GPIO PATA/IDE on Linux | KittenLabs
Bit-banged GPIO PATA/IDE kernel module| KittenLabs
Backstory At the 38th Chaos Communication Congress (38C3) benjojo gave a very interesting talk titled: “Going Long! Sending weird signals over long haul optical networks” Spoiler/tl;dw: Ben is showing that common SFP fiber optic transceivers are mostly “dumb” devices, just converting digital electric signals into light (and vice-versa). He used this to transport Toslink over a single-mode fiber through a city. Coincidentally, ember posted this joke to the Fediverse:| KittenLabs
What is it? The 16bit-LVDS-FX3-Framegrabber is a Cypress FX3 SuperSpeed Explorer Kit-based PCB, which can digitize a parallel 16bit digital video stream from a commercial image sensor. It exposes a USB 3.0 UVC (“webcam”) device to the operating system. Video signal is accepted on a 50pin SCSI-II connector as parallel LVDS. Required signals: DATA_VALID HSYNC VSYNC PIXCLK DATA0 through DATA15 The framegrabber follows the common industry standard pinout for 16bit digital LVDS video.| KittenLabs
A 20 port USB-C charger in use What is it? The 20 port USB-C charger can charge up to 20 USB-C devices from a single USB-C supply. Each charging port can deliver up to 7.5W (5W if all ports are in use) and is individually current limited. The charger was developed to charge a whole litter of Blinkekatzen from a single supply.| KittenLabs
What is it? The NVMe BIOS Option ROM is a heavily modified version of iPXE, which can be integrated into a computers BIOS (or provided via a PCI card, USB flash drive, SD card, etc.). It allows x86 computers to boot from NVMe devices attached via PCIe, even on devices which are much older than NVMe itself. The NVMe implementation was ported from SeaBIOS and modified to work with iPXE.| KittenLabs
What is it? This tiny mod board can be used to add 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet to devices that have PCIe available internally. It can for example be used to replace an existing 1 Gigabit PCIe NIC in embedded devices, upgrading them to 2.5 GbE connectivity. The board is based on the cheap and well-supported RTL8125BG PCIe 2.5 GbE Ethernet controller.| KittenLabs
Wild Blinkekatzen in their natural habitat What is it? Blinkekatzen are a replacement PCB for commercially available silicone LED lights. The lights usually contain a battery, some RGB LEDs and an optical diffuser in a soft cat shaped translucent silicone housing. The light emitted by the LEDs hits the diffuser and lights up the outer cat shaped silicone shell.| KittenLabs
What is it? USB-C PD trigger board with integrated high-power Step-Down converter to 16V. This board will negotiate 20V, 5A (100W) against a USB-C PD power supply and convert the bus voltage into 16V. This can be used to power various laptops like ThinkPad T41, T43, etc. Electronics Enclosure To ensure a full 100W can be delivered continuously a bit of cooling is required. For this project cooling is provided though a SLM printed stainless steel enclosure. Good thermal transfer is ensured by ...| KittenLabs
What is it? HomeSwitch-4 is a small, low-cost, open hardware, USB-C powered 4-port Gigabit ethernet switch, running OpenWRT. It’s VLAN-capable and can handle simple VPN and routing applications (CPU connected via 100 MBit/s). It uses a cheap Allwinner V3s SoC (Cortex A7, 64MB DDR2) and a Realtek RTL8367RB switch chipset. The design is optimized for automated assembly. Features OpenWRT managment Front & rear USB-C power inputs (redundant power inputs) I2C and UART connectivity PoE add-on boa...| KittenLabs
What is it? DC UPS is a lithium battery-powered uninterruptible power supply, which can provide backup power to devices like routers, switches, modems, single board computers, etc. In contrast to commercially available UPSes, it uses off-the-shelf 18650 Li-Ion cells and outputs DC voltage directly. This is significantly more efficient than providing AC power through an inverter.| KittenLabs
Features Bright, sunlight readable OLED display Infinity constrast ratio Support for GIF animations WLAN AP support Web interface for management of animations Automatic brightness adjustment 8h+ runtime Links Hardware: KiCAD design files Firmware: ESP-IDF source code| KittenLabs
