Hardware Hacker Meetings, Aug/Sept/Oct 2008

This is Fredrik, one of our hot new Hardware Hacker geeks...

Here is Fredrik's presentation on the Propeller, 8core, 32bit RISC, PIC microcontroller by Parallax.

Fredrik is a programmer for IBM.. Hard core. :)

Here is his Hydra DIY gaming system.

The Hydra is powered by a propeller microcontroller.

Here is another propeller uC that Fredrick later uses as a serial interface to his Appledore Replica-I apple-I clone in a C64 case. :)

Nice close up shot of the Hydra w/a 1GB SD card full of games. :)

W/controller...

Here it is with a factory 512kB expansion card.

Playing a graphics demo.

Fredrik's USB/serial adapter.

Point to point soldering on his Propeller dev board.

Two completely different Propeller applications.

Man and Machine. :)

That same night, a rep from the local educational/robotics group came buy looking for volunteers.

This is Fredrik's Appledore. An Apple-I clone in a C64 case with a Propeller C64-to-Serial interface "terminal" and VGA output.

The Propeller is used to interface the C64 keyboard to the replica-I apple clonevia RS-232, and also output the text to a VGA output to form a seamless "computing system". Very cool. :)

Charles Strang's Oct. 20th presentation on HOWTO create a PC board from inception to completed, professional grade PC board.

The steps...

VIDEO: The killer video of Fredrik's way cool, Propeller driven 64x32 bi-color LED panel by sureelectronics.net. Must watch!

VIDEO: On another table, some geeks are archiving some classic C=64 1541 5.25" DSDD floppy disks to image files.

Charles and Fredrik compare hardware... Fredrik's is bigger.. AND blinky-er. :)

VIDEO: This was a DIY 25KV flyback transformer. "Not enough to kill.. but enough to burn" he said. :)

VIDEO: This looks like a harmless plasma ball.. but you don't want to touch this one with your bare skin!

His name was Mike Henry from the TIER "Educational Robotics" program here in SA.

Good program.