Top all-time · #1804
Electronics etc…
Personal blog · tomverbeure.github.io · on HN as tverbeurehardwareprogramming
Electronics etc… is a personal blog at tomverbeure.github.io about hardware and programming. Since 2018, 40 different Hacker News readers have linked it 132 times, most often “Video Timings Calculator”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-08-23, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (14) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link his technical posts on FPGA design, video timing, test equipment hacks and RISC-V SweRV cores as references. One commenter calls his blog an interesting one for learning FPGA design.
- Recommended for · 1 comments
- Listed among interesting blogs for learning FPGA design.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 14 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Video Timings Calculator5 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2019-11-28
- The VexRiscV CPU – A New Way to Design3 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2018-12-07
- Solderless PCB Assembly with Z-Tape – You Shouldn't, but Maybe You Could?3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-04-17
- Remote controlling an HP 1670G logic analyzer with a Linux PC X server3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-12-27
- HP 16500A Logic Analyzer Teardown3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-06-18
- A Racing-The-Beam Ray Tracer in an FPGA3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2018-12-11
- Reed-Solomon Error Correcting Codes from the Bottom Up3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-08-08
- Analyzing the Monoprice Blackbird HDCP 2.2 to 1.4 Down Converter3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-11-27
- Getting Started with ECP5 FPGAs on the Colorlight I5 FPGA Development Board3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-01-29
- /2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2021-02-02
What Hacker News says?
Electronics etc. - https://tomverbeure.github.io I try to stay on a pace of at least 1 blog post about various electronics topics every 2 months. It's a great way to have a little bit of pressure to finish some hobby projects, but not too much pressure to actually feel pressure.
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Share your personal site”Submitted Tesla's FSD – A Useless Technology Demo as a story · 254 points
HN discussionReverse engineering the way they do it is very satisfying and time consuming. If you want the same results but without the sweat, LLMs are the way to go now. They eat this kind of stuff for lunch. You could literally ask one for a table with all the CAN bus messages and it would figure it out. I wrote a blog posts where I first did it the traditional way and then, a few months later, the lazy way: https://tomverbeur…
Comment linking /2026/04/12/AMIQ-License-Key-Generation.html
on “Reverse engineering my e-scooter and rewriting the firmware in Rust”Submitted Refurbishing a Tektronix TDS7104 Oscilloscope as a story · 152 points
HN discussionI just gave it another try after my last failed attempt. ( https://tomverbeure.github.io/2024/05/20/Tesla-FSD-First-and... ) I still find it shockingly bad, especially in the way it reacts, or doesn’t, to the way things change around the car (think a car on the left in front of you who switches on indicators to merge in front of you) or the way it makes the most random lane changing decisions and changes it’s mind i…
Comment linking /2024/05/20/Tesla-FSD-First-and-Last-Impressions.html
on “US probes Tesla's Full Self-Driving software after fatal crash”Submitted Making Screenshots of Test Equipment Old and New as a story · 134 points
HN discussionI’ve made such a box myself. It cost me $20 in hardware and many hours of effort. https://tomverbeure.github.io/2018/04/23/Color3-HDMI-RX-to-H... Right now it’s just a proof of concept (check out the video with a moving overlay rectangle and the red 8 that is converted into a partially green 8), but it wouldn’t take a whole lot of work to add support for subtitles. There are still some of these boxes for sale on Ama…
Comment linking /2018/04/23/Color3-HDMI-RX-to-HDMI-TX-is-UP.html
on “HDMI Forum Rejects Open-Source HDMI 2.1 Driver Support Sought by AMD”Submitted Reverse Engineering the Comtech AHA363 PCIe Gzip Accelerator Board as a story · 127 points
HN discussionI updated a $330 new HP laptop (it flexes like cardboard) from 8GB to 32GB in May. Cost back then: $44. Today, the same kit costs a ridiculous $180. https://tomverbeure.github.io/2025/03/12/HP-Laptop-17-RAM-Up...
Comment linking /2025/03/12/HP-Laptop-17-RAM-Upgrade.html
on “The RAM shortage comes for us all”Submitted A Pixel Purse LED Cube Controlled by a Cisco 3G Modem as a story · 118 points
HN discussionWith KiCAD and dirt-cheap PCB manufacturing, the PCB design is just a matter of starting with something simple. It took me a (long) evening to go from nothing to an VGA I2C Atari joystick controller board. [1] Once you've got the hang of it, more complex PCBs aren't really that much different. I started with double-sized PCBs, but 4-layer PCBs are now almost equally cheap, which makes routing a lot easier too. [1] h…
Comment linking /2019/02/05/VGA-I2C-My-First-PCB.html
on “LED Industrial Piercing”Submitted SweRV – An Annotated Deep Dive of the SweRV RISC-V Core as a story · 113 points
HN discussionI did a tear down of this Monoprice dongle: https://tomverbeure.github.io/2023/11/26/Monoprice-Blackbird... . It terminates as an HDCP 2.0 endpoint and converts to HDCP 1.4. You’d still need an HDCP 1.4 sink to make it work though.
