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.
- 5 Best Sunrise Alarm Clocks for Heavy Sleepers (May 2026) Top Picks
If you have ever hit snooze so many times that you woke up in a panic, missed an important meeting, or felt completely exhausted despite … Read more - 10 Best Indoor Bike Trainers (May 2026) Expert Reviews & Buying Guide
I spent three months testing indoor bike trainers in my garage, and I learned something quickly. The difference between a good trainer and a bad … Read more - 8 Best Pizza Stones for Home Ovens (May 2026) Expert Reviews
Homemade pizza should be better than delivery. Yet most home ovens max out at 450 to 500 degrees Fahrenheit, leaving you with pale, soggy crusts … Read more - 13 Best White Noise Machines for Babies (May 