What is it? 3D-printable adapter, which fits into commercial thermal cameras and adds a 18mm ZnSe CO2 laser lens to the optical path. This greatly improves the imaging quality on small electronics / SMD parts. Before / After Sample photos of PCB with 0603 LEDs: Internal mounting 7 small rod magnets are used to snap the lens into the camera magnetically. The lens to be easily removed for operation at regular focus distances.| KittenLabs
Warning: While this project does work and has been tested against a number of devices, the firmware is very quick & dirty with hardcoded parameters and missing error handling. Use in production environments is discouraged. What is it? Old computers, machines and test equipment often expect printers to be directly connected via a parallel port / LPT / IEEE 1284. In the modern day, this is impractical. Having a single printer for each device is expensive, takes up a lot of space and they need t...| KittenLabs
What is it? These mechanical adapter PCBs allow the use of PC104 and Vortex86DX X-ISA single board computers on an ISA backplane. Such adapters are available commercially for industrial use at extreme prices (100$+), for simple passive adapters. PC104 adapter Vortex86DX adapter| KittenLabs
What is it? A USB-C sync and charging adapter for the Palm serial dock connector. Problems with other adapters A common problem with other adapters is that they often require a hardware RS-232 serial port, making use of an additional adapter with modern hardware necessary. There was also a USB-equipped docking station available but that one is very large, too. Also it has only USB-A so strictly speaking there is still an adapter required for use with many modern devices. USB-C all the things!| KittenLabs
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What is it? Gigaset-Debug-Adapter can be used with many Gigaset DECT phone models to access the internal UART. It’s basically a 1.8V USB->UART converter, with switchable strapping logic and 3V step-down converter. The device fits into the battery tray and mechanically emulates 2 AAA batteries. The dialog-cr16c-uart-boot bootloader can be used to upload a stub to the phone through the boot ROM and access the SPI NOR flash chip.| KittenLabs
What is it? This mechanical adapter allows older devices (like the popular apu2 SBCs) to use modern M.2 NVMe storage. Usage 2 adapters installed in a PC Engines apu2 with Samsung PM991 NVMe SSDs: Links Hardware: KiCAD design files| KittenLabs
Your browser does not support the video tag. What is it? 3.5" floppy disks hold information by storing them magnetically on 80 different tracks (effectively circles) across the media. A stepper motor moves a read/write head across the media and can select which track is being accessed. In normal computer usage, the tracks are being formatted/modulated with modified frequency modulation (MFM) to store digital data onto these tracks.| KittenLabs
What is it? Samsung / Commodore SQ-1000 electronic typewriters can be modified to work as a teletype terminal. They use a simple 8bit microcontroller to scan the keyboard matrix and do the printing itself. The keyboard was originally attached using a flat-flex connector directly to the mainboard. The connector was unsoldered and connected to an Arduino microcontroller, which emulates the keyboard matrix. Another arduino is connected to the keyboard and scans the matrix.| KittenLabs
What is it? A replacement LED backlight for the popular Palm IIIc handheld computers (“PDAs”) of the early 00s. The original CCFL backlight (high voltage fluorescent tubes in a portable device!) uses a lot of power for very little brightness. This mod can be used replace broken/worn out CCFL tubes in a Palm handheld. Modification PCBs Links Hardware: KiCAD design files| KittenLabs
What is it? A small PCB, which can receive RS232 over IrDA/IrCOMM (for example from Palm PDAs, Nokia phones, old laptops) and relay it to a RS232 device. Modded ISDN terminal adapter This ELSA MicroLink ISDN terminal adapter was modified to include such a IrDA adapter PCB. It can now be used wirelessly from a Palm PDA to sync data without having to connect it to a PC.| KittenLabs
