The Curious Engineer

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Big Mess o' Wires

bigmessowires.com

Exploring DIY electronics, retro-computing, and maker business dreams

ElectronicsApple / classic MacRetro computingEmbedded / microcontrollers

Posts
782 from 26 Nov 2007 to 23 Oct 2026
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monthly (12 in the last year)
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personal blog
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2026 12

  1. Wombat Game Controller Beta – Call for Testers
  2. Help Me Choose a Web Hosting Plan: Decoding the Marketing Speak
  3. Applying 10 Years of Server Updates in One Shot
  4. The Mother of All USB Wombat Firmware Updates
  5. Thoughts on implementing game controller support for the ADB-USB Wombat
  6. ADB-USB Wombat firmware fix for unrecognized USB keyboards and mice
  7. Floppy Emu Hardware Failure Analysis Results
  8. Mactoberfest 2026: Exhibits, Activities & More
  9. Adventures in Microcontroller Circuit Debugging
  10. Yellowstone Universal Disk Controller Back in Stock
  11. Mactoberfest Meetup is back for 2026! Saturday November 7, Belmont California
  12. BMOW Summer Closure June 18 to July 11

2025 3

  1. Bulk Lots of DB-19s for Sale!
  2. Canada Post Strike and Shipping Changes
  3. New Product and Mea Culpa

2024 4

  1. ADB-USB Wombat Back in Stock
  2. Floppy Emu Deluxe Bundle and Acrylic Case Back in Stock
  3. Mac Sync-inator VGA Sync Converter Launches Today!
  4. Mac Sync-inator Update

2023 28

  1. Mac-to-VGA Composite Sync-Splitter Progress
  2. Floppy Emu update: StuffIt file support, CD-ROM and SCSI image support, more
  3. Power Supply Design, Group Regulation, and Vintage Computers
  4. Mactoberfest Meetup Recap
  5. Tetris Max Worldwide High Score Contest is Saturday
  6. Mac-to-VGA Sync-Splitter Prototype
  7. Yellowstone Disk Controller Begins Second Production Run
  8. Electric Bow Tie 3000 Reloaded
  9. Mactoberfest Meetup is One Week Away!
  10. Classic Macintosh Video Signals Demystified, Designing a Mac-to-VGA Adapter with LM1881
  11. Announcing the Tetris Max High Score Contest, October 14
  12. ATX to Mac 10-pin Power Supply Adapter Kit
  13. ImageWriter II Printer Resurrected
  14. Remote Sleuthing of Circuit Failures – Success!
  15. Mac ROM-inator II Restock and Partnerships
  16. Mactoberfest Bay Area Meetup is October 14!
  17. A Tale of Three Bidirectional Level Shifters
  18. Mactoberfest: October 14 Bay Area Classic Macintosh Meetup, Expo, Repair Clinic, Swap Meet
  19. Wombat Firmware Update: Hardware Mouse Scaling
  20. Searching for Paul C. Pratt
  21. Tetris Max and System 6, Fixing 31-Year-Old Bugs
  22. Floppy Emu Update: GS/OS Errors, Dual-Drive Automount, More
  23. End of the Global Semiconductor Shortage?
  24. Reflections on Orders of Magnitude
  25. Oceania Has Always Been at War with Eastasia: Dangers of Generative AI and Knowledge Pollution
  26. Atari 2600 Hardware Acceleration
  27. Thoughts on an Apple II FPGA Coprocessor
  28. Atari 2600 Hardware Design: Making Something out of (Almost) Nothing

