Really cool flashback.
Interesting article from #Hackaday: https://hackaday.com/2026/04/02/sega-meganet-online-gaming-in-1990/
It looks at how #Sega tried to build an #OnlineGaming and utility network in the early 90s using the #segamegadrive.
Did anyone here ever try MegaNet?
Exposing a Radiation-Hardened 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi Receiver to 500 Kilograys
[https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/close-up-of-a-receiver-chip.webp?w=800]Exposing the Wi-Fi chip to gamma radiation. (Credit: Yasuto Narukiyo et al, 2026) [https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/radiation_resistance_test_yasuto_narukiyo_et_al_2026_thumb.jpg?w=400]https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/radiation_resistance_test_yasuto_narukiyo_et_al_2026_thumb.jpg Exposing the Wi-Fi chip to gamma radiation. (Credit: Yasuto Narukiyo et al, 2026) From outer space to down here on Earth, there are many places where ionizing radiation levels are high enough that they effectively bar access for humans, but also make life miserable for anything containing semiconductor technology. This is especially true for anything involving wireless communications, such as Wi-Fi. However, recently Japanese researchers have created a Wi-Fi chip that is claimed to be so radiation-hardened [https://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics-in-nuclear-industry] that it can be used even in gamma ray-rich environments, such as in the worst contaminated depths of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor. The indicated dose exposure of 500 kilograys that the chip survived during testing is quite significant. A single gray (Gy) is the absorption of one joule of energy per kilogram of matter. In radiation therapy, a solid epithelial tumor can receive as much as 60 to 80 Gy in a single dose, for example. That this Wi-Fi chip was still able to function after such a large cumulative dose was therefore quite impressive, as it rivals what space-based probes receive over numerous years. Unfortunately, the research paper [https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11408968] is paywalled, but the PR article [https://www.isct.ac.jp/en/news/579sx0x3qhha] from the Tokyo Institute of Science fills in a few more details along with the IEEE Spectrum article. The key was reducing the number of transistors to offer as few targets for radiation as possible. Further inductors were used instead of transistors, for example, variable-gain, as these are less sensitive to ionizing radiation. Remaining transistors were physically enlarged, reducing the number of parallel segments and using NMOS transistors instead of PMOS, due to the latter’s higher radiation resistance. Although degradation in receiver performance was observed after successive blasts at 300 kGy and then 500 kGy, the change was on the order of 1.5-1.6 dB. The next challenge is to make a Wi-Fi transmitter, which is much harder and may require the addition of materials like diamond. Designing for a hostile radiation environment is an art form unto itself [https://hackaday.com/2026/03/29/self-healing-cmos-imager-to-withstand-jupiters-radiation-belt/]. And if you are generating radiation, you have to be extra careful [https://hackaday.com/2015/10/26/killed-by-a-machine-the-therac-25/]. — From Blog – Hackaday [https://hackaday.com/] via this RSS feed [https://hackaday.com/blog/feed/]
Turning Tesla Model 3’s Computer Into a Desktop PC
[https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/teslacomp_feat.jpg?w=800] Like many high-tech companies Tesla runs a bug bounty program. But in the case of a car manufacturer, this means that you either already have one of their cars, are interested in buying one, or can gain access to its software-bits in another legal manner. Being a Tesla-less individual, yet with an interest in hunting bugs [David Schütz] thus decided to pursue the option of obtaining the required parts from crashed Tesla cars [https://bugs.xdavidhu.me/tesla/2026/03/23/running-tesla-model-3s-computer-on-my-desk-using-parts-from-crashed-cars/]. [https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/crashed_headunit_tesla_3_working_david_schuetz.jpg?w=384]https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/crashed_headunit_tesla_3_working_david_schuetz.jpg Specifically [David] was interested in the Tesla Model 3 and its combined Media Control Unit (MCU) and Autopilot computer (AAP) assembly. In addition to the main unit, it also requires – obviously – a power supply, and the proprietary display. These were all obtained fairly easily, but unfortunately the devices all had their cables cut off, leaving just a sad little stump of wiring with the still plugged-in connectors. After trying his luck with an incompatible BMW LVDS cable from one of their headunit infotainment systems, he then proceeded to try and use the cable stumps with some creative patching. This briefly worked, but some debris fell onto the MCU board and blew a power rail IC. Ultimately this IC got swapped after [David] had already purchased a whole new Model 3 computer, leaving him with two units and the easy way out of buying the Dashboard Wiring Harness cable loom that contained the Rosenberger connectors he needed to connect the display to the main unit. — From Blog – Hackaday [https://hackaday.com/] via this RSS feed [https://hackaday.com/blog/feed/]
Preparing to Fire Up a 90-Year-Old Boiler After Half a Century