Comment linking /2023/11/26/Monoprice-Blackbird-4K-Pro-HDCP-Converter.html
on “Modifying an HDMI dummy plug's EDID using a Raspberry Pi”Submitted A Tektronix TDS 684B Oscilloscope Uses CCD Analog Memory as a story · 109 points
HN discussionThe calculator I was using was: https://tomverbeure.github.io/video_timings_calculator Changing the refresh rate would work too, but some monitors can be pretty picky about that.
Comment linking /video_timings_calculator
on “Raspberry Pi 4 WiFi stops working at 2560 x 1440 screen resolution”Submitted Remote controlling an HP 1670G logic analyzer with a Linux PC X server as a story · 71 points
HN discussionRight. Here are the internals of the G2: https://tomverbeure.github.io/pano/logic/2018/12/02/Pano-Log...
Comment linking /pano/logic/2018/12/02/Pano-Logic-G2-Disassembly.html
on “Compiling my own SPARC CPU inside a cheap FPGA”Submitted HP/Agilent E3631A Rotary Knob Repair as a story · 70 points
HN discussionWe went from 1920 wide to 3840 to 7680. A step of 4x give or take in number of total pixels each time. It’s a logical progression? But either way, 8K is already pushing the limits of what today’s video transports can carry. 16K is currently impossible. Uncompressed 8K/60Hz requires >64% of the max BW of DisplayPort 2.0 (which is not even on the market yet.) That’s why he needed 2 DP cables. You can check out video t…
Comment linking /video_timings_calculator
on “I built a 5K iMac Display”Submitted Rohde and Schwarz AMIQ Modulation Generator Teardown as a story · 68 points
HN discussionI present you with Flir 80×40 resolution E4, one setting away from full 320×240 E8 https://hackaday.com/2013/11/04/manufacturer-crippled-flir-e... Oscilloscopes are another product notorious for shipping same hardware with different jumpers/variables in the firmware. https://tomverbeure.github.io/2020/06/27/In-the-Lab-Tektroni... somewhat famous DS1052E 50 to 100MHz hack https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnhXfVYWYXE D…
Comment linking /2020/06/27/In-the-Lab-Tektronix-TDS420A.html
on “GeForce RTX 3060 Ethereum Mining Restrictions Have Been Broken”Submitted A Hack to Update RAM Initialization Contents in Intel FPGA Bitstreams as a story · 67 points
HN discussionYep! But it sadly cannot replace soldering for denser pinout layouts, unless a lot of pressure is applied. Someone tried though; https://tomverbeure.github.io/2019/11/21/Z-tape.html (A bit off topic but that Bloomberg story is still such a mystery to me. It went into quite a bit of details and claimed it had tons of sources, so even if it was a completely false story whoever fabricated it must have put insane amount…
Comment linking /2019/11/21/Z-tape.html
on “3M tape with anisotropic z-axis electrical conductivity”Submitted Inside an Isotemp OCXO107-10 Oven Controlled Crystal Oscillator as a story · 63 points
HN discussionI wrote a long blog post about the VexRiscv RISC-V CPU and how its design methodology is radically different than traditional RTL languages. The VexRiscv is written in SpinalHDL, which is a close relative of Chisel. The advantage of SpinalHDL/Chisel is that it supports plug and play configurability that’s impossible with languages like SystemVerilog or VHDL. You can read about it here: https://tomverbeure.github.io/…
Comment linking /rtl/2018/12/06/The-VexRiscV-CPU-A-New-Way-To-Design.html
on “An Open-Source FPGA-Optimized Out-of-Order RISC-V Soft Processor (2019) [pdf]”Submitted Option Hacking the Tektronix TDS 420A as a story · 59 points
HN discussionFor those who are interested in submitting airplane data to the non-commercial ADSB-Exchange project, here are my extensive installation instructions: https://tomverbeure.github.io/2019/05/11/ADSB-Exchange-Feede... .
Comment linking /2019/05/11/ADSB-Exchange-Feeder.html
on “Receiving images of Earth from satellites with software defined radio”Submitted Repairing an HP 3478A Multimeter with a Hacksaw as a story · 53 points
HN discussionIf you want to compare video bandwidth requirements not only for HDMI but also for DisplayPort and some other video transports, you can also use my video timings calculator: https://tomverbeure.github.io/video_timings_calculator .
Comment linking /video_timings_calculator
on “When HDMI 2.1 isn't HDMI 2.1 – the confusing world of the standard”Submitted Interposer to fix the Symmetricom SyncServer S200 GPS week rollover problem as a story · 52 points
HN discussion