2022 36

  1. New Macintosh Firmware Updates for Floppy Emu
  2. BMOW Quality Control Breakdown
  3. AVR-GCC Compiler Makes Questionable Code
  4. Mysteries of Macintosh High Density MFM Disks
  5. MOOF disk image support for Floppy Emu
  6. An Idea for Macintosh Disk Daisy-Chaining
  7. Floppy Emu Update: Odds and Ends
  8. Floppy Emu: New Smartport UI and Settings Menu
  9. Floppy Emu Update: UI Goodies and More
  10. Noisy Disk 5.25 Inch Mechanical Sound Maker
  11. Floppy Emu Update: Multi-Disk Fix
  12. Yellowstone Firmware 221024, Total Replay and Reset
  13. NMOS 6502 Phantom Reads, Odd Yellowstone Bugs
  14. ADB-USB Wombat Firmware 0.3.8 – Caps Lock Mod
  15. Extraterritorial Compliance and Small Business
  16. Semiconductor Shortage and Business Threat
  17. Yellowstone Future Forecast Update
  18. Ron Nicholson, Early Mac and Amiga Engineer
  19. Apple IIc Drive Switcher and ADB-USB Wombat: Back in Stock
  20. Exploring Antenna Gain Directionality
  21. Learn Morse Code for Fun and Profit
  22. Intentional Unintentional RF for Sneaky CW Transmissions
  23. Don’t Cook Yourself With RF Energy
  24. International Space Station Downlink!
  25. Yellowstone Future Forecast
  26. UPS International Shipping Redlining in South San Francisco
  27. My First Amateur Ham Radio Contact Attempt
  28. Now Available: Yellowstone Universal Disk Controller for Apple II
  29. BMOW Tries Amateur Radio
  30. First Look at the RP2040 – Raspberry Pi Microcontroller
  31. BMOW Business Update – Good, Bad, and Scary
  32. Amazon Pay, Part 2: $2300 Lost and Found
  33. Hello New Zealand, Goodbye Hong Kong, International Shipping Dumpster Fire
  34. Yellowstone Manufacturing is Go!
  35. Merchant Service Disaster: Amazon Pay and the Disappearing $2300
  36. Almost Manufacture-Ready

2021 84

  1. Edge Connectors, ENIG Plating, and Galvanic Corrosion
  2. Circuit Sleuthing: Unidisk 5.25 Enable and PHI1
  3. Apple IIgs 80 Column Mode Crash
  4. Global Chip Shortage Hits Home
  5. Yellowstone Beta Testing Continues
  6. Cyber Monday 10% Off at the New BMOW Store
  7. BMOW Store Gets a Major Remodeling
  8. Logic Analyzer Shopping
  9. The Amazing Disk II Controller Card
  10. ADB-USB Wombat Restock
  11. Call For Yellowstone Beta Testers
  12. ROM-inator Resurrections
  13. Zener Regulator Trouble
  14. 5V Logic Level Errors
  15. The Yellowstone Tester
  16. WordPress Latin1 and UTF-8, Part 2
  17. Non-Breaking Spaces and UTF-8 Madness
  18. Apple II Pascal Booting Problems
  19. Tech Support Dilemmas
  20. New Zealand Shipping Suspension
  21. Desk Overflow Error
  22. Yellowstone Tester Update
  23. Temporary Suspension of Australia Shipping
  24. Short Circuit Current Experiments
  25. ADB-USB Wombat Firmware 0.3.7
  26. Yellowstone: Ready for Takeoff
  27. Floppy Emu Update: Smartport and More
  28. New Cases for the Daisy Chainer!
  29. Yellowstone 2.2 First Look
  30. Testing For Short Circuits
  31. Dark Castle Bugs
  32. Smartport Cleanup
  33. 4th Quarter Fumble
  34. PCB 2.2, Board Tester, And One More Problem
  35. Plans for a Yellowstone Tester
  36. Floppy Drive Pin 9 Is Not My Friend
  37. Eject Motor Gearbox Autopsy
  38. Death of an M0131 Floppy Drive
  39. Disk Drive Testing
  40. Back-Powering and Phantom Power From JTAG
  41. Four Years of Yellowstone
  42. Yellowstone Ground Noise and Bypass Capacitors
  43. Current Limiting, Part 3
  44. Current Limiting Strategies (Again)
  45. FPGA In-System Programming: Beginnings
  46. Yellowstone Option Configuration Design
  47. Transistor Puzzles
  48. Yellowstone and Macintosh Floppy Drives
  49. ADB-USB Wombat Update – Power Key Fix
  50. Yellowstone Glitch, Part 10: Resolution?
  51. Yellowstone Glitch, Part 9: Scope Probe Ground Leads
  52. Yellowstone Glitch, Part 8: Down the Rabbit Hole
  53. Yellowstone Glitch, Part 7: Maybe a Conclusion
  54. NASA Struggles to Fix Hubble Space Telescope’s 1980s Computer
  55. Yellowstone Glitch, Part 6: This Is Getting Ridiculous
  56. Yellowstone Glitch, Part 5: Fix Signal Integrity With This One Weird Trick
  57. Yellowstone Glitch, Part 4: The Plot Thickens
  58. Yellowstone Glitch, Part 3: Train Wreck
  59. Clock Glitch, Part 2
  60. Clock Glitch
  61. Yellowstone Testing With Real Drives
  62. When A Space Is Not A Space
  63. Testing Yellowstone 2.0
  64. New Product Release: Dual 5.25 Adapter for Disk II, and Apple IIc Drive Switcher 2.0
  65. Apple II Binary Files and FPGA Reprogramming
  66. ADB-USB Wombat Restock, and Global Shipping
  67. Canada Shipping is Back Online!
  68. Yellowstone 2.0 PCB
  69. US Customs Export Control Says: I’m Screwed
  70. Off to the Fab!
  71. Yellowstone 2.0 Layout and Route
  72. Floppy Emu Update: Smartport Daisy-Chain Support
  73. Yellowstone Reprogramming and Testing
  74. Fixing Laser’s Bugs
  75. Testing Yellowstone
  76. Yellowstone 3.5 Inch Drive Support!
  77. Yellowstone 5.25 Inch and Smartport Support
  78. Yellowstone Progress Update
  79. Floppy Emu Update: WOZ Writes, Dual 5.25 Emulation, and More!
  80. FPGA Block RAM Packing
  81. When 64 Kbits Is Not 8 Kbytes
  82. UDC: The Next Generation
  83. Squeezing FPGA Memory
  84. BMOW Product Updates

