[XCSSA] XCSSA Meeting: High voltage, Hardware Hacking, and other fun stuff (Mon, June 15th, 7pm back in the NTC building, old room 140 (not the basement))

[X-otic Computer Systems of San Antonio]

                Xotic Computer Systems of San Antonio *
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	http://xcssa.org/archives/XCSSA_2009-06-15.html

Hey all!

NOTE: This meeting will be held in the NTC building, back in our "old old" 
room 140 on the 1st floor!

No formal presentations as of yet... but some cool show-n-tells going on. :)

First up...

Plasma (High Voltage) Fractals: By Fredrik
Besides propeller and microcontroller hacking, Fredrik also has a thing for 
things that make sparks.  Specifically, high voltage sparks.  A while back, 
Fredrik built a simple flyback high voltage kit that puts out 25,000 volts AC 
at around 25kHz.  About what you get from a CRT based television set HV 
flyback circuit.  In previous meetings he's lit up light bulbs, globes and 
what not (see links on web site) but now he's playing with the burn patterns 
that can be achieved by dampening composite wood boards with water and 
hitting them with HV plasma arcs.  Some pretty cool fractal-like patterns can 
be created very easily (links on web site) and he's going to show the 
results, and with building approval, do some demonstrations of the process.
http://xcssa.org/archives/XCSSA_2009-06-15.html#NEXT

De-WinCE-ing the AMD "PIC Brick": By Tweeks
A few years back, AMD released a sealed, rubberized PC about the size of a 
brick called the AMD PIC (link).  It only ran a specific version of WindowsCE 
(and not very well at that), and could not run anything else as it had a 
special "Trusted Hardware" BIOS in it that would not allow any other OS to be 
booted(link).  Well after some discussions on the XCSSA mail list... Tweeks 
has decided to go ahead an un-WinCE-brick the device at XCSSA and load a 
small Linux distro on it to show how easy it is... and what a nice little 
system the AMD PIC can actually be, if the right OS is employed.
(links to the directions and flash ROM image related files are linked to from 
the web site)
http://xcssa.org/archives/XCSSA_2009-06-15.html#NEXT

There has been some other x-otic hardware chatter on the list.. so come out 
ans see what shows up.. We might have some other interesting hardware show up 
too.

FREEBIES!: Tweeks finally GOT that handful of free (as in beer) Ubuntu Case 
Badges to brandish on your Linux lappy!  He'll bring them in to give out.

** See the web site for links to the above subjects. **
http://xcssa.org/archives/XCSSA_2009-06-15.html#NEXT


Should be a fun laid back meeting this month.. 
Hope to see you there!

Tweeks
President of XCSSA.ORG