Category Archives: Miscellany

All sorts of stuff, ranging from my insane rants on the proper indenting of stuff to

Davids bile giveaway - Subscription? No, thanks.

Warning: NSFW language. So, Autodesk bought Eagle. This in and of itself would not necessarily be bad news - Eagle has been in need of some improvements for some time, and occasionally, when a bigger company assimilates a smaller company … Continue reading

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GPIO abuse - sourcing and measuring at the same time

The GPIO (General Purpose Input Output) pins are the pins of a microcontroller (or other device) that can connect the device to the rest of the world, without having a particular dedicated function. In contrast to pins dedicated to a … Continue reading

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Overdetermined system of linear equations

Introduction This text is a quick post that should give a quick explanation on (overdetermined) systems of linear equations, particularly their matrix form. It is for an upcoming article that deals quite a lot with these systems. Warning: Please note … Continue reading

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Repair/teardown - FlexiScale weight and calculator scale

I love going to the flea market - you find all sorts of fun stuff, bargains, trash and the occasional treasure that is being sold for next to nothing. This posts fits into the 'fun stuff' area - while at … Continue reading

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L110 METRA Blansko resistance decade box

Recently I got a L110 resistance decade box made by METRA Blansko, in former Czechoslovakia. Unfortunately something was rattling inside, so I had a quick look inside to remove the offending part - it was a small metal nut that … Continue reading

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HP 9000 Superdome utilities board ( A6475-60201 ; UGUY5-500 ) high res scan + guesswork

While on a buying frenzy at a local radioamatuer gettogether (Holice 2014) I saw an interesting looking PCB - apparently taken from some kind of older HP system, it had some very nice oscillators (500, 525, 100, 126 MHz), some … Continue reading

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Words of Embedded Design Wisdom

On this page I would like to publish some thoughts, sayings, rules of thumbs and wise things that I've come to observe during my few years of experience in the field of embedded systems design (and life in general). If … Continue reading

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Perspective - why does it take so long to compile FPGA projects

I recently started (again) to poke into FPGA devices. I remembered the most annoying thing about that development - it took so damn long to compile. But, when one takes into account how much the compiler (implementer, mapper, optimizer, whatever) … Continue reading

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Davids bile giveaway - Customer Area, Download Area, Bugger off Area

There are two basic ways you can give out information on your products: A comprehensive, simple, publicly available website, complete with all of the information the potential customer might need, support software (if applicable) freely available and easily available pricing … Continue reading

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Medical cable teardown

It's time for something exotic - while at the ham radio get together at Holice in 2014 (great event! Go there.) I bought a cable. Not just any old cable, a really, really well made cable that must have originally … Continue reading

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