2020 26

  1. Backyard Metal Sand Casting
  2. Unlocking the Secrets of the UDC Disk Controller
  3. FPGA Disk Controller Next Steps
  4. BMOW Inventory Restock
  5. Yellowstone Back From the Dead
  6. Apple II Video Card Thoughts
  7. How Many Bits in a Track? Revisiting Basic Assumptions
  8. Floppy Emu Update: Apple II Copy-Protection
  9. Mac ROM-inator II: The Thickening
  10. Redesigning an Acrylic Case
  11. Retro Puzzle Contest: Solution
  12. Floppy Emu Restock and Retro Puzzle Contest
  13. The International Shipping Mess
  14. Acrylic Cases Back in Stock
  15. Floppy Emu Update: Favorites, Lisa Fixes, and More
  16. Windows 10 External Video Crashes Part 6 – Conclusion
  17. Sorry, Europe. International Shipping Woes
  18. Building a 12V DC MagSafe Charger
  19. New Features for ADB-USB Wombat
  20. Residential Solar Power and the Duck Curve
  21. Used LiFePO4 Battery Fiasco
  22. Used Lithium Battery Mysteries
  23. Batteries – Lead Acid or Lithium?
  24. Small-Scale Solar Experiments
  25. Constant Power Battery Discharge
  26. Shelter In Place

2019 37

  1. Backyard Metal Foundry Dreams
  2. BMOW Store Trouble
  3. Floppy Emu SoftSP Warning
  4. Windows 10 External Video Part 5 – Failure
  5. Wombat Released into the Wild
  6. Floppy Emu and Disk Daisy Chainer Restock
  7. Windows 10 Crashes Part 4 – 2K Video
  8. ADB-USB Wombat Manufacturing Trouble
  9. Windows 10 Crashes Part 3 – New Clues
  10. Windows 10 Ongoing Crashes
  11. Introducing Noisy Disk
  12. USB Wombat Parts Shortage
  13. Intel Integrated Graphics Driver Crashes
  14. Mac ROM-inator II is Back!
  15. Seeking Daisy Chainer Early Adopters
  16. Shiny New Computer Setup
  17. Explaining 4K 60Hz Video Through USB-C Hub
  18. Floppy Emu May Feature Update
  19. More AVR ICSP Footprints
  20. Take a Tour of BMOW Labs
  21. Alternative AVR Programming Header Ideas
  22. Daisy Chainer Testing
  23. Floppy Emu Firmware Update: Smartport Unit 2 Mode
  24. Floppy Emu Chameleon Firmware
  25. Daisy Chainer Update
  26. PCB Autorouting
  27. Simulating Disk Sounds
  28. Jumbo OLED Fun
  29. Daisy Chain Design Vote
  30. Daisy Chain Adapter Progress
  31. Circuit Fixes and Pulldown Problems
  32. Introducing the Floppy Emu Model C
  33. Part Selection and Schmitt Trigger Oscillator
  34. Daisy Chain Daydreams
  35. The End of the ROM-inator
  36. Yellowstone Goes Open Source
  37. Floppy Emu Adds .WOZ Support