Your browser does not support the video tag. Hardware Specs 1x STM32F7 taking care of power management, USB and display multiplexing 1x ESP32 Pico D4 providing a web interface to build and store animations 20x HC595 shift registers for row and column control 768x Tiny 1x1mm RGB LEDs arranged in 1.7mm pitch grid Features only 84mm wide and 29mm tall WLAN enabled 48x16 glorious RGB led pixels with more than 16 million colors each Powerful ARM Cortex M7 and Xtensa 32bit dual core 3MB of onboard ...| KittenLabs
What is it? At the Hacken Open Air 2021 (Gifhorn, Germany) event, this 5m by 3m large LED display was built. It consists of 50 individual LED strings with 50 WS2812 LEDs each (50x50 pixels). A central Raspberry Pi feeds 3 seperate STM32F722 via UART. These then generate the pixel data for the individual chains of LEDs. Each LED chain has it’s own 24V -> 5V buck regulator.| KittenLabs
What is it? ATAPIMega is a hardware project which allows regular (P)ATA CD/DVD drives to be used as a standalone Audio-CD player. The PCB accepts (regulated!) 12V DC power via a 5.5mm/2.1mm barrel jack and outputs 12V/5V for the CD drive. The microcontroller is an ATmega2560 (Arduino Mega-compatible), chosen for 5V-I/O voltage and high pin-count (and bad availability of STM32’s in the component shortage of 2021).| KittenLabs
What is it? These PCBs contain eMMC storage ICs, which are electrically compatible with SD and microSD interfaces. They use a different protocol and (depending on the type of eMMC IC used) can be more reliable and faster. Many (but not all!) SD card slots/readers can also handle eMMC. These adapters can be used in devices like Raspberry Pis, APUs, etc. to provide stable eMMC storage through the SD slot.| KittenLabs
What is it? This project allows the use of ISA extension cards on a modern computer over a USB interface. The main project goal was to learn about the ISA bus, not to build a polished product. USB limitations USB has inherent limits to the minimum latency, defined by the frame timing in the USB specification. This means that a USB 1.1 attached device will only ever be able to handle 1000 transfers per second. USB 2.0 increases this limit to 8000 transfers per second (125μs frame time), which...| KittenLabs
What is it? This passive adapter PCB allows the use of HP FlexibleLOM extension cards (like 10/40 GbE network cards) in regular PCIe slots. FlexibleLOM extension cards are available used at very low prices (due to them not being PCIe compatible, despite using the same physical slot). Development photos For easier prototyping, a PCIe to 0.1" header PCB was designed:| KittenLabs
What is it? This adapter board provides the required voltage level conversion, anode supply and filament bias voltages to run a Noritake MN12864K graphical vacuum fluorescent display. Bad Apple Links Breadboard adapter: KiCAD design files STM32F7-based controller: KiCAD design files| KittenLabs
What is it? The Colour Maximite 2 is a hobbyist computer, mimicking the home computers of the 80s, running BASIC. Because the original PCB (and seperate STM32 devboard) were expensive and hard to obtain, we designed this machine-assembly ready PCB. Wolfenstein Your browser does not support the video tag. Linux on STM32 (no-MMU) tSYS managed to get Linux No-MMU on STM32 working. This setup actually uses the pata-gpio driver for its root filesystem.| KittenLabs
Your browser does not support the video tag. What is it? The NeonMatrix 8x8 matrix uses common neon indicator bulbs to display simple graphics. They can be chained and controlled directly via SPI. Operating voltage is about ~70V AC. The circuit is pretty dangerous, all neon bulbs have high voltages on their legs, the 74HC595 shift registers are floating at mains/AC potential. Hardware| KittenLabs
What is it? The M.2 A/E key adapter enables the use of M.2 WiFi cards in the Pinebook Pro Arm64 laptop. This adapter was designed as a replacement for the available NVMe M.2 (M-key) adapter. It uses the same flat flex cable, mounting screws and mounting position. WiFi 6 (Intel AX200) speedtest Links Hardware: KiCAD design files| KittenLabs
Safety note The A/C is being powered by a ST VIPER12A switch mode supply. This type of supply is not mains-isolated, so all voltages (even the low voltages) are referenced to mains voltage. Don’t work on this device while plugged in without being aware of the implications of this! Every metal piece, every wire, every component inside can be at deadly voltage potentials against mains earth! Don’t connect any mains-referenced measurement equipment (like oscilloscopes), as they’ll create a...| KittenLabs