[https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/damper_shaft_maintenance_claymills_pumping_station_youtube.jpg?w=800] Continuing the restoration of the #1 Lancashire boiler at the Claymills Pumping Station in the UK, the volunteers are putting on the final touches [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Dviv0cIJBo] after previously passing the boiler inspection. Although it may seem that things are basically ready to start laying down a fire after the boiler is proven to hold 120 PSI [https://hackaday.com/2026/02/23/how-to-restore-your-19th-century-lancashire-boiler-to-hold-120-psi/] with all safeties fully operating, they first had to reassemble the surrounding brickwork, free up a seized damper shaft and give a lot of TLC to mechanisms that were brand new in the 1930s and last operated in 1971. Removing the ashes from a Lancashire boiler. (Credit: Claymills pumping station, YouTube) [https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/fired_up_boiler_claymills_pumping_station_youtube.jpg?w=400]https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/fired_up_boiler_claymills_pumping_station_youtube.jpg Removing the ashes from a Lancashire boiler. (Credit: Claymills pumping station, YouTube) The damper shaft is part of the damper mechanism which controls doors that affect the burn rate, acting as a kind of throttle for the boilers. Unfortunately the shaft’s bearings had seized up completely, and no amount of heat and kinetic maintenance could loosen it up again. This forced them to pull it out and manufacture a replacement, but did provide a good look at how it’s put together. The original dial indicator was salvaged, along with some other bits that were still good. Next was to fit the cast-iron ash boxes that sit below the boiler and from where ash can be scraped out and deposited into wheelbarrows. The automatic sprinkler stokers are fitted above these, with a good look at their mechanism. The operator is given a lot of control over how much coal is being fed into the boiler, as part of the early 20th-century automation. The missing furnace doors on the #1 boiler were replaced with replicas based on the ones from the other boilers, and some piping around the boiler was refurbished. Even after all that work, it’ll still take a few weeks and a lot more work to fully reassemble the boiler, showing just how complex these systems are. With some luck it’ll fire right back up after fifty years of slumbering and decades of suffering the elements. — From Blog – Hackaday [https://hackaday.com/] via this RSS feed [https://hackaday.com/blog/feed/]
Magnetic-Suspension Hoverboard is Only 11 Years Late
[https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/magnet-hoverboard.jpg?w=800] Anyone who saw Back to the Future II was disappointed when 2015 rolled around with nary a hoverboard in sight. There have been various attempts to fake it, but none of them quite have the feel of floating about wherever you’d like to go that the movie conveys. The little-known YouTuber [Colin Furze] has a new take on the idea: use magnets. Really big magnets [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzXZ7cZXifo]. If you’re one of [Colin]’s handful of subscribers, then you probably saw his magnetic-suspension bike. We passed on that one, but we couldn’t resist the urge to cover the hoverboard version, regardless of how popular [Colin] might be on YouTube. It’s actually stupidly simple: the suspension is provided by the repulsive force between alarmingly large neodymium magnets. In this case, two are on the base plate that holds the skateboard ‘trucks’, and two are on the wooden ‘deck’ that [Colin] rides upon. Of course magnetic repulsion is a very unstable equilibrium, so [Colin] had to reduce the degrees of freedom. In his first test, that was with a pair of rods and linear bearings. That way the deck could only move in the z-axis, providing the sensation of hovering without allowing the deck to slide off its magnetic perch. Unfortunately those pins transferred too much vibration from the ground into the deck, ruining the illusion of floating on air. After realizing that he’d never be able to ollie (jump) this massive beast of a skateboard, [Colin] decides he might as well use a longboard instead. Longboards, as the name implies, are long skateboards, and are for transportation, not tricks. The longboard gets the same massive magnets, but after a couple of iterations to find a smoother solution — including a neat but unsuccessful tensegrity-inspired version — ends up with a pair of loosely-fitted pins once again, though relocated to the rear of the board. From the rider’s perspective, it looks exactly like a hoverboard, since you can’t see underneath from that angle. According to [Colin], it feels like a hoverboard, too. The only way to do better would be with eddy currents over copper, [https://hackaday.com/2023/05/22/hoverboard-rides-on-eddy-currents/] or superconductors over a magnetic track [https://hackaday.com/2015/08/05/secrets-of-the-lexus-hoverboard-revealed/], but both of those methods limit you to very specific locations. This might be a bit of a fakeout, but its one with a degree of freedom. One, to be specific. You have to admit, it’s still less of a fake than the handle-less Segway we got in 2015, at least. — From Blog – Hackaday [https://hackaday.com/] via this RSS feed [https://hackaday.com/blog/feed/]
Are We Finally At The Point Where Phones Can Replace Computers?
