[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]

Howdy...

I'm 99% sure that I got Strep Throat this Saturday, however I'm not 
showing any symptoms yet... I know this is contagious so I'm not going 
to the meeting tonight, don't want to get anyone else sick...
I'll save the Plasma Fractals show and tell until the next meeting...

/Fredrik

X-otic Computer Systems of San Antonio wrote:
>                 Xotic Computer Systems of San Antonio *
>                  \_____\________\__________\___\______X
>                         \________\__________\___\_____C
>                                   \__________\___\____S
>                                               \___\___S
>                                                    \__A
>          (* this email is best viewed in fixed fonts) 
> 	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
> _______________________________________________
> XCSSA mailing list
> XCSSA at xcssa.org
> http://xcssa.org/mailman/listinfo/xcssa
>
>