2018 43

  1. ADB-USB Wombat Converter Back in Stock
  2. The Demon Razor that Wouldn’t Turn Off
  3. ProDOS Software Collection for Floppy Emu
  4. Get 10 Give 10 – Floppy Emu and Samaritan House
  5. ADB-USB Wombat Firmware Update
  6. Apple IIc Drive Switcher Back in Stock
  7. Halloween LED Matrix and PSU Death
  8. Cortex M4 Interrupt Speed Test
  9. Spot The Design Error
  10. Atmel ICE Wiring Horror
  11. Where Did All The Watts Go?
  12. Limiting SD Card Inrush Current
  13. LED PWM Without Resistors
  14. Raspberry Pi GPIO Programming in C
  15. 64 x 32 LED Matrix Programming
  16. Apple IIc Drive Switcher Version 2
  17. Crazy Fast PCB Manufacturing
  18. 10000 More DB-19 Connectors
  19. Apple IIc Internal/External Drive Switcher
  20. International Shipping Struggles
  21. Star Ring Version 2
  22. More on Fast Interrupt Handling with Cortex M4
  23. Star Ring: Abusing the PCB Fab
  24. Thoughts on Low Latency Interrupt Handling
  25. Atmel-ICE + Floppy Emu. The Taste of Sadness
  26. Thoughts on Floppy Emu Redesign
  27. Garbage In, Garbage Out
  28. Floppy Emu OLED Prototype
  29. Floppy Emu Display Experiments
  30. More Yellowstone Trouble
  31. Quest for a Decent LCD
  32. Yellowstone Arrgh
  33. Apple II Card Electrical Woes
  34. Mac ROM-inator II Sale!
  35. Mac ROM-inator Kit Back in Stock
  36. Yellowstone Bugs
  37. Floppy Emu Back in Stock
  38. Yellowstone: Cloning the Apple II Liron
  39. No Device Connected
  40. Quest For a Simple JTAG SVF Player
  41. What’s on the BMOW Bookshelf
  42. Yellowstone JTAG Debugging
  43. Meltdown and Spectre Vulnerabilities Explained

2017 53

  1. FPGA-Based Disk Controller for Apple II
  2. Weather Logger with Losant and Amazon Alexa
  3. Zeroplus LAP-C 322000 Logic Analyzer Review
  4. Floppy Emu and the Apple Pippin
  5. Custom Key Mappings for ADB-USB Wombat
  6. Accepting Bitcoin for BMOW Hardware
  7. Unidisk Firmware Update for Floppy Emu
  8. Unidisk 3.5 Daisy Chain, Sad Trombone
  9. Liron Support for Floppy Emu
  10. Pogo Pin Test Board for ADB-USB Wombat
  11. Custom Mini Case for Macintosh LC, P475, Q605
  12. ESP8266, Freeboard.io, Blynk, and IoT
  13. Multi-Button Mouse Support
  14. Future Hardware with Animal Names
  15. USB Wombat: What’s in a Name?
  16. Retro USB Improvements
  17. Build an Electric Scribble Machine
  18. Retro USB 1.1 Fail
  19. Floppy Emu Back in Stock
  20. Retro USB Firmware Update 0.1.8
  21. USB Voltage Sag
  22. Retro USB Firmware Update v0.1.5
  23. How to Clean a PCB
  24. MEGA, and the Future of ROM-inator II
  25. The Emerging Retrocomputer Industry
  26. Bay Area Maker Faire Meetup
  27. Retro USB – On Sale Now
  28. First Hardware
  29. PIC32MX Mini-Review
  30. Electronic Junk Mail Teardown
  31. Retro USB in Reverse
  32. The Programming Board
  33. Reflow Soldering Re-re-re-revisited
  34. Managing Multiple Power Supplies
  35. RetroUSB Happy Progress
  36. Retro USB – So Close, So Far
  37. USB-to-ADB is not Dead
  38. Snow White Case for Floppy Emu
  39. Floppy Emu WCC Faire Anniversary Sale – Save 10%
  40. Reflow Soldering with Hot Plate and Stencil
  41. Bootstrapping Apple //c with Floppy Emu
  42. Reflow Soldering Still Doesn’t #*&@ Work
  43. BMOW on https
  44. Hot Plate + Aluminum Pie Pan = No Joy
  45. Hot Plate Reflow Soldering: Round 1
  46. Case Packing Time Lapse Video
  47. Reflow Soldering Fail
  48. Hobby Business Time-Lapse Video
  49. Now Available – New Enclosure Styles
  50. Snow White Case Experiments
  51. New Firmware for Floppy Emu
  52. Floppy Emu on the Apple III
  53. Falling into an Email Blacklist with DreamHost

