A slow journal of embedded systems, hardware, and low-level craft.
Long-form writing about microcontrollers, assembly language, driver development, and the strange specific corners of hardware that most publications no longer cover.
Issue 01 · April 2026
Welcome back. We are restarting a quiet publication that used to live at this address, and we think you will find the new work familiar in spirit.
The site you are reading was, for most of two decades, the home of a small and widely used piece of Windows software. The software is gone. The URL stays. We think there is still an audience for the kind of careful technical writing the old site tried to produce, and we think that audience has been badly served by the last few years of hardware publishing.
We are going to publish slowly. We are going to publish long. We are going to publish when it is finished. If that sounds like what you were hoping existed, pour some coffee. There is a primer below.
Three places to start reading.
If you are new to the journal, these three pieces give you the shape of the thing.
Why we still write about the parallel port.
It is not the hardware that is interesting. It is the specific thinking a direct I/O port still demands of the person using it.
The weight of a single instruction.
Assembly language has not gotten easier. The questions it lets you ask about a program have not gotten less useful.
Notes from a year of firmware postmortems.
Twelve bugs. Six fixed in software. Two fixed in hardware. The rest were fixed, quietly, in the documentation.
The datasheet said the pin could sink 25 mA. The application note, published by the same company six years later, said the pin could sink 25 mA only if. The bug was in the gap between the two documents.
What a datasheet will not tell you about the MCP23017
Read the full piece8051·Z80·68HC11·PIC16F84·AVR ATmega·STM32F4·RP2040·ESP32·MSP430·Parallax Propeller·Raspberry Pi·Arduino Due·BeagleBone·MAX7219·MCP23017·DS1307·Parallel Port·USB-to-Serial·JTAG·SWD·I²C·SPI·CAN·UART·RS-232·RS-485
From the workbench, in passing.
On noise, and the difficulty of finding where it is actually coming from.
A one-afternoon investigation that turned into a two-week chase through the analog front end of a temperature logger. Notes before the formal writeup lands.
The PIC programmer that keeps refusing to die, and what that actually means.
A decade-old programmer, still in daily use, still reliable. The lesson is not nostalgia. The lesson is what made the thing well-engineered in the first place.
What we actually mean when we say “production firmware.”
A short terminology note. The difference between firmware that works and firmware that ships matters more than most engineers quietly acknowledge.
From the journal.
Recent writing. Unscheduled. Arrives when it is finished.
- 10 Best Gravel Bikes Under $2000 (July 2026) Ranked & Reviewed
Finding the best gravel bikes under $2000 used to mean settling for heavy frames and budget components. That has changed dramatically. Modern sub-$2000 gravel rigs … Read more - 8 Best Cabinet Table Saws for Woodworking Shops (July 2026) Reviewed
When I first set up my woodworking shop, I underestimated how much a solid cabinet table saw would change everything. The right saw gives you … Read more - 8 Best Barrel Saunas for Outdoor Use (July 2026) Tested & Reviewed
I spent the last four months researching, assembling, and sweating through eight outdoor barrel saunas to figure out which ones are actually worth your money. … Read more - 8 Best Floor Jacks for Heavy Trucks (July 2026) Buying Guide
Working on heavy trucks is a completely different ballgame compared to standard passenger cars. I learned this the hard way when my buddy’s 2-ton jack … Read more - 10 Best Electric Log Splitters for Homeowners (July 2026)
Splitting firewood by hand is backbreaking work that nobody looks forward to after a long day. I spent the better part of three months testing … Read more - 10 Best Red Light Therapy Panels (July 2026) Expert Guide
Finding the best red light therapy panels for full body treatment can feel overwhelming when you are staring at dozens of models with confusing spec … Read more - 12 Best Walk Behind Mowers for Small Lawns (July 2026) Tested & Reviewed
Finding the best walk behind mowers for small lawns comes down to three things: your yard size, your storage space, and how much maintenance you … Read more - 10 Best Hybrid Water Heaters for Energy Savings (July 2026) Reviews
Switching to one of the best hybrid water heaters for energy savings could cut your annual water heating costs by up to 70 percent. I … Read more - 10 Best Engine Hoists for Home Mechanics (July 2026) Buying Guide
When you are tackling an engine swap in your home garage, having the right lifting equipment makes the difference between a smooth project and a … Read more - 8 Best Rotary Hammers for Concrete Drilling (July 2026) Reviewed
Drilling into concrete with a standard drill is an exercise in frustration. I learned that lesson the hard way when I spent 45 minutes trying … Read more - 8 Best Brush Cutters for Overgrown Fields (July 2026)
Clearing overgrown fields is tough, frustrating work when you have the wrong tool. A standard lawn mower bogs down in thigh-high weeds, and a basic … Read more - 8 Best Zero Gravity Massage Chairs for Back Pain (July 2026)
Back pain does not care about your schedule. It shows up after a long day at the desk, after a workout, or sometimes for no … Read more - 12 Best Wood Chippers for Homeowners (July 2026) Reviews & Guide
Yard cleanup eats up weekends faster than almost anything else. Every fall, branches pile up, storm debris scatters across the lawn, and pruning leftovers turn … Read more - 10 Best Evaporative Coolers for Garages (July 2026)
Working in a garage during summer can feel like standing inside a convection oven. Temperatures in an uninsulated garage regularly climb 20 to 30 degrees … Read more - 8 Best Carpet Extractors for Pet Owners (July 2026) Tested and Reviewed
If you share your home with pets, you already know that accidents happen. Whether it is a puppy learning house training, a senior cat with … Read more
The catalog.
Four subjects. Every piece on the site lives under one of them.
This domain was first registered in January 2003 as the home of inpout32.dll, a Windows DLL and kernel-mode driver that gave user-level programs direct access to hardware ports on the NT line of Windows. It was written at the moment Microsoft started locking down ring-zero access, and hobbyists still needed a way to talk to the parallel port.
The software was hosted here for the better part of two decades. It was forked many times, academic papers cited it, university coursework linked to it, and every hobbyist project that needed to toggle a pin from user space eventually found its way to the original download page. It quietly became the de facto standard for hardware port access on Windows in an era that no longer exists.
The original site eventually lapsed. The domain became available.
We took the name because the work that happened here mattered, and because the URL had been pointing at a particular kind of technical writing for more than twenty years. Plain, accurate, and useful to the person on the other end of the screen. We intend to keep it pointing in the same direction.
About this journal
Written by a small group who read datasheets for fun and think the best technical writing has been getting rarer, not better. New dispatches arrive when they are finished. The archive grows as it grows.