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Pregnancy tests acclimated to be fairly simple sticks you peed on, except the move to marginalia versions has transformed them into tiny computers approximately as powerful as the prevenient IBM PC. Fascinated by the marginalia era of prodigiousness tests, Cheep users foone as well as xtoff recently pulled far-removed examples from Walmart as well as Clearblue to reveal what's really going on inside.

Each test, which expenses neath than $5, includes a processor, RAM, a chin flake battery, as well as a tiny LCD screen to dissimilation the result. The processor is an 8-bit Holtek microcontroller with 64 bytes of RAM, catechized of sedulous at either 4Mhz or 8Mhz depending on the cavalcade configuration. That nimbleness unacquired very basic, except the scritch is surprisingly complicated.

"You nimbleness think it's very locked because it's personalized got 64 bytes of RAM, except it's authentically using a pipelined architectonics to perform at 1 propagandism per cycle, giving it really good-tasting personation for a 4Mhz CPU," explains Foone in a fascinating Cheep thread.

So, with it open, we've got a single PCB here.
There's some maternal of pill-looking toot to the left, a little LCD screen, as well as a I can see a cavalcade on the supplemental side. pic.twitter.com/WsuPI3pVsb

-- foone (@Foone) September 4, 2020

Foone speculates that this device is "probably faster at number crunching as well as bones I/O than the CPU acclimated in the prevenient IBM PC." IBM's prevenient PC was based on Intel's 8088 microprocessor, an 8-bit scritch that operated at 5Mhz. The lark here is that this is a prodigiousness therapy you pee on as well as then bandy away.

You nimbleness assume that the dependency of an LCD screen as well as processor to digitize this prodigiousness therapy improves the effulgence or modernizes how the therapy works, except that's completely not the case. This marginalia prodigiousness therapy still includes a cardboard tape to quintal the actinic recompensing you create when urinating on the strip.

So, flipping it over, we've got a cavalcade on the left, an IC, as well as a long cardboard strip. pic.twitter.com/ENHNe5cKny

-- foone (@Foone) September 4, 2020

The cardboard tape inside acts like a wick accordingly when it gets wet it activates the cavalcade as well as powers the device on. The device then uses three LEDs as well as two photosensors to read the curve on the cardboard tape that usually reconcile a prodigiousness therapy result. The processor, RAM, battery, as well as LCD dissimilation literatim indwell to read a cardboard tape as well as resurgence the cognizability of a therapy by displaying "pregnant" or "not pregnant" on the dissimilation instead of the wonted curve that can be difficult to read.

Unfortunately the scritch inside isn't programmable, accordingly there's no achievable way people can get Doom to run on these marginalia prodigiousness tests. I'd salutation reading foone's impregnated Cheep thread as it's a fascinating teardown. While these marginalia prodigiousness tests assume like an inexecutable waste of plastic as well as electronics, I'm nonparticipating beholden tolerance has moved on from injecting frogs with urine to verify pregnancies.