2016 47

  1. Laser-Cut Case Experiments
  2. 3D Printed Floppy Emu Case Experiment
  3. Fruit + Electronics = Piano
  4. The Vintage Computer Festival is Almost Here!
  5. ROM Disk Creation with ROM-inator II
  6. Battery-Powered Apple IIc, Part 2
  7. ROM Hacking Tutorial with ROM-inator II
  8. See BMOW at VCF West, August 6-7
  9. SIMM Programmer for ROM-inator II
  10. Battery-Powered Apple IIc?
  11. DB-19: Resurrecting an Obsolete Connector
  12. Dirty PCBs Review
  13. Discovery Day!
  14. AV2HDMI Video Adapter for Apple II
  15. The Amiga Years
  16. Introducing the Mac ROM-inator II
  17. Lower International Shipping Costs!
  18. FC8 – Faster 68K Decompression
  19. Optimizing Assembly (Fast 68K Decompression)
  20. Capacitor Replacement in a Vintage Power Supply
  21. Identify the Mystery Components
  22. More USB-to-ADB Planning
  23. Too Many ARMs!
  24. Macintosh System Boot Disks
  25. The End of Things
  26. USB to ADB – Multitasking Two Interfaces
  27. Crikey! USPS International Shipping Costs
  28. USB to ADB Progress – Good News and Bad News
  29. Understanding the ADB Service Request Signal
  30. Apple ADB Traffic Sniffing
  31. Floppy Emu Firmware Update: Mac HD Menu
  32. USB to ADB Napkin Design
  33. DB-19 Group Buy
  34. USB to ADB Keyboard/Mouse Adapter
  35. Floppy Emu Firmware Update: Disk Automount
  36. New Project Ideas
  37. Designing an Electric Scribbling Machine
  38. New Demo Video
  39. DB-19 Substitute, Take Two
  40. A New BMOW Storefront!
  41. WordPress, https, and Canonical URLs
  42. Apple IIc+ is Weird
  43. Kit Biz Profit and Loss
  44. SD Card SPI Initialization
  45. Standby Current of a USB Car Charger
  46. Clearance Sale: $79 Floppy Emu Model A
  47. Introducing Floppy Emu Model B

2015 71

  1. The Story of Tetris Max
  2. Backups: Head in the Sand
  3. Four Little Updates
  4. Oops! Laser Cut Material Thickness
  5. Plus Too Mac Replica, New Progress!
  6. A Handmade Executable File
  7. Assembly Language Windows Programming
  8. What Happens Before main()
  9. Dissecting Bloated Executables
  10. Reverse Engineering Hello World
  11. Teen Boy Arrested over Homemade Clock
  12. Building an SRAM Substitute
  13. Apple II Copy Protection
  14. GS/OS 6.0.2 for Floppy Emu
  15. Nibbler PCB Build
  16. New Product: Universal Adapter Extension Cable
  17. Web Hack Analysis, Part 3
  18. Web Hack Analysis, Part 2
  19. Smartport Firmware Update
  20. Web Site Hacked
  21. Signed By Woz
  22. Floppy Emu – Apple II Demo Video
  23. 2 GB Smartport Hard Drive for Apple IIGS
  24. Smartport Firmware Release
  25. Apple II Hard Disk Emulation
  26. Smartport Hard Drives for Apple II
  27. Apple IIc ROM Upgrade
  28. Apple II Firmware and Mods
  29. Missing Pull-up, Sad Trombone
  30. 5.25 Inch Disk Write Support
  31. 5.25 Inch Disk Firmware
  32. Floppy Emu Has Cholera
  33. Mail to Japan Hurts my Head
  34. 5.25 Inch Disk Kickoff
  35. ROM 03 Revisited
  36. Circuit Protection: Economics and Electronics
  37. Changing the Macintosh Start-Up Sound
  38. Apple IIgs ROM 03 Headaches
  39. More Fun with Apple IIgs Disks
  40. Apple II 800K 3.5″ Disk Emulation
  41. New Product: Apple Disk Drive A/B Switch
  42. Apple II (Emulation) Forever
  43. Finding a DB-19, Angering the Internet
  44. Apple SmartPort Pin Directions
  45. Apple II Disk Emulation
  46. Floppy Emu “Universal” Firmware Update
  47. Lisa Native Floppy Emulation
  48. Anatomy of a Product Failure
  49. Lisa Floppy Emu, Looking Good
  50. ROM-inator Back in Stock
  51. Floppy Emu AVRGCC Mystery Behavior
  52. Lisa Emu, Day 3
  53. Lassoing the Lisa
  54. Apple Lisa Floppy Emulation
  55. The Sonic Bow Tie
  56. 2 GB Disk Images with Floppy Emu
  57. ROM-inator Disk Setup Tutorial
  58. DB-19 Madness
  59. Macintosh Disk Daisy Chaining
  60. Hacking the Happy Mac
  61. Introducing the Mac ROM-inator
  62. A Good Idea That Wasn’t
  63. Bagging the DB-19
  64. Designing a DB-19 Substitute
  65. Floppy Emu – Back in Stock
  66. In Search of the Elusive DB19
  67. Sorry Pakistan (Why PayPal Stinks)
  68. Board Assembly Headaches
  69. Make Your Own Katy
  70. 68 Katy PCB Style
  71. Saleae Pro 8 Logic Analyzer Review

