[Mansour] presents an interesting idea in his essay A Common Thread — just as USB-C has become the “One Connector To Rule Them All” in the world of electronics, so too should his projects have a unified physical connection layer. A common thread, if you will.

Specifically, the 1/4″-20 UNC connector that was already on all his camera equipment. Unifying his stuff around that connector wasn’t a bolt from the blue brainwave. By the sounds of it, the idea evolved over time and only became intentional after he’d already started using it.

There’s something to be said for it, though. One thing is the convenience of knowing your various bits and bobs are going to fit together like they were made with LEGO. Another is taking away a whole set of decisions in the design process: it’s going to have a 1/4″-20 UNC fitting, so [Mansour] needs only decide if its going to be tapped into the material or if he’s using an inset or captive bolt.

It isn’t like a 1/4″ bolt is going to introduce a weak point in most things we build — with good hardware it can take a ton or more. On the other hand it’s not exactly resilient to torque, but [Mansour]’s camera bag had the answer to that, too: spring loaded locator pins that drop into holes on the female side to take up the torque. In the photography world, these are AARI pins. To us they just seem like a good idea.

Maybe you don’t see the point of avoiding redesigning the wheel every time for custom mounts and brackets. After all, that lets you come up the the ideal solution every time. On the other hand, [Mansour] has both simplified his design process and made decades worth of camera-holding objects — everything from tripods to stabilizing gimbals — accessible to all his stuff. It’s an interesting idea, and his full blog post is worth a read, even if it’s not likely the EU is going to force its adoption like it did USB-C.

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For the past three years [Christopher Mitchell] has been working on his replica of a British Rail Class 800 control cab for a physical train simulator, with the July blog update providing many details on the progress.

The Class 800 series of trains is relatively new, having first entered service in the UK in 2017 on the Great Western Railway (GWR). Designed and built by Hitachi as part of their modular AT300 product series, they come in both purely electrical and diesel-electric hybrid configurations to deal with non-electrified rail sections.
British Rail Class 800 in service with LNER in 2023. (Credit: Foulger Rail Photos, Wikimedia)
Replicating the experience of driving a train is always a trade-off between what one would like and what is practical or affordable. With only a corner of his apartment to work with, [Christopher] has opted to focus on the instruments and controls in the cab, using real components where possible or building replicas for the remainder.

This entire control panel is to be used with simulators like Train Simulator and Train Sim World, using their controller APIs to both control the in-game train as well as to get feedback to be displayed on the real instruments and the various LEDs, such as those that indicate the state of the external lights. These are all controlled internally via a CAN bus, as is typical.

These instruments include genuine AWS sunflowers, part of the safety system that ensures that a driver has acknowledged a non-clear signal along the track. It’s another nice touch to a control cab simulation that’s shaping up to be rather close to the real deal.

Even if for the average person something like a Densha de Go! copy and associated controllers will likely suffice, there’s a lot to be said for having something closely resembling the real deal for a realistic game, whether it’s a train, car or airplane controller and associated instrumentation.

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Who says an old dog can’t do new tricks? The Atari ST has got to qualify as an “old dog” 41 years after launch, and if playing Full Motion Video (FMV) cutscenes– from DOS games of a decade later– doesn’t count as a new trick, we’re not sure what does. In this case, [Jonas Eschenburg] is the trainer and his fascinating write-up lets you know exactly how he did it.

Unlike the contemporary and pricier Amiga, Atari’s 68000-based home computer didn’t have any fancy graphics chips; everything has to go through the Motorolla CPU at a blistering 8MHz. Just porting classic DOS games like [Jonas Eschenburg] is doing with Command and Conquer— a title 10 years newer than the ST– is an amazing tour de force. Bringing the cutscenes along for the ride is just bonus, but what a bonus it is.

Granted, [Jonas] has to work within the Atari’s limitations, so it doesn’t quite look the same. The biggest limitation is of course the 16 colour planar graphics on the Atari, compared with 256 colours of chunky goodness that VGA offered. [Jonas] admits that getting good palettes to minimize artifacting is a challenge. Interestingly he’s not showing quite so many blocking artifacts we would expect from the technique he is using: to take advantage of how the ST’s memory is laid out, he’s using a codebook-based codec that splits the image into easily-addressable blocks. Both the palette and the codebook must update continuously as the film plays but that’s still easier on the antique hardware than streaming raw pixel data, which you cannot do. The whole article is absolutely worth a read, and the demo videos generously sprinkled through it are worth a look, too. We’ve included a demo of C&C‘s intro below. If you’re itching to play, the port is on Itch.io.

