Top all-time · #3306
Doug Brown
Personal blog · downtowndougbrown.com · on HN as dougg3hardwaresystemshistory
Doug Brown's personal blog at downtowndougbrown.com covers hardware, systems and history. Since 2019, 22 different Hacker News readers have linked it 72 times, most often “Adventures of putting 16 GB of RAM in a motherboard that doesn’t support it”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-03, and you can follow it by feed.
Most-linked posts?
- Adventures of putting 16 GB of RAM in a motherboard that doesn’t support it3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-04-04
- Why is my CPU usage always 100%?3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-04-26
- Apple's developers reflashed Mac ROMs in the '90s3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-11-25
- Customizing the startup chime on a 1999 G3 iMac3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-03-05
- Upgrading my Chumby 8 kernel part 4: reboot/poweroff3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-03-16
- Fixing an EMachines EL1200 Bios Bug with Claude2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-08-24
- Getting ChatGPT to write a Linux kernel module2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-12-06
- Playing 1080p H.264 video on my old 256 MB Raspberry Pi2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-06-30
- Fixing an Elgato HD60 S HDMI capture device with the help of Ghidra2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-09-15
- Upgrading my old Chumby 8 Linux kernel part 1: U-Boot2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-12-18
What Hacker News says?
That's the spirit! :-) By the way, delving into obscure and hardware-specific kernel code, sometimes yields quite interesting generally-applicable problems. For example, @dougg3 did an (excellent!) series of articles about his work on bringing mainline kernel support to "Chumby 8", a somewhat obscure, but historically significant piece of hardware, and as a side-quest he stumbled into this: https://www.downtowndougb…
Comment linking /2024/04/why-is-my-cpu-usage-always-100-upgrading-my-chumby-8-kernel-part-9/
on “My first contribution to Linux”Submitted Adventures of putting 16 GB of RAM in a motherboard that doesn’t support it as a story · 817 points
HN discussionThe schematics for the multitap are out there in the SNES developer manual [1]. I actually made one on a breadboard for fun [2] and eventually turned it into a PCB. It's a pretty simple circuit with an analog mux and some tri-state buffers. [1] https://archive.org/details/SNESDevManual/book2/page/n385/mo... [2] https://www.downtowndougbrown.com/2013/04/homebrew-snes-4-pl...
Comment linking /2013/04/homebrew-snes-4-player-multitap-adapter/
on “Building a USB SNES Controller”Submitted Why is my CPU usage always 100%? as a story · 537 points
HN discussionIntel has been absolutely incorrect on this a few times. Quite often there is a conflict in ranges that the ACPI spec included in the system firmware can't deal with, but if an operating system is clever enough it can work around the problem. It may require some ACPI trickery, but it absolutely is doable. If the firmware guys are super lazy it may just work without ACPI trickery. Check out an example here: https://w…
Comment linking /2019/04/adventures-of-putting-16-gb-of-ram-in-a-motherboard-that-doesnt-support-it/
on “Lenovo announces the first Arm-based ThinkPad”Submitted The capacitor that Apple soldered incorrectly at the factory as a story · 536 points
HN discussionYes, I know that there are examples in the wild of that kind of AI modding: https://www.downtowndougbrown.com/2026/08/fixing-an-emachine... https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/modder-uses-... Coreboot in desktops is perhaps in the best shape it has been in more than a decade because you have the MSI Z690-A/Z790-P series for LGA 1700 (Which were current gen when released, and still viable if you want Inte…
Comment linking /2026/08/fixing-an-emachines-el1200-bios-bug-with-claude/
on “ReBarUEFI: Resizable BAR for almost any UEFI system”Submitted Fixing an Elgato HD60 S HDMI capture device with the help of Ghidra as a story · 510 points
HN discussionThis same kind of thing happened to a family member several years ago on his Dell Inspiron 3650 minitower. Dell’s automatic updates installed a BIOS update (3.9.0) that bricked the computer. It would just power off and on automatically forever, no way to even access the BIOS. A bunch of other people online ran into the exact same problem. I ended up reflashing the 3.9.0 BIOS to the flash chip and it fixed it [1]. La…
Comment linking /2019/06/fix-dell-inspiron-3650-wont-boot-powers-itself-on-and-off-every-5-seconds/
on “HP bricks customers laptops with faulty automatic BIOS upgrade”Submitted Adventures of putting 16 GB RAM in a motherboard that doesn’t support it (2019) as a story · 419 points
HN discussionSubmitted Finding a 27-year-old easter egg in the Power Mac G3 ROM as a story · 394 points
HN discussionSubmitted Apple's long-lost hidden recovery partition from 1994 has been found as a story · 315 points
HN discussionSubmitted An invalid 68030 instruction accidentally allowed the Mac Classic II to boot as a story · 304 points
HN discussionSubmitted Modifying an HDMI dummy plug's EDID using a Raspberry Pi as a story · 301 points
HN discussionSubmitted Gooey rubber that's slowly ruining old hard drives as a story · 287 points
HN discussionSubmitted More fun with Apple's internal tools: creating a PDS card as a story · 167 points
HN discussionSubmitted Fixing a knockoff Altera USB Blaster that never worked as a story · 155 points
HN discussionSubmitted Upgrading my Chumby 8 kernel part 10: RTC as a story · 121 points
HN discussionSubmitted Solving my truck’s TPMS sensor problem with the help of an RTL-SDR dongle as a story · 109 points
HN discussionSubmitted Hacking up a fix for the broken AppleTalk kernel module in Linux 5.1 and newer as a story · 106 points
HN discussionSubmitted Tracking down a segfault that suddenly started happening as a story · 105 points
HN discussionSubmitted Upgrading a motherboard’s BIOS/UEFI (the hard way) as a story · 103 points
HN discussionSubmitted Debugging BeagleBoard USB boot with a sniffer: fixing omap_loader on modern PCs as a story · 80 points
HN discussionSubmitted How I fixed the infamous Basilisk II Windows “Black Screen” bug in 2013 as a story · 79 points
HN discussionSubmitted Upgrading my Chumby 8 kernel part 13: the end as a story · 67 points
HN discussionSubmitted Upgrading my Chumby 8 kernel part 11: SD/CF card reader as a story · 35 points
HN discussionSubmitted Fixing an NZXT Signal 4K30 part 2: the green/pink video bug as a story · 34 points
HN discussionSubmitted Upgrading my Chumby 8 kernel part 12: UART woes as a story · 10 points
HN discussionSubmitted Are wireless gamepads terrible? Mario Maker TAS playback with an RP2040 as a story · 9 points
HN discussionSubmitted Please don't ship heavy, fragile vintage computers. They will be destroyed as a story · 8 points
HN discussion
