I’m also very curious! I got a pair of icebreaker boards [0] and they’ve been great to toy around with.
The tooling is open source, and Fable in a loop - especially when paired with a digital scope that Fable interfaces with (the Saleae’s [1] are great) - gives you a level of verifiability that feels like beyond what software typically gives you. ie it feels more like Lean than code with tests.
I had ai implement a few toy circuits (sha hashing, 8088 emulation, a tiny llm) but yeah. Still looking for fun applications.
There have been a few recent fpga threads on hn, check them out. [2][3]
Well I'm even more 1000%%%%%% coming to the swapfest now!!!! My precious bag, haha.
Also, you are the most incredibly generous person for lending me that extraordinary piece of computing history!! I recorded its relay sounds and actual resistances. I truly cannot tell you how happy it made me.
- an open source AES67 hardware receiver/decoder - based on my friend Jessie's work [0]. I want speakers to have ethernet ports and to use an open/inexpensive stack. it's hard because physics/timing are brutal (1ms sync is ~not enough), but that's what makes it a great problem.
- an open source embroidery machine - based on my friend Owen's work [1]. Owen found Brother PE-150 machines which are readily available on eBay for ~$100 as they only work with proprietary 90s-era CF cards which nobody has (or sell for more than the machine). he designed a replacement motherboard (!!) and is running a fully open stack. it's wild.
- a ~$20 tiny cute display you can have on the side of your monitor, and display things on - realtime airport view from flightaware? a mini terminal? you can grab a display today [2], all that's missing is a 3d case (email me for firmware/OS code! I'll share it, just haven't had time). friends Frank and Sophie are working on a similar GUD-compatible display as well! [3]
- my friend Antoine has been working on Python bindings to Canonical's dqlite, a distributed sqlite-variant with raft-based failover and transactions (only C and Go clients existed) [4] - this will soon be a structural ("load-bearing"! haha!) part of Disco, a project we've been working on for a few years which lets you run your own PaaS. we're growing and get nice love letters [5] which for an open source project is obviously deeply rewarding
AppleTalk is a protocol that was used on classic/vintage Macs (think: early/late 1980s, 1990s) to create local networks. The wikipedia page [0] has a good historical overview, including the parallel rise of ethernet / tcp/ip (which won).
Using TailTalk on my modern Mac, I can expose a file share accessible to my Macintosh Plus, which has a simulated SCSI Ethernet adapter bridged to a Pi Pico 2W's wireless connection via a BlueSCSI.
The tooling is open source, and Fable in a loop - especially when paired with a digital scope that Fable interfaces with (the Saleae’s [1] are great) - gives you a level of verifiability that feels like beyond what software typically gives you. ie it feels more like Lean than code with tests.
I had ai implement a few toy circuits (sha hashing, 8088 emulation, a tiny llm) but yeah. Still looking for fun applications.
There have been a few recent fpga threads on hn, check them out. [2][3]
[0] https://1bitsquared.com/products/icebreaker
[1] https://www.saleae.com/
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49564064
[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49531525
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