Speaking of DOS games, did you know the Atari ST can run doom? Multiple versions, even.

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Styrofoam – or closed-cell extruded polystyrene (XPS) foam if you want to be precise – is one of those materials that is both super versatile for packaging and insulation, but also a menace when it comes to disposal, even if you ignore that the monomer styrene (C₈H₈) is a known mutagenic toxin. One of the more creative ways to deal with the metric tons of polystyrene waste generated each year is to turn it into gasoline, as demonstrated by [Lowered Expectations] in a recent video.

With polystyrene being just another hydrocarbon polymer, the idea of turning these polymers into the mixture of hydrocarbon chains we call ‘gasoline’ isn’t so crazy. The problem is mostly doing it in a way that makes some economic sense and doesn’t risk turning your domicile into a hazmat risk site or threaten the health of you, your loved ones and the neighborhood.

The method demonstrated in the video uses fairly basic methods involving pyrolysis and distillation. The first step involves dissolving the polystyrene in gasoline that was previously recovered from stale gasoline, which is another dangerously fun science experiment. This creates a thick slurry that’s then put into the distillation flask for the heating phase.

After testing the distillates for spark ignition the useful distillates were combined with fuel stabilizer added. Before tossing this into a gasoline engine tank for further testing, the concerns of auto-polymerization of styrene monomers are addressed, which requires special inhibiters.

Although this mixture runs a gasoline generator just fine, a borescope inspection of the cylinders showed a build-up of a shiny, gummy residue. There’s also the issue that this mixture contains styrene monomers, which are as noted very unhealthy to breathe in from either the fuel or any remaining monomers in the exhaust. Definitely not something to try at home, basically.

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If you’re flying high in the sky, it’s useful to know if there’s turbulence, heavy rain, or other nasty weather ahead. Onboard weather radar is a useful tool that pilots use to scope out conditions ahead. [Thomas Scherrer] came into possession of a weather radar display from a vintage aircraft, and decided to tear it apart for our viewing pleasure.

The unit in question is a Bendix PPI-1 plan position indicator. This particular 1971 example was scored from a McDonnell-Douglas DC9. [Thomas] only has the display itself, not the radar that would feed it or the power supply to turn it on. Still, even just the readout unit is super interesting to look inside. Right off the bat, there’s a neat dimming filter on the front, and the case itself is really beautifully designed for service. The design is very much of its time, full of neat wire harnesses and chunky through-hole components. There are some neat surprises inside, too, like an interesting device shaped like a triangular prism whose purpose we won’t spoil here.

If you’re wondering what one of these units looks like in action, you can see such an example on YouTube. The display basically lights up in areas where there were stronger radar returns indicating weather to be avoided.

We love radars around these parts, and we feature them all the time. Video after the break.

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As strong and light as carbon fiber-epoxy composites are, the same can’t always be said of carbon-fiber reinforced 3D printer filaments. Of those that do improve over stock filament, the best performance comes from long, continuous strands, but the printers that can embed these are quite expensive. [MagicLAG], looking for a cheaper method, made something even stronger: prints reinforced with subsurface carbon-fiber cloth.

They tried a few other methods first, including pausing the print and manually embedding carbon fiber strands, ironing strands into the finished part, and ironing carbon fiber cloth into the bottom layer. For the main method, though, he printed the test part in three pieces: a core part, and two outer shell layers. Between the core and the shell is a small gap, into which carbon-fiber cloth can be epoxied. Under good conditions (not using quick-setting epoxy), this mostly preserves the outer surface and dimensional accuracy.

To test the various strengthening methods, [MagicLAG] printed hooks and tensioned them on a load cell until failure. None of the methods using single-stranded fiber showed any improvement; the fiber simply bent and let the surrounding plastic break. As a control for the epidermal cloth parts, they printed shells and cores and epoxied them together. These controls performed better than the standard parts, but not nearly as well as the carbon-fiber cloth composites. With only a few layers of cloth, these more than tripled the yield strength of the basic hook.

If you’d rather use a carbon-fiber filament, the type of plastic matters; carbon fiber makes PLA, at least, weaker. Regardless of form, some caution is called for whenever handling carbon fiber, since it seems to show some asbestos-like effects.

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If you used a serious computer pre-IBM PC, there was a fair chance its operating system was CP/M. CP/M was a staple among 8080 and Z80 computers and while there were other versions, we’ll always associate CP/M with the Z-80. There was a CP/M made for the PC which used an 8088 (a hybrid 8-bit bus with a 16-bit 8086 core), but it was overwhelmed by MSDOS. However, there was another interesting version made for the 68000, and now [johnsonjh] has ported that over to create an early version of CP/M for 80386 protected mode.

