Electronics

The 4164 DRAM memory chips can be found inside old 8-bit computers like Atari 800XL and Commodore 64. In this blog I will try to explain how they work by going through the datasheet and then building a breadboard with an Arduino to look at the operation in more detail. You can also watch this on youtube.

As a child I have owned an Atari 800XL. This 8-bit computer always had a special place in my heart. After almost 35 years I have decided to dive a bit deeper into the circuitry of this now called retro computer. What better way to start is to remake the PCB from scratch.

MiSTer project that is installed on the DE10-Nano board can only output video using the on-board HDMI connector. However if you want to get the real retro gaming experience then you can attach the MiSTer IO Board. Among other things, this add-on board let's you output 15KHz analog RGB video and audio signals that will let you connect to a CRT monitor. This blog post describes how to build such a board.

In order to connect your DE10-Nano board to VGA or other RGB output, you need an I/O Board. This PCB board and assembly instructions are available on the GitHub pages of the MiSTer project.

The Terasic DE10-Nano board is based on Altera Cyclone V SoC chip. It is a hybrid of ARM processor and FPGA that lets you do amazing things, among which is run cores of vintage computers. But as always it is good to start with making a LED on the board blink.

In this blog I will show how to connect a 0.96" IPS color display that is 80x160 pixels to Arduino Nano. Then I will try the new Arduino Web Editor to create and later to share this project.

Sonoff is an ESP8266 based on/off switch that will let you control electrical devices around your home. Out of the box it can be only managed by the eWeLink app which is running on Chinese servers. If you want to take full control of the device you can flash the firmware and access it inside your local network.

Fast Fourier transform (FFT) is an analysis method that let's you dissect complex waveforms and determine out of which frequencies they were composed. This function is often present on an oscilloscope and in this blog I will show a basic application of it.

Electrolytic capacitors are known for their terrible accuracy. Just by reading the value on the package is often not enough to know their true capacitance. In this blog I will show how to measure the real value by using a scope.

If you want to save your valuable space and don’t want to put a real Xmas tree in your room, there is always an option to make one out of PCB and LEDs and during the process learn something about electronics.