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.
- 9 Best Life Jackets for Kayakers (June 2026) Top Picks
Every time I push off from a launch point, I do a quick mental checklist: paddle, PFD, whistle, bilge pump. That PFD is the one … Read more - 12 Best Cordless Wet Dry Vacuums for Garages (June 2026) Tested Guide
Garages punish vacuums. Sawdust, drywall chips, wood scraps, leaves, puddles from melting snow, and the occasional oil spot — no single household vacuum can handle … Read more - 10 Best Soundbars for Gaming Consoles (June 2026) Tested Picks
I’ll never forget the night I missed a crucial headshot in Warzone because my TV speaker turned footsteps into a mushy wall of noise. That … Read more - 15 Best Kayak Paddles for Touring (June 2026) Buying Guide
Touring kayaking demands gear that can handle hours on the water without turning your arms into lead weights. I learned this the hard way on … Read more - 12 Best Condenser Microphones for Vocals (June 2026) Reviews
Finding the right microphone for recording vocals can feel overwhelming with so many options on the market. Whether you are building a home studio from … Read more - 10 Best Wide-Angle Lenses for Landscape Photography (June 2026)
A wide-angle lens is one of the most important tools in a landscape photographer’s kit. I spent the last three months testing 10 of the … Read more - 8 Best Full-Frame Cameras for Portraits (June 2026) Expert Reviews
Finding the right full-frame camera for portrait photography can feel overwhelming when every manufacturer claims their model is the one you need. I have spent … Read more - 10 Best Rolling Tool Bags for Technicians (June 2026) Tested & Compared
Field technicians haul expensive, heavy gear to jobsites every single day. A standard backpack or tote leaves your shoulders burning before lunch, and a hardshell … Read more - 8 Best Hanging Toiletry Bags for Travel (June 2026)
Nothing derails a trip faster than digging through a cramped bathroom kit at 6 a.m., trying to find your contact solution while your shampoo leaks … Read more - 10 Best Weightlifting Belts for Squats (June 2026) Expert Reviews
I remember the first time I squatted 315 pounds without a belt. My lower back screamed for two days. That was the moment I started … Read more - 10 Best Cordless Blowers for Workshops (June 2026) Tested & Reviewed
Looking for the best cordless blowers for workshops? I have spent the last 90 days testing 10 popular cordless blowers in my own woodworking shop, … Read more - 8 Best Cordless Chainsaws for Firewood (June 2026)
Cutting firewood used to mean dealing with gas fumes, pull cords that would not cooperate on cold mornings, and carburetor tuning that ate up your … Read more - 10 Best Wireless Doorbell Cameras for Apartments (June 2026)
Finding the right doorbell camera when you rent an apartment comes with a unique set of challenges that most buying guides simply ignore. You cannot … Read more - 10 Best Fishing Kayaks for Lakes (June 2026) Expert Reviews
Finding the right fishing kayak for lakes is a different ballgame than picking one for rivers or coastal waters. Lake fishing demands stability for casting, … Read more - 7 Best Trolling Motors for Kayaks (June 2026) Tested & Reviewed
If you have spent any time on the water lately, you have probably noticed how many kayaks now look like miniature bass boats. Rod holders, … 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.