[https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/dex-pc-feat.png?w=800] There was an ideal of convergence, a long time ago, when one device would be all you need, digitally speaking. [ETA Prime] on YouTube seems to think we’ve reached that point, and his recent video about the Samsung S26 Ultra [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwgsGpIwhJo] makes a good case for it. Part of that is software: Samsung’s DeX is a huge enabler for this use case. Part of that his hardware: the S26 Ultra, as the upcoming latest-and-greatest flagship phone, has absurd stats and a price tag to match. First, it’s got 12 GB of that unobtanium once called “RAM”. It’s got an 8-core ARM processor in its Snapdragon Elite SOC, with the two performance cores clocked at 4.74 GHz — which isn’t a world record, but it’s pretty snappy. The other six cores aren’t just doddling along at 3.62 GHz. Except for the very youngest of our readers, you probably remember a time when the world’s greatest supercomputers had as much computing power as this phone. So it should be no suprise that when [ETA Prime] plugs it into a monitor (using USB-C, natch [https://hackaday.com/2023/07/24/displayport-tapping-the-altmode/]) he’s able to do all the usual computational tasks without trouble. A big part of that is the desktop mode Samsung phones have had for a while now; we’ve seen hackers make use of it in years gone by [https://hackaday.com/2020/07/28/broken-smartphones-laptops-in-disguise/]. It’s still Android, but Android with a desktop-and-windows interface. What are the hard tasks? Well, there’s photo and video editing, which the hardware can handle. Though [ETA] notes that it’s held back a bit because Adobe doesn’t offer their full suite on Android. But what’s really taxing for most of us is gaming. Android gaming? Well, obviously a flagship phone can handle anything in the play store. It’s PC gaming that’s pretty impressive, considering the daisy chain of compatibility [https://hackaday.com/2025/07/05/daisy-chain-of-hacks-lets-new-arm-board-run-doom/] needed last time we looked at gaming on ARM. Cyberpunk 2077 gets frame rates near 60, but he needs to drop down to “low” graphics and 720p to do it. You may find that ample, or you may find it unplayable; there’s really no accounting for taste. We might not always like carrying an everything device [https://hackaday.com/2026/02/26/the-curse-of-the-everything-device/] with us at all times, but there’s something to be said in not duplicating that functionality on your desk. Give it a couple of years when these things hit the used market at decent prices, and unless PC parts drop in price, convergence might start to seem like a great idea to those of us who aren’t big gamers and don’t need floppy drives. [https://hackaday.com/2025/09/27/how-many-phones-sport-a-5-and-1-4-diskette-drive-this-one/] — From Blog – Hackaday [https://hackaday.com/] via this RSS feed [https://hackaday.com/blog/feed/]
Building a Super-Compact Cistercian Numerals Clock
[https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/557451365-9cd29f81-9203-4d00-91ab-066bb83d9574.jpg?w=800] Around the thirteenth century CE, European society was in the midst between transitioning from Roman numerals to the Arabic numerals that we use today. Less remembered are the Cistercian numerals, which [BigCrimping] used for their most recent project in the form of a rather unique clock [https://github.com/bigcrimping/cistercian_clock]. The Cistercian numeral [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cistercian_numerals] system was developed by the Cistercian monastic order in the 13th century, forming a rather unique counterpoint to the Arabic numeral system. Although Arabic numerals are already significantly more compact than Roman numerals, Cistercian numerals up the ante by being capable of displaying any number between 1 and 9,999 with a single glyph. Although for a simple 24-hour clock you don’t need to use more than a fraction of the possible glyphs, there is the complication of the Cistercian numerals not having a zero glyph, but that invites an even better take. For the version that [BigCrimping] made there are namely two glyphs that encode date and time, with the left glyph a counter for blocks of two hours and the right for seconds from 1 through 7200. The clock is based around MAX6969 LED drivers and an ESP32 MCU on a custom PCB, with the design files including the 3D-printed enclosure available in the repository. — From Blog – Hackaday [https://hackaday.com/] via this RSS feed [https://hackaday.com/blog/feed/]
Check out #hackaday’s latest #FLOSS weekly episode featuring our CEO Philippe Humeau.
In this episode, Jonathan Bennett chats with Philippe about CrowdSec and how we created an open source Web Application Firewall that runs as a Multiplayer Firewall.
Watch to get all the details: https://hackaday.com/2026/03/04/floss-weekly-episode-865-multiplayer-firewall/
Railway End Table Powered By Hand Crank
[https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/traintable_feat.jpg?w=800] Most end tables that you might find in a home are relatively static objects. However, [Peter Waldraff] of Tiny World Studios likes to build furniture that’s a little more interesting. Thus came about this beautiful piece with a real working railway built right in. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cLuf6BuB3A] The end table was built from scratch, with [Peter] going through all the woodworking steps required to assemble the piece. The three-legged wooden table is topped with a tiny N-scale model railway layout, and you get to see it put together including the rocks, the grass, and a beautiful epoxy river complete with a bridge. The railway runs a Kato Pocket Line trolley, but the really neat thing is how it’s powered. [Peter] shows us how a small gearmotor generator was paired with a bridge rectifier and a buck converter to fill up a super capacitor that runs the train and lights up the tree on the table. Just 25 seconds of cranking will run the train anywhere from 4 to 10 minutes depending on if the tree is lit as well. To top it all off, there’s even a perfect coaster spot for [Peter]’s beverage of choice. It’s a beautiful kinetic sculpture and a really fun way to build a small model railway that fits perfectly in the home. We’ve featured some other great model railway builds before, too [https://hackaday.com/2025/12/22/an-ho-model-power-bogie-for-not-a-lot/]. — From Blog – Hackaday [https://hackaday.com/] via this RSS feed [https://hackaday.com/blog/feed/]
Jay
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