The Ware for December 2023 is shown below.

Thanks to Cedric Honnet for contributing this ware! Unfortunately this image does have an exact hit on Google images, as it is already in Cedric’s social media feed — but I think the ware itself is functionally interesting, yet simple enough to guess without having to rely on image searches.

Thus answers will be judged in part based on their insight into the reasoning behind the construction of this ware — for example, what’s going on in the zoomed in view of the ware? What are some of the considerations in building a module of this nature?

Happy new year! Name that ware will be wrapping up its 18th year soon 🤯.

The Ware for November 2023 is a Lucira at home Covid test. Congrats to Jon Neal for nailing it, email me for your prize!

Here’s some more images of the ware for your enjoyment.

The Ware for November 2023 is shown below.

Thanks to Zack Weinberg for mailing me this device to take apart and share!

The Ware for October 2023 is a Seiko DS-250 keyboard synthesizer.

Nobody guessed the exact make and model of the keyboard, but it was really entertaining to see the comment thread puzzle through the design. The dual 8049’s caught my attention too, as well as the lack of obvious DACs. I have some partial photos of the associated I/O board, and it also lacks an obvious DAC — mostly just generic mixer/amp/analog switch components on there, so I’d agree with the idea that the DAC could be integrated into one of the big Toshiba chips (or perhaps they are doing something with PWM).

I’ll give the prize to Cary Roberts for being the first to guess the general class of ware (congrats and email me for your prize!). Lots of attention to detail to what I had accidentally left in the background after the crop, I didn’t even notice the rollover diodes in the background until someone pointed it out!

Thanks again to JeffreyO for contributing these photos!