Mining rigs were using USB-C to transport PCIe x1 by the truckload. Because USB 3.0 cables are dirt cheap and are capable of transporting signals at PCIe x1 data rates.

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256809341543494.html

The closed system doesn’t (only) prevent counterfeit systems, it also prevents someone from maliciously releasing a mod that could make the motor accelerate instead of break at some random time.

It’d be negligent for anyone to release a product like this without locking down the FW.

Many years ago, we did exactly that: our product had FW update support and our biggest concern was a rogue hacker creating a package that would brick the product.

Reverse engineering the way they do it is very satisfying and time consuming. If you want the same results but without the sweat, LLMs are the way to go now. They eat this kind of stuff for lunch. You could literally ask one for a table with all the CAN bus messages and it would figure it out.

I wrote a blog posts where I first did it the traditional way and then, a few months later, the lazy way: https://tomverbeure.github.io/2026/04/12/AMIQ-License-Key-Ge....

LLMs are fun until you have to break up a devices that use encrypted firmware files and non-documented interfaces.. that you are back in the past ;-)

But for the rest: Yes. They will be eaten alive by the latest generation of LLMs. I use DS-Flash 4.1 a lot for this. A big helper.

The bike derangement syndrome in the US is truly something to behold.

I’ve used this board for an LED cube, but in general I don’t recommend it as a cheap general purpose FPGA board due to the lack of inputs, the different versions, and the uncertainty about getting access to the JTAG pins on later versions.

The Colorlight I5 is a much better choice for that. It’s also a high volume and this cheap HUB75 controller board but with a plug-in configuration so they all pins can be used as input or output.

See my old blog post about it: https://tomverbeure.github.io/2021/01/22/The-Colorlight-i5-a...

"getting access to the JTAG pins"

I have seen some of the boards being reflashed with DirtyJTAG and openfpgaloader.

JTAG pins might dissappear from the board?

There is a video here "Pico-DirtyJTAG: Cheap JTAG Programmer! Raspberry Pi Pico for Lattice ECP5 + Icestudio":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yj1X4PIoQGg

I have some HUB75 boards where the JTAG pins are covered with solder mask or only available by scratching solder mask from non-descript traces.

These boards are programmed in production with SPI pins or assembled with preprogrammed PROMs.

What I remember of the V20 was that there was some benchmark (Norton?) that was way faster, but I never saw a difference for any real application that I tested.

I have a soft spot for the V20. The laptop I carried in high school was V20-based (a NEC Ultralite PC1701). I remember a CGA 3D billiards game I played on both the laptop and an XT clone desktop. The V20 was definitely faster for that game.

For most of what I actually used it for (typing notes and playing with QBASIC) I didn't notice a difference.

It’s not just funny to see, it’s also fun to create, satisfying to see it work, and terrifying to deploy it for hundreds of thousands of users… when it’s a cursed way to update firmware.

Using SATA gen 1 would be ideal, but the TDS7104 motherboard is old enough not to have that: it doesn't support booting from a USB stick.

It's a hobby, not work.

$300 bucks is at least three grocery trips for two people, shopped wisely. That stands for work to me.

One totally needs a 500 MHz oscilloscope to debug a kHz range serial port signal! :-)

Family and friends aren't impressed by experiments measuring C either...

Heh, like my 100MHz scope used for audio signals.