hardware prototype

A Ben Heck Show episode tearing down the Nintendo PlayStation prototype, one of the rarest consoles ever, with its owners Terry and Dan Diebold. Part 2 then gets it working again.

Google engineer Dany Qumsiyeh presents a prototype automatic, non-destructive book scanner that turns pages and captures high-resolution images, built in Google's workshops. The talk includes a live demo and a short technical overview.

Tested gets hands-on with four Meta Reality Labs research VR headset prototypes testing resolution, brightness, focus shifting and form factor, plus an interview with Mark Zuckerberg on display technology.

A hobbyist builds a prototype full-frame CCD camera from scratch, with open-source design files and a custom PCB. The video shows the first, still rough prototype.

A one-minute Tesla clip showing a prototype robotic snake charger that finds a Model S's charge port and plugs itself in.

Mike of mikeselectricstuff shows his heavily modified old BBC Micro system in a 28-minute tour of 8-bit hardware archaeology.

Area 5150 is a demoscene production for the original 4.77MHz IBM PC with CGA graphics and PC speaker. This is the Evoke 2022 party version, captured from real hardware, and it won the Alternative Demo compo.

Ben Heck modifies a keyboard with magnets, Hall effect sensors and an Xbox controller so the WASD keys give analog control. He walks through the hardware build.

James Lambert demos a MegaTexture-style technique running on real Nintendo 64 hardware, built for an N64Brew game jam. It streams high-resolution textures onto stained-glass scenes on the console.

UploadVR covers a Facebook Reality Labs prototype that tracks facial expressions using cameras mounted in a VR headset. The updated version captures subtle micro-expressions for realistic avatars.

An episode of C++ Weekly in which Jason Turner shows modern C++14 compiling to the Commodore 64's 6502. It demonstrates writing efficient high-level code for 8-bit hardware.

A demo of Quake's E1M1 rendered as vector graphics on a Hitachi oscilloscope. A laptop generates the audio signal that the scope draws.

Enderman gets Windows 11 running on a Pentium 4 system with a Radeon HD 5870 and 8 GB of DDR2. It explores how an unsupported, ancient CPU can be made to work by using the rare last Pentium 4 variant and a registry flag.

Strange Parts spends four months, seven custom circuit boards and several disassembled iPhones adding a working headphone jack to an iPhone 7 in China. The build is documented in detail.

Tom Murphy (suckerpinch) presents a deliberately trollish computer architecture built on IEEE-754 floating point, using NaN and infinity to define logic gates. He builds working hardware around the idea.

AvE tears down the Juicero cold-press juicer, examining its heavily machined parts, electronics and the pricey juice packs. He pokes fun at the product and venture-funded culture along the way.

Matthaeus Krenn presents a concept for car touchscreen UI where the screen controls only one thing at a time, designed to suit driving. A tablet prototype accompanies the short demo.

Overdrive 2 by TiTAN, a Sega Mega Drive demo that won first place in the Oldskool competition at Revision 2017. It shows effects and 3D graphics on the stock console.

Linus Akesson demonstrates the Commodordion, a fully functional 8-bit accordion built around Commodore 64 hardware with bellows made of floppy disks. He performs Scott Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag and tells the story of the build.

Bang! is an Atari 2600 demo by XAYAX that won first place at the Revision 2014 oldschool demo competition. It fits into a 32k ROM using F8SC bankswitching.

A 1995 Sun Microsystems film about the Self programming language, a prototype-based Smalltalk relative, showing its live, graphical programming environment.

A two-minute demo of SmartKnob View, an open-source input knob built from a brushless gimbal motor, magnetic encoder and round LCD. Closed-loop torque control gives software-defined detents and end stops.

Der8auer tours Hetzner's test lab and shows a custom AM5 server motherboard with the CPU socket rotated 90 degrees, built for rack airflow in their AX52 servers.

Dave Jones of EEVblog tears down an Esinomed Infoview medical tablet computer built around an 800MHz AMD Geode board, exposing extremely shoddy construction and design.

Marco Reps builds and tests an open-source 8.5 digit voltmeter based on CERN's high-precision ADC design. The video walks through assembly, soldering and measurement of the resulting instrument.

A three-minute demo of a series circuit with three LEDs that behaves in a surprising way, posed as a question of how it works.

LGR reviews the weeCee, a tiny mini PC that boots MS-DOS and Windows from a microSD card. It offers Sound Blaster Pro and General MIDI compatibility with VGA output, and the video tries it with DOS and Windows 98 games.

Valve's short video on building the Steam Controller on a heavily automated assembly line, which the company designed itself. It shows the robotic manufacturing process and US final assembly.

A short clip of the Super Mario Bros 3 proof-of-concept PC port built by id Software's founders to pitch Nintendo on a PC version. Nintendo passed, and the same technology led to Commander Keen.

A 74-minute video of upgrading Windows 1.0 through every release up to Windows 8 on a real netbook rather than in a virtual machine.

An early 2009 tech test by Notch of an Infiniminer-style cave game running about 700 fps on a 256x256x64 tile map. It is the prototype that grew into Minecraft.

Promotional video from Zapata Racing showing Franky Zapata flying the Flyboard Air prototype, claiming autonomous flight to 10,000 feet, 150 km/h top speed and 10 minutes of endurance.

A demo of the Bad Apple music video played back at 60 FPS on an e-ink display, up from 2.4 FPS in an earlier attempt. It is part of the effort behind the open source Modos e-ink monitor.

Ben Katz's custom robot solves a Rubik's Cube in 0.38 seconds. The description links to the hardware and software write-ups.

A short 2001 Tom's Hardware clip that runs Quake 3 on several popular CPU and motherboard combinations of the era, then removes the CPU cooler to see which chips survive. It shows how different processors handle losing their heatsink or fan.

Sam Zeloof shows the upgraded second iteration of his homemade silicon integrated circuit fabrication process, producing chips with around a thousand transistors in his garage. It is a short overview of what the home fab can now do.

8088 MPH is a demoscene production for the original 1981 IBM PC with CGA graphics and a 4.77MHz 8088, shown with real composite output. It competed at Revision 2015 and pushes the hardware well past what it was thought capable of, breaking emulators.

Linus Tech Tips reviews the Looking Glass 8K holographic display, a glasses-free 3D monitor. The video shows the display in action and explains how it works.

A Samsung-backed viral demo that builds a fast computer from 24 256GB MLC SSDs in a RAID 0 array and shows the throughput results.

Zack Freedman introduces Gridfinity, his free, open-source modular workshop storage system of 3D-printable bins and baseplates. The video walks through the design, the parametric templates and the many module types that fit parts, tools and accessories.