Hi everyone, a few months ago I got a Brother AX-25, and since then, I've been working on turning it into a computer. It uses an Arduino to scan the custom mechanical keyboard and control the typewriter, and a Raspberry Pi is connected to the Arduino over serial so I can log into it in headless mode.
Circuit design *
Design of electronic circuits
System-on-Chip bus: AXI4 simplified and explained
Protocol AXI4 was developed for High-bandwidth and low latency applications. It is designed to allow communication between master and slave devices. Master is typically a DMA or CPU and slaves are DRAM controllers, or other specific protocol controllers: UART, SPI, and others. Sometimes one component can implement multiple instances of this protocol. Usually, a prefix is used to differentiate between multiple AXI4 interfaces.
For example, Ethernet MAC can integrate DMA and slave interface used to command MAC. MAC can accept commands on the slave interface that contain data about the location of the next ethernet packet and MAC can start fetching this packet using the separate master interface instance.
This article was motivated by common design mistakes AXI4 designers make when they are designing their Digital IP. (Looking at you Xilinx)
3rd Order Low-pass Filter with 1 Op Amp
Common approach to build a 3rd order low-pass filter is to use two circuit stages and two Op Amps. Making a good One Op Amp design is not always easy, but it is possible.
Common misconceptions about space-grade integrated circuits
Space exploration was always fascinating, and recent developments have reignited the interest to the heights never seen since the last man stood on the Moon. People argue about Mars exploration and features of spaceships as their grandparents would’ve done if the internet existed fifty years ago. I’m an electronics engineer working in the aerospace industry, so I know a thing or two about the technical background of this stuff — and I see that these things aren’t common knowledge, and people often have significantly skewed ideas about the reasons behind many things and decisions. Namely, I’d love to speak of some misconceptions about radiation hardened integrated circuits and the means of protection from radiation-induced damage.
Reverse engineering a high-end soldering station
(This is the translation of the original article performed by baragol)
We had a bunch of photographs of the main PCB, a YouTube video with drain-voltage waveforms of MOSFETs, a forum post with a breakdown of the capacitance values of LC circuit capacitors and also a number of unboxing videos showing the heating-up of the soldering tip. The only thing that really worried me was the video with the measurement of the peak power consumption during the heating-up. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than burned cartridge newly bought for 60 bucks from Amazon. But let me start from the beginning.
System in Package, or What's Under Chip Package Cover?
Disclaimer: This article is a slightly updated translation of my own piece published on this very site here. If you're Russian-speaking, you may want to check the original. If you're English-speaking, it's worth noting that English is not my native language, so I'll be very grateful for the feedback if you find something weird in the text.
Authors' contribution
MaFrance351 1730.0dlinyj 1714.0dmitriyrudnev 1673.0amartology 1282.0Lunathecat 1117.0OldFashionedEngineer 902.0ynoxinul 744.0zatim 544.0MyElectronix 480.0tgx 470.0