The Wiikey team has released version 2 of their modchip. Changes look mostly related to performance, although there is now added support for "problem titles" such as Mario Kart Wii and Super Smash Bros. Brawl. More details in the full article.

Xbox 360 owners who are closely following the project developments of the InFeCtuS homebrew developer team, be informed that the group has just released a new build for the Programmer bumping it up to version 0.0.3.9. Know about its details after the jump!

No, you aren't seeing things. That really is a gigantic DS modded to enormous proportions. Comcast user "olimar" shows what he did with the use of two tablet PC screens, an FPGA (Field-Programmable Gate Array) logic chip to translate the hardware, a Nintendo DS, and some other parts he had "lying around" to create the Jumbotron DS.0

The two screens simulate the double screen of the Nintendo DS while the pen input is taken care by the FPGA and sent back to the DS. It can also take screenshots via a PC serial port. He also noted the parts he used as well as the approximate cost of each:

• Gateway M275 screens (14" 1024x768): $100*2
• LVDS modules (Advantech PCM-205): $60*2
• Digilent S3BOARD + headers: $130
• Nintendo DS: $100
• Wacom pen: $30

With the total running more or less a hefty US$ 600, eager buyers will have to curb their fantasies of owning their own overblown DS because olimar claimed that he wasn't interested in producing the Jumbotron DS or even selling the one he made unless it was at cost. He might be surprised how many people may be interested though if he ever considered putting it up on ebay.

Either way, it surely is an ingenious display of the possibilities you can push a hardware's capabilities to its limit.

The full article awaits after the jump!

This news makes me glad that I am driving a banged-up Toyota. Apparently, newer car models are more prone to the possibility of being damaged by cosmic rays (radiation consisting of energetic particles originating beyond the Earth that impinge on the its atmosphere). The reason for this is that cars of today have evolved from purely mechanical machines to highly integrated drive-by-wire electronics system.

This poses a dilemma to car manufacturers, desginers and engineers. They must continually add complex electronics to each successive model year while still maintaining high standards for quality and reliability, all while meeting the stringent demands of low-cost, high-volume production.

To solve these problems, many designers are turning to FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Array) as a flexible, low-cost solution for their next-generation automotive electronics designs.

But cars which boast of the latest technologies are in trouble because of "Neutron- induced Firm Errors" which is basically the bombardment of neutrons from space. This might sound too Star Trekkish to most (it does to me!) but it could actually happened.

When it does, it may cause the host system (your car's intricate electrical set-up) to malfunction. Looking into the future, this problem will only worsen as future deep submicron manufacturing processes will continue to create substantial challenges for designers of FPGA-based automotive electronics.

The consequences of a neutron-induced error could be severe. If a configuration bit upsets and changes state, it could change the entire functionality of the device, resulting in significant data corruption or the forwarding of spurious signals into other circuits in the system.

In extreme cases, the undetected existence for a prolonged period of a firm error can become a "hard error" and cause the destruction of the device itself or the system containing the device - a neutron-induced firm error that misroutes a signal creating an internal short is one common example of this type of problem.