2014 52

  1. 68 Katy PCB, Dead on Arrival
  2. Rewritable ROM Disk for Mac Plus
  3. Emu Firmware 0.7: Performance Improvements
  4. Eagle vs. KiCad Revisited
  5. Emu Firmware 0.6: Formatting the HD20
  6. Emu Firmware 0.5: Floppy and HD20 Combined!
  7. HD20 Firmware 0.4: Write Support!
  8. HD20 Firmware 0.3: Fixes for 020 and 030 Macs
  9. 68 Katy Schematics and Parts List
  10. Floppy Emu, $10 Off This Week
  11. HD20 Firmware 0.2: Fewer Bugs, More Emus
  12. HD20 Firmware 0.1
  13. Reverse Engineering the HD20
  14. 68 Katy – 68000 Linux on a Solderless Breadboard
  15. Floppy Emu, Year 1
  16. Banging my Head Against the Wall
  17. Inching Forward
  18. Baby Steps with uClinux
  19. Building uClinux for a 68000 Target
  20. Breadboarding the 68K
  21. Reset Debouncing Gives Me Ulcers
  22. Floppy Emu Cases are Here!
  23. Overheating a Voltage Regulator
  24. 68K Free Run
  25. Designing a 68K Single Board Computer
  26. More Thoughts on Homebrew CPU Linux
  27. Acrylic, Wood, Hardboard, Oh My!
  28. Porting Linux to a Homemade CPU
  29. Designing a Laser-Cut Enclosure
  30. Raspberry Pi 3D Performance Demo
  31. BadUSB and the Hidden Microcontroller
  32. LEGO Case for Floppy Emu
  33. I, For One, Welcome Our New Raspberry Pi Overlords
  34. Floppy Emu “Scratch and Dent” Sale
  35. Business License Hell
  36. Fresh from the Factory
  37. Floppy Emu Backlight
  38. Troubleshooting Damaged Chips
  39. How to Manufacture a Widget
  40. Taking Care of Business
  41. Outsourced PCB Assembly and Testing
  42. Moar Floppy Emu!
  43. Supply Chain Snafu
  44. BMOW on RetroMacCast Show
  45. Emulating the Apple HD20
  46. Drag Soldering for Surface Mount Chips
  47. Board Revision 1.2
  48. International Shipping Meltdown
  49. Making a Difference
  50. Building the Blinky POV
  51. LCD Contrast Adjustment in Firmware
  52. Selling the Floppy Emu

2013 32

  1. Fixing Electronics with a Wooden Stick
  2. Mastermind Game Rules, and Nibbler Near-Death Experience
  3. Macintosh DiskCopy 4.2 Floppy Image Converter
  4. Floppy Emu Back in Stock
  5. No-Connector AVR Programming
  6. Floppy Emu – Ready For Sale
  7. International Shipping Hurts!
  8. Rigol DS1074Z Oscilloscope Review
  9. Manufacturing is Hard
  10. New Floppy Emu Boards and Supply Noise
  11. What Is The Bus Pirate?
  12. Getting Ready to Sell
  13. 1.4 MB High Density Floppy Emulation
  14. Fixing 30 Year Old Apple ROM Bugs
  15. Nibbler Demos!
  16. Entry-Level Oscilloscopes
  17. Invalid Logic Levels Explained
  18. Sneaky Combinatorial Feedback Bugs
  19. De-Glitching RAM Writes
  20. Homemade CPU First Boot
  21. Wire Wrapping the Nibbler CPU
  22. Son of 3D Graphics Thingy – A Homebrew Graphics Processor
  23. Nibbler Refinements
  24. Inside Vintage Electronic Toys – How Speak & Spell Works
  25. Guess the Number
  26. Nibbler Software Tools
  27. Programming the 4-Bit CPU
  28. Custom 4-Bit CPU Schematic and Control
  29. Hello Nibbler!
  30. Backwoods Logger Battery Life
  31. 400K Floppy Support
  32. Raspberry Pi