The Z-80 only had a 16-bit address bus, so it could only handle 64K of memory. It was common to “bank switch” some memory, and CP/M Plus could be made to understand that (for example, you might have 32K of common memory and three banks of 32K memory; you could address one bank at a time). However, the 386 had a full-blown memory management unit that could remap physical 4K memory pages to anywhere in a program’s virtual address space.

Ordinary CP/M couldn’t handle that, but the Motorola 68000 had a similar page management model, so it makes sense it might be easier to port CP/M-68K to the 80386 than starting from the original, even though the instruction set for the Z-80 is conceptually more similar to the 80386.

What can you do with it? We don’t know. Presumably, it will allow you to use lots of memory. Historically, CP/M software from one variant would not run on another, so you’ll have to build anything you want to use. Of course, the real killer for lots of CP/M memory was multitasking, but that takes MP/M, and only about half of that is currently working. But we won’t be surprised to see it completed soon.

While CP/M skills won’t land you many jobs these days, it is a pretty good way to get mentioned on Hackaday.

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Over the years I have been to many hacker camps and done a lot of very cool things, but BornHack 2026 brought me something entirely new: Radio. By which I don’t mean radio in terms of amateur radio, LoRa, or whatever, but Radio. Broadcast radio, because the camp had a special event FM radio station for the first time. And because in a previous life I spent an inordinate amount of time in my university’s student radio station and have the Radio Voice to prove it, I was totally there for it.
The BornHack Radio nerve centre.
For a hacker camp, one of the special things about BornHack Radio was unexpected, that it was entirely analogue. No online streams, the only broadcast was over the air, 5 watts ERP from a vertical antenna stuck on a mast at the highest point of the Hylkedam scout camp site. I don’t know whether any of the residents of the isle of Funen listened, or what they made of it, but it certainly reached as far as the two closest towns.

The other unexpected feature of the station was that it had no music licensing. Personally I viewed this as an asset, because it forced the programming to be hacker-focused rather than suit the musical tastes of whichever people are enthusiastic enough to be DJs. I sincerely hope they don’t get a music licence at future events, speech-only gives it a special quality.

The studio for an analogue station like this one can be surprisingly simple, in that it’s a mixing desk to bring all the different microphones and other inputs together and set the levels, and not a lot else. the whole thing was in a Coleman shelter on the main drag through the camp, so as studios go it could have been quieter. Programming varied from talk shows through interview shows, a live feed from the speaker tent — is this the first ever Hacker Jeopardy broadcast? — and a beautifully done robotic numbers station which I suspect may also have been part of one of the on-camp games.

I brought two shows to the airwaves, both recorded, the first of which was a BornHack take on the Hackaday Podcast format, and the second a half-hour roving interview show. I believe I may be the first person ever to live-commentate a pixelflood screen in the style of Formula One coverage.

The thing that struck me most in my first foray into radio journalism was how straightforward it was. Wander the camp with microphone (complete with fluffy windshield and 3D-printed Hackaday cube), drop the results into Audacity, and a remarkably straightforward editing process compared to video. Last time I did this it involved 1/4″ tape and a razor blade.

So that was BornHack Radio, a new experience at a hacker camp both for those of us who ventured forth on the airwaves, and I hope also for the listeners. A format in which the live shows disappeared into the aether rather than having an online afterlife gave the whole thing a freedom rarely found in 2026. I really hope this isn’t the last time I break out the fluffy microphone at a hacker camp.

Thanks to [⁨Morel Sourvalley⁩] for the images.

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In the 1980s, France was the stage for one of the boldest public computing projects of the era. Minitel was the French take on viewdata, and instead of making it an expensive and unattainable luxury, they made the terminals universally available. Many Minitel services cost extra to use, but despite this it was a runaway success that lingered on into the 21st century.

The ubiquitous terminals are now surplus to requirements, but that’s not to say they are useless. [MemoireMorte] has proved this with the Memo-1, a 6502-based computer designed to plug into a Minitel-1 terminal. It’s just the accessory your Minitel needs!

Hardware wise it’s a relatively conventional device with the usual RAM, ROM, and BASIC. There’s an expansion port, and a 6522 to provide a couple of Atari joystick ports. The serial port uses a a 6551 ACIA rather than the more usual W65C51 because of an incompatibility between the latter chip and the Minitel-1.

We like this computer, not because of novelty, after all it’s hardly the first 6502 we’ve seen, but because of its use of the Minitel terminal. These devices are magnificent, and deserve more love. We subjected another terminal to a teardown a year or two ago.

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