PlutoSDR (or ADALM-PLUTO) is an inexpensive SDR (software-defined radio) platform by Analog Devices. It uses a Xilinx Zynq Z-7010 FPGA, which integrates an 32bit ARMv7 core together with the FPGA functionality. This 32bit ARMv7 CPU runs Linux and is normally (when used as an SDR via USB) just passing libiio messages to the host computer. The USB port on the PlutoSDR can also be used as a host/OTG port instead. By connecting a USB-to-Ethernet converter and a USB flash drive (or other form of s...| KittenLabs
Search Results| KittenLabs
Webserver & IRC client on Casio fx-9750GII graphical calculators| KittenLabs
Configuring PipeWire to make laptop speakers sound better (Bankstown, Convolution/FIR, etc.)| KittenLabs
Using WPA-Enterprise with EAP-SIM to authenticate against a network using SIM cards| KittenLabs
My personal (and very opinionated) tweaks to make a Windows 11 installation more bearable| KittenLabs
Use your own domain name as a redirect to an existing account without running your own instance| KittenLabs
Extreme network speeds on macOS/iOS devices using ConnectX network cards via USB4/Thunderbolt| KittenLabs
Running GTA: Vice City on a TP-Link TL-WDR4900 wireless router| KittenLabs
Push TLS certificates to a Windows machine from any SSH-capable machine (like a Linux box). Useful to deploy self-signed or Let's Encrypt certificates for services like RDP or web servers.| KittenLabs
Diagnosis and Fix of a dead AMD EPYC Embedded server mainboard| KittenLabs
Overview This is a build log of an IBM XT-compatible system called “Micro 8088”, designed by Sergey Kiselev. micro8088 CPU card specifications: NEC V20 CPU (4.77 MHz, 7.16 MHz and 9.54 MHz CPU frequencies) Faraday FE2010A chipset 640 KiB RAM (+ XMS) PS/2 keyboard interface 8bit ISA interface Other ISA cards in the system:| KittenLabs
Language note This post was written in a hurry at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 as a way to get people (and their offices) usable for remote work quickly. This is also the reason why it’s written in German language. Some of the information is already outdated (as of 2024), some of the UIs have changed since, but the general idea is still valid. Some of the IP addresses listed in the screenshots might also not reflect the correct configurations. OpenWRT ist eine ideale Grundlage...| KittenLabs
Feeding a high-accuracy external frequency reference into a Raspberry Pi 1| KittenLabs
QO-100, also known as Es’hail-2 is a geostationary amateur radio satellite. It can be used by large parts of the world, including Europe, Africa, (parts of) South America and Asia. The satellite works as a linear transponder. It receives a specific range in the 2.4 GHz (13cm) band and sends it back to earth on 10 GHz (3cm). In order to generate such a 2.4 GHz signal and transmit it to the satellite conventional radio technology with transverters could be used. I chose a different route and ...| KittenLabs
One of the rarest ThinkPads is the ThinkPad PowerSeries 820, running a Power PC 603e at 100 MHz. It’s code name is Wiltwick, the type designator (used in Windows) is 6040. It uses an 800x600 TFT, WD90C24A/G10 graphics and has a 1.2 GB SCSI HDD. 48 MiB RAM is the maximum configuration.| KittenLabs
Warning! This modification voids the warranty and can operate the transceiver outside of it’s absolute maximum ratings! The PlutoSDR has an internal XO (Rakon RXO3225M 40.000 MHz), which has excellent qualities like very low jitter. Unfortunatly for ham radio use, the absolute accuracy (PPM) and stability isn’t great. When generating signals in the GHz-range (like a TX-signal for QO-100 at 2.4 GHz) the error can multiply up to several kHz, much more than the signal bandwidth itself.| KittenLabs
There’s a number of different ways to distribute an ethernet signal throughout a building. The most common types being: twisted pair wiring fiber optic cable WiFi (2.4 GHz, 5GHz) powerline (also called PLC, IEEE 1901) In my application, running cables wasn’t easily possible, so twisted pair and fiber connections were out of the game. PLC-based networking is absolutely unacceptable as a ham radio operator, because these devices produce lots of interference and noise. The distance is a bit ...| KittenLabs
PHPPLD - Use EEPROMs as PLAs/logic gates with PHP| KittenLabs
