It's funny how bad humans are (or at least I am) with large numbers of items. I might have said 200-300 capacitors in this small bag, but apparently there are 1000 of them in there. 😁

I think I can consider this PCB about as full as it gets. ;-) Looking at the "xray" of both copper layers it starts to get a bit tight - but that is my own fault since I use a old-school fat 12.5/12.5 here for some retro feeling.

My wife will kill me now. I just paid $1300 for a KIM-1 - but in my defence I wanted to get one for many years now. It was my first computer back in 1977/1978, so it holds a lot of nostalgia. I few years ago I got my 2'nd and 3'rd computers as well. An AIM-65 and an Apple ][

My KIM-1 arrived and I fired it up. I need to change a 2102 RAM chip and the displays. Two of them are bumpy and one has a dead segment. I wonder if I can hit them with hot air and pull the plastic from the legs and then desolder leg-by-leg as you do with an IC after snipping it?

I'm glad that I remembered that there is a math function on the scope so I can measure across a resistor to determine the current through it without desolder it. 82ohm with 800mV across is 10mA. No wonder the old style MAN72 displays are dim. Max is 30mA continuous, 200 peak.

I'm really happy about my small haul of Lindström cutters I got today. They're like $100 each when new, I got all of them for $25 used. The cutting edges are still nice and sharp with no blemishes. From what I understand these are miles ahead of Knipex quality-wise.

I've ordered a #SLogic16U3 (with the premium probes) from Sipeed, the shipping notice says 18 December as the expected delivery data. Oh! - the pain and suffering of having to wait another 5 weeks. But I'm happy to get it before the holidays. ^__^

Decoding async counters is always risky. In sim this design works without glitches even when stepping through the propagation of the signals. The real test is to build it IRL and see. But for real you need to make 1000 of them and have it always work perfectly.

Is it only me or has ChatGTP and Grok become totally useless lately? I asked for an S/R latch IC that had non-inverting input unlike a 74LS74. And requests for simple bash or python codes often ends up with syntax errors and logical fails even if it says the code was "verified".

Nice! The #SLogic16U3 from Sipeed, ordered on the 8th, arrived in my mailbox today. With my wife away this weekend, I have plenty of time to run tests and real-world usage cases. ^__^

Why does my breadboarding look like crap compared to those I see on YouTube ;-) At least it works - feed it 1MHz and get a composite 312 line "PAL" signal out with an exact 192 line x 40us active area signal for gating the later pixel clock and serializer. #noDecouplingWednesday

All three are equivalent. The first two being the same is absolutely intuitive, but it took me a while to realize how and why the last one works too. I'll probably remember this for the rest of my life as a "one weird trick" that can come in handy sometimes.

I have mixed memories of how good those old round pre-made jumper wires for solderless breadboards performed compared to modern square "Dupont" ones. Are the round ones actually better, and should I bother to buy a batch?

At least it looks pretty ;-) I could definitely pay some cash to have this nicely printed and put in a frame to hang on my wall.

This contraption comes in handy sometimes when other combinatorial logic acts up. If you haven't seen it before, it can be hard to figure out what it actually does - it really looks like it does nothing except add a short delay to the signal.

This cool looking device is for sale in my local area for $50. My google-fu is not strong enough to find anything about it, but considering the 8 LEDs and the largish size I guess it's something more than just a keyboard. Maybe I should get it just to see what it really is....