hardware testing

Linus Tech Tips tests a large batch of DisplayPort cables with a Total Phase cable tester, checking bandwidth and signal quality. Many cables did not meet their claimed specs.

GreatScott! tests ProLogium lithium ceramic batteries, a solid-state design. He measures their volumetric and gravimetric energy density, compares them to Li-ion and LiPo, and runs durability tests at the end.

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

Builder Matt Risinger freezes water-filled copper and PEX piping capped with SharkBite fittings to see which survives. The video compares how each pipe type handles freezing.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Linus Tech Tips tests whether chaining many PCIe riser extensions causes loss of GPU performance. They keep adding extensions to see how far the signal will go.

JerryRigEverything puts the iPhone Air through scratch, bend and durability tests and is surprised that the ultra-thin phone proves very tough. The video is sponsored by dbrand cases.

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.

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 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.

A short video of a Boeing 777 wing being tested to destruction, finally breaking at 154 percent of its designed limit load. The wing is flexed upward until it fails.

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.

EposVox reviews a very cheap USB 2.0 HDMI capture dongle sold under names like BlueAVS/Goodan, testing whether it works as an alternative to the Elgato Cam Link. He covers its quality and limits for webcam-style and camera capture use.

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.

Tested explains how Apple's Touch ID recognizes fingerprints, then tries to defeat it using fake fingers and prints, retracing methods claimed by a German computer club.

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.

Archival 1978 Sandia footage testing shipping containers for spent nuclear fuel, including trucks ramming walls, a locomotive hitting a truck-borne cask and a rocket-propelled train crash, plus a fire test.

Fully Charged gets an exclusive first drive of the Porsche Taycan, running 0-200 km/h launch control repeatedly. It covers the car's twin-motor 800-volt specs, claimed range and fast charging.

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.

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.