educational

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The box of the Busch Electronic Digital-Technik 2075

The Busch Electronic Digital-Technik 2075 Digital Lab From The 1970s

November 26, 2025 by 6 Comments

In a recent video, [Jason Jacques] demos the Busch Electronic Digital-Technik 2075 which was released in West Germany in the 1970s.

The Digital-Technik 2075 comes with a few components including a battery holder and 9 V battery, a push button, two 1 K resistors, a red LED, a 100 nF ceramic capacitor, a 100 µF electrolytic capacitor, a quad NAND gate IC, and a counter module which includes an IC and a 7-segment display. The kit also comes with wires, plugs, a breadboard, and a tool for extracting modules.

The Digital-Technik 2075 doesn’t use the spring terminals we see in other project labs of the time, such as the Science Fair kits from Radio Shack, and it doesn’t use modular Denshi blocks, such as we saw from the Gakken EX-150, but rather uses wire in conjunction with yellow plastic plugs. This seems to work well enough.

In the video, after showing us how to do switch debouncing, [Jason] runs us through making a counter with the digital components and then getting the counter to reset after it counts to five. This is done using NAND gates. Before he gets stuck into doing a project he takes a close look at the manual (which is in German) including some of the advertisements for other project labs from Busch which were available at the time. As he doesn’t speak German [Jason] prints out an English translation of the manual before working through it.

We’ve heard from [Jason] at Hackaday in recent history when we saw his Microtronic Phoenix Computer System which referenced the 2090 Microtronic Computer System which was also made by Busch.

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A RISC-V Operating System Instruction Manual

May 26, 2025 by 1 Comment

To some, an operating system is a burden or waste of resources, like those working on embedded systems and other low-power applications. To others it’s necessary, abstracting away hardware so that higher-level programming can be done. For most people it’s perhaps not thought of at all. But for a few, the operating system is the most interesting piece of software running on a computer and if you’d like to investigate what makes this often overlooked aspect of computer science interesting, take a look at this course on operating systems from Cornell University.

The operating system itself is called Earth and Grass Operating System because it splits the functionality of the operating system into three separate parts. The Earth layer involves dealing with hardware, the Grass layer involves hardware-independent aspects, and a third application layer implements other key operating system features. It’s built for a RISC-V processor, since that instruction set is completely open source and transparent about what it’s doing. It’s also incredibly small, coming in at around 2000 lines of code. The course covers nine areas, with the first six being core operating system functions and the remaining three covering more advanced operating system concepts.

For understanding the intricacies and sometimes mysterious ways that operating systems work, a course like this can go a long way into unraveling those mysteries and developing a deeper understanding of how it brings the hardware to work for higher-level software. We actually featured this operating system two years ago, before this course was created, which covers this project for those who like to take a more self-directed approach, or simply want a lightweight OS for a RISC-V system.

Educational Breadboard Synth Module

June 15, 2024 by 11 Comments

Synth designers [Erica Synths] have devised a very cool, approachable way to get started with DIY synth hacking. Designed around a breadboard, the EDU DIY LABOR is a synth module with everything you need to get started. The Basic version comes with potentiometers, switches, and jack sockets, and is aimed more at those who likely already have a decent supply of parts on hand for experimentation. The Full kit comes with all that, plus a supply of resistors, capacitors, ICs and transistors so you can get up to speed, even as a beginner.

The device is supplied as a semi-DIY kit, with some soldering and assembly required. The kit was designed in collaboration with Dr. Shalom D. Ruben, a teaching professor of engineering at the University of Colorado. So it should be approachable for those with some soldering experience under their belt. Labor includes a multi-voltage power supply which supplies all Eurorack voltages, an oscillator section for both audible ranges and LFO, a full envelope control section, an output amplifier and more! Once assembled you can quickly start making bloops, beeps, and bzzts. You can easily design filters, oscillators, amplifiers, sequencers, and whatever else you can dream up!

However, the kit is designed to be more than just a synth playground – the idea was also to create an environment where you could learn the basics of electronics at the same time, in an approachable, fun way. This is reflected in the excellent user manual, which goes beyond just assembling the device and gives some example circuits, complete with wave diagrams and detailed working explanations. Great for beginners and experienced hackers who want to learn more about fundamentals and audio synthesis!

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CH32V003 Makes For Dirt Cheap RISC-V Computer

May 31, 2024 by 35 Comments

These days, when most folks think of a computer they imagine a machine with multiple CPUs, several gigabytes of RAM, and a few terabytes of non-volatile storage for good measure. With such modern expectations, it can be difficult to see something like a microcontroller as little more than a toy. But if said MCU has a keyboard, is hooked up to a display, and lets you run basic productivity and development software, doesn’t that qualify it as a computer? It certainly would have in the 1980s.

With that in mind, [Olimex] has teased the RVPC, which they’re calling the “world lowest cost Open Source Hardware All-in-one educational RISC-V computer” (say that three times fast). The tiny board features the SOIC-8 variant of the CH32V003 and…well, not a whole lot else. You’ve got a handful of passives, a buzzer, an LED, and the connectors for a PS/2 keyboard, a power supply, and a VGA display. The idea is to offer this as a beginner’s soldering kit in the future, so most most of the components are through-hole.