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.
- 12 Best Dynamic Microphones for Live Vocals (May 2026)
Choosing the right microphone can make or break your live performance. After testing dozens of dynamic vocal mics over the past three months, our team … Read more - 10 Best Mini Air Compressors for Airbrushing (May 2026)
I spent three months testing mini air compressors on my workbench, painting everything from Warhammer miniatures to 3D-printed terrain pieces. After pushing ten different models … Read more - 8 Best Fire Extinguishers for Electronics Labs (May 2026) Expert Guide
Working with electronics carries an inherent risk that every lab owner must address: the possibility of electrical fires. According to NFPA data, electrical failures cause … Read more - 10 Best CNC Tool Holder Sets for Machinists (May 2026) Buying Guide
Every machinist has experienced that moment of frustration. You are halfway through a precision cut when chatter starts creeping in, your surface finish degrades, and … Read more - 10 Best Heat Shrink Tubing Kits (May 2026)
After three months of testing heat shrink tubing kits across automotive repairs, marine wiring projects, and electronics builds, I have learned what separates a frustrating … Read more - 6 Best Rain Gauges for Backyard Weather Stations (May 2026)
After spending three months testing rain gauges in my backyard weather station setup, I have learned that not all rainfall measurement tools are created equal. … Read more - 10 Best Console Tables for Home Studios (May 2026) Buying Guide
Setting up a home studio means making every square foot count. I learned this the hard way after placing my studio monitors on a folding … Read more - 10 Best Audio Snake Cables for Live Sound (May 2026) Expert Guide
After spending 8 years running sound for venues ranging from 200-capacity clubs to 2,000-seat theaters, I have learned that your audio snake cable can make … Read more - 8 Best Soil Moisture Sensors for Smart Gardens (May 2026)
I killed three tomato plants last summer before I realized I was drowning them. The soil looked dry on top, but three inches down it … Read more - 6 Best Inverter Generators for Home Backup (May 2026)
I learned the hard way that not all generators are created equal when my old conventional unit fried my laptop during a power outage three … Read more - 10 Best Scroll Saws for Detailed Woodwork (May 2026)
When I first started making intricate wooden puzzles and fretwork pieces, I quickly realized that a jigsaw just wouldn’t cut it. After 15 years of … Read more - 10 Best Heat Press Machines for Maker Projects (May 2026)
Finding the best heat press machines for maker projects can feel overwhelming when you are staring at dozens of options online. I spent three months … Read more - 10 Best Mini Plasma Cutters for Garage Workshops (May 2026)
I spent three months testing mini plasma cutters in my garage workshop, cutting through everything from thin sheet metal to half-inch steel plate. What I … Read more - 12 Best Lab Power Supplies for Electronics Hobbyists (May 2026)
When I first started building circuits on my workbench five years ago, I fried more components than I care to admit. The problem was not … Read more - 7 Best Pico Projectors for Engineering Demos (May 2026)
Walking into a client meeting with a 50-pound projector case gets old fast. I have been there, lugging bulky equipment through airports and up stairs … 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.