Exploring the stars, thousands of light years away from Earth, sounds pretty great right about now. While Darian Johnson hasn't invented intergalactic travel, he has created a tiny desktop computer that looks straight out of Jean-Luc Picard's ready room, letting you at least pretend that you're safely aboard a distant starship.It's a testament to Star Trek: The Next Generation's production designers, including technical consultant Michael Okuda, that the fictional LCARS (short for Library Computer Access/Retrieval System) operating system used on the computers aboard the USS Enterprise-D still look futuristic, despite the show first airing 33 years ago. Gene Roddenberry himself insisted that the computer screens aboard the ship be as minimal and clean as possible to give the impression of the technology being incredibly advanced, and it's an aesthetic that many fans of the show are still fans of, including Johnson.Johnson's LCARS computer is based on an existing design for a similar TNG-themed alarm clock, which he upgraded with a larger 3D-printed enclosure, bigger screen, and additional components to add considerably more functionality.Using everything from an Adafruit ESP32 Feather Board to Amazon's AWS cloud servers, the computer can access and display a host of information, accessible with a series of simple buttons, including the weather, the temperature and humidity of the room, news headlines, calendar data pulled from Microsoft Outlook, fitness info courtesy of Google Fitness, a resistor color code chart and calculator, and even a tool for measuring power and current that Johnson can use as he develops other devices. Geordi La Forge would be proud.All of the files and schematics needed to create and customize your own are available for free on Hackaday for download, and while you don't need to be a Starfleet caliber engineer to build one, you will need soldering, electronics, and programming skills to make it so.
Many claimed to build a ternary computer, however nobody (to the best of my knowledge) completed the project. Triador project makes no empty promises! I am building a very simple but functional 3-trit balanced ternary computer. The only building block allowed is a ternary multiplexer based on DG403 analog switches. You can find more details on the build at the homebrew ternary computer hackaday project. Also check this youtube mini-series about the hardware: This repository contains a program emulator that eases the debugging of the hardware. Triador has a 3-trit architecture, this means that its registers can store numbers from -13 to +13. It has four main registers R1-R4 and nine extra registers R5-R13. Note that R13 is a special register used to choose current program memory segment (more on this below). So, in total, Triador can store 13 numbers from the [-13..+13] range. In addition to that, it has a 1-trit borrow/carry flag and a 6-trit program counter register. The rea...
Laptops are ubiquitous in today's fast-paced internet-connected world, but the decades-old desktop PC is still the undisputed champ for gaming and serious productivity. Beefier hardware, more customizability, bigger displays (not to mention the option to easily set up multiple displays if that's your thing), and the ability to use better peripherals like mechanical keyboards are all great reasons to opt for a good desktop computer over a Windows laptop or MacBook for your work, entertainment, and general daily use. Desktop PCs span an enormous range when it comes to specs, price points, and even designs today, with mini desktops and all-in-one PCs offering alternatives to those bulky desktop towers of old (although those still have a place, of course). Put more simply, whatever your budget and needs are — be it work, hardcore gaming, streaming, or all of the above — there's a cheap desktop computer deal out there for you, and we've rounded up a handful of the best one...
From Best Products We judge laptops on a scale of 10, analyzing the categories we think are most important: design, display, and performance. Here's how the Microsoft Surface Go 2 stacks up. On the surface, there aren't a whole lot of differences between Microsoft's latest 2-in-1 laptop and its predecessor. As you'd expect, the all-new Surface Go 2 is a nicer machine overall that packs a more powerful processor and a larger 10.5-inch touchscreen — fortunately without increasing the base model's $399 asking price. Key Specs • Intel Pentium Gold 4425Y or eighth-generation Intel Core m3 dual-core processor• 10.5-inch PixelSense display• 4/8 GB of RAM; 64 GB eMMC or 128 GB SSD• One USB-C port, Surface Connector, MicroSD card reader, headphone jack• LTE connectivity available for extra charge I spent a few days testing the Microsoft Surface Go 2. Although I couldn't use it on the go like the name implies I should, I did my best to use it for the tasks you'd likel...
Exploring the stars, thousands of light years away from Earth, sounds pretty great right about now. While Darian Johnson hasn't invented intergalactic travel, he has created a tiny desktop computer that looks straight out of Jean-Luc Picard's ready room, letting you at least pretend that you're safely aboard a distant starship.It's a testament to Star Trek: The Next Generation's production designers, including technical consultant Michael Okuda, that the fictional LCARS (short for Library Computer Access/Retrieval System) operating system used on the computers aboard the USS Enterprise-D still look futuristic, despite the show first airing 33 years ago. Gene Roddenberry himself insisted that the computer screens aboard the ship be as minimal and clean as possible to give the impression of the technology being incredibly advanced, and it's an aesthetic that many fans of the show are still fans of, including Johnson.
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