

…

Case comprises of a base, with room for pins and cables, a tray for the ESP32 USB-C to sit in, and a click-lock lid. Lid secures nice and tight, and the board is a perfect fit.

Download the files and learn more

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Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!

Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!

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Manly Third Hand – Oversized Helping-Hand for Serious Work #3DThursday #3DPrinting

hypnoziil shares:

Helping hand. Simply needed a tool and all others were wimpy and did not scale up well – so made my own, can be mounted with M6 bolt or screw.

download the files on: https://makerworld.com/en/models/377279

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Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!

Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!

LIVE CHAT IS HERE! http://adafru.it/discord

Adafruit on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adafruit

Shop for parts to build your own DIY projects http://adafru.it/3dprinting

3D Printing Projects Playlist:

3D Hangout Show Playlist:

Layer by Layer CAD Tutorials Playlist:

Timelapse Tuesday Playlist:

Connect with Noe and Pedro on Social Media:

Noe’s Twitter / Instagram: http://instagram.com/ecken

Pedro’s Twitter / Instagram: http://instagram.com/videopixil

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Fine, I’ll build my own text editor

David Bushell set out to build his own browser based text editor. His first attempt drew everything to a <canvas> element at 60 to 120 frames per second. It worked, but canvas gives nothing for free: no text selection, no scrollbars, and no accessibility. He faked scrolling with a hidden overflow <div> sized to match the text, then used the scroll position to offset the canvas render.

The second approach dropped canvas and made that same <div> editable with contenteditable="plaintext-only". That brought native selection and undo history along with it. He had to disable spellcheck to stop input latency spikes, a fix that took days to find.

Past a certain character count, performance got strange, and Chromium fared worse than WebKit. So the final demo uses a plain <textarea>, which handled long text much better, with a third layer of markup for syntax highlighting via MicroLighter. Bushell calls it 90% of a text editor with 1% of the features, and is filing it away for a rainy day.

See more at dbushell.com.

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Cobalt: apps and an SDK for Kobo e-readers

Cobalt is an open source application platform for Kobo e-readers, published at bandarlabs.github.io. It includes a launcher, a signed app store, a Rust SDK, and a runtime that keeps each app in its own unprivileged process. Install it once over USB, then install, update, and remove apps on the reader itself over WiFi. A reboot returns to the stock Kobo reader.

The app list covers reading and utilities: an arXiv preprint reader that handles sections, math, tables, and figures, an OPDS client for Project Gutenberg and Standard Ebooks, a Hacker News client with full comment threads, a Zotero browser, a terminal, Sudoku, and a tool that sends Morse code using the front light. Every package is verified before it opens, and an interrupted install leaves the working version in place.

Developers can start a Rust app, run it in the Cobalt simulator, test on a supported reader, and submit it to the Store without waiting for a platform release. Supported profiles are the Clara BW, Clara Colour, Clara HD, Elipsa 2E, Libra 2, and Libra Colour, each at specific firmware and kernel versions. Cobalt does not replace Kobo’s boot chain, and it is not affiliated with Rakuten Kobo.

See more at bandarlabs.github.io and code on GitHub.

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Hacking IKEA furniture

Wanting a workbench that had the practicality of a shop surface but the look of living room furniture, a maker documented turning IKEA Kallax shelving units into a pair of sturdy office workbenches. Custom furniture came in around 1,000 € per unit and kitchen cabinets did not offer good-looking sides or a workable layout, so the build started with two 2×2 Kallax units plus drawer and door inserts, MDF boards cut to size at the hardware store, screws, decorative foil, and rubber sheets. The top surface came from an old desk that had been sitting in the basement after failing to sell on eBay: a 160 cm by 80 cm desktop cut into two 80 cm by 60 cm pieces, with the cut edges hidden against the wall.

Assembly happened upside down, stacking the desktop, a 3 mm rubber sheet to damp vibration from a 3D printer and pen plotter, an MDF board, another rubber sheet, and then the Kallax, with a final MDF board screwed to the bottom of the shelving unit. Test drilling on an older unit showed that hollow IKEA panels will blow out if screws are overtightened, and paper templates plus drilling through matched pieces kept every hole aligned.

The two headaches were replacement shelf boards cut 355 mm wide instead of 335 mm, and shelf holes that turned out not to be symmetrical, solved on the second try by using inverted clamps to hold the shelf at the exact height and marking the holes directly instead of measuring. The finished benches feel dramatically more solid than a loose board resting on a cabinet, with only a slight lateral wobble when pushed around, and the whole project came in well under the cost of anything comparable off the shelf.

See more at greenlightning.eu.

Ed. note: around my house, we have several excellent IKEA hacks done by my spouse.

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