2012 12

  1. Floppy Emu Disk Menu
  2. Plus Too Files
  3. Tranz 330 Files
  4. A New Kind of Video Game Console
  5. Finally!
  6. In-System CPLD Programming Using XSVF Files
  7. Procrastinating the Future
  8. Floppy Emu, Large and In Charge
  9. Mouse Freeze Debugging
  10. Plus Too Interrupt Bug
  11. Ready to Assemble
  12. Parts Order By Mail

2011 73

  1. Floppy Emu Board Layout
  2. Three Crazy Ideas
  3. Floppy Write Emulation, Continued
  4. Floppy vs SD Card Write Speeds
  5. SD Write Speed Anomolies
  6. Violating Setup Times With Floppy Writes
  7. Implementing Floppy Emu Writes
  8. Mixing AVRs, Xilinx CPLDs, and JTAG
  9. Backwoods Logger, Available Now
  10. Macintosh Floppy Emu Video
  11. Macintosh Floppy Emu
  12. Extreme Product Testing
  13. Soldering Self-Confidence
  14. FCC Testing For Open Hardware
  15. Classic Mac Floppy Emulator Boot-Up
  16. Macintosh Floppy Drive Emulator Update
  17. Cortex M3 For Dummies – STM32 Discovery Board
  18. Blsync
  19. The Quest For A Simple Level Converter
  20. Mac Floppy Emulator Revisited
  21. Halloween LED Display Demo
  22. Backwoods Logger – Open Source and On Sale
  23. A Working Hardware Replica of the Mac Plus
  24. Plus Too – Hello World!
  25. Newark/Farnell Product Review
  26. Happy Mac
  27. Crazy Disk Encoding Schemes
  28. Building a Halloween LED Display
  29. Backcountry Logger Mini Custom Build
  30. Mac Floppy Disk Hardware
  31. Too Many Macs!
  32. Mac Toolbox Mysteries
  33. Question Mark Disk
  34. Xilinx vs. Altera Tools For Hobbyists
  35. Sad Mac
  36. Hardware Simplification
  37. Understanding Verilog Warnings
  38. Emulation, or Replication?
  39. Frame Buffer Test
  40. An SD-card Floppy Emulator for Classic Compact Macs
  41. Too Many Pins!
  42. Plus Too Keyboard and Mouse
  43. Plus Too Video and Audio
  44. 68000 Interleaved Memory Controller Design
  45. Plus Too
  46. Building a Classic Mac Hardware Clone
  47. Backcountry Logger Free PCBs
  48. Logger Mini on the John Muir Trail
  49. Logger Mini Refinements
  50. Backcountry Logger at Mt. Langley
  51. I am the Best Solderer in the World
  52. Goodies in the Mail
  53. Backcountry Business
  54. Tiny CPU Update
  55. Backcountry Logger Bill of Materials
  56. JTAG, EXTEST, and hair loss
  57. Soldering, with Profanity
  58. Tiny CPU Boards
  59. Backcountry Logger v1 Demo
  60. Backcountry Logger v1 PCB
  61. Shrinking the Backcountry Logger
  62. Low-Power LCD Smackdown
  63. Off To The Board House
  64. Tiny CPU Board Design
  65. Tiny CPU Rebirth?
  66. Living on the Edge
  67. Micropower Data Collection
  68. Pressure and Temperature Demo
  69. Hiking Data Analyzer
  70. Mapping the Tranz 330
  71. Mozart’s Credit Card
  72. Tranz 330 Computer Progress
  73. Z-80 Based Credit Card Terminal

2010 38

  1. Tiny CPU Instruction Set
  2. Pin Constraints
  3. Tiny Device
  4. Bank Switching
  5. 2D Graphics Thingy?
  6. Power Research
  7. CPU Angst
  8. Board Test Success!
  9. Got Board
  10. Bits of Progress
  11. Maker Faire 2010
  12. Small ROM
  13. Cheetos Guitar Amp
  14. Circuit Board Test
  15. Eagle vs. KiCad
  16. Computer History Museum Visit
  17. Experimental Hardware
  18. Variable Size Instructions
  19. Tiny CPU Architecture
  20. Tiny Asm
  21. Fixed Size Instructions
  22. Tiny CPU
  23. Back-Annotation
  24. Success?
  25. Synthesis Puzzles
  26. 128 Is Not Enough
  27. 8-Bit CPU Comparison
  28. T-Shirts
  29. Feeds
  30. Birth of a CPU
  31. Separated at Birth
  32. Verilog Examples Synthesized
  33. Verilog Headaches
  34. Cramming Everything In
  35. A CPU in a CPLD
  36. RC Servo Signal Decoder, Part 2
  37. RC Servo Signal Decoder for Camera Shutter Switch
  38. Fail

2009 49

  1. Sdram
  2. Small Progress
  3. Xilinx Memory Controller
  4. More on Memory
  5. FPGA Pong
  6. Memory Bandwidth
  7. FPGAngst
  8. Goodbye BMOW, and a Contest
  9. Uzebox, Take 2
  10. Care Package
  11. FillRect
  12. Aftermath
  13. BMOW Project Summary
  14. Faire Preparations
  15. More Uzebox
  16. Uzebox
  17. BMOW Shirts
  18. Software-Generated Video
  19. More Swag
  20. FPGA Research
  21. 3D Breakdown
  22. Swag
  23. BMOW Road Trip
  24. Construction Notes
  25. 3D Graphics Thingy
  26. Done
  27. Maker Faire
  28. Board Layout
  29. Date and Time
  30. Music Visualizer
  31. Spit and Polish
  32. Phantom Reads
  33. Boot Menu 1.0
  34. Memory Map
  35. Final Touches
  36. Death of a Dremel
  37. Finishing the Case
  38. Building the Case
  39. Music Demo
  40. Wire-Wrap Photos
  41. Fun With Dremel
  42. Arduino Repair
  43. Audio Amplifiers
  44. Custom PCBs
  45. Mixing and Volume
  46. Progress on Audio
  47. Audio Plans
  48. Fun With Fonts
  49. Fudging It

2008 64

  1. Back from the Dead
  2. Microsoft BASIC
  3. Happy Birthday BMOW!
  4. Basic
  5. Microchess Video Support
  6. Simulator Download
  7. Microchess
  8. Everything But The Kitchen VSYNC
  9. Debugging
  10. Odd Problems
  11. Boot Logo Needed!
  12. Putting It All Together
  13. Boot Loader
  14. Mixed Mode Video
  15. 25.175 MHz
  16. Text Generation
  17. Video Demo
  18. Video Bringup: Part 2
  19. Video Bringup: Part 1
  20. Loads o’ Random Stuff
  21. Wire Wrapping Pain
  22. Video Update
  23. Video System Design
  24. Current Source Confusion
  25. Decisions, Decisions
  26. Apple II Machine Language Monitor
  27. Video Palette Setup
  28. Notes on Video
  29. Video Tests
  30. Multitasking Success
  31. Robo-Flower
  32. User Mode Programs
  33. Clocks and Interrupts
  34. Small C
  35. Keyboard Kaos
  36. Microcode Cleanup
  37. Keyboardin’ Part 3
  38. New Instruction Set?
  39. USB Action
  40. Validation Test
  41. RAM Test
  42. More Hardware Woes
  43. Hardware Glitches
  44. BMOW Is Alive!
  45. First Bootup!
  46. Almost There
  47. Straight Line Code
  48. Funny Fanout Flaws
  49. Bit by Bit
  50. Slow and Slower
  51. Construction
  52. Peripherals Galore
  53. Keyboarding
  54. Slow Progress
  55. Hello World, Take 2
  56. BMOW Simulator
  57. Schematics!
  58. Initial Schematics Complete
  59. More Timing Analysis
  60. Logic Analyzer/Oscilloscope
  61. Piles of Hardware
  62. Digital Memories
  63. Das ist kein 6502
  64. 7 Segment LED

2007 18

  1. Universal Programmer
  2. Schematics
  3. Final Design Tweaks?
  4. Protoboardin’
  5. Max Clock Speed
  6. Microcode 1.0 Complete
  7. ADC $NNNN,X
  8. Optimization, or Distraction?
  9. Interrupts and Condition Codes
  10. Parts List
  11. Multitasking
  12. Random Hardware Musings
  13. First Hardware
  14. Design Progress
  15. First Simulation
  16. 6502 Inspiration
  17. Component Details
  18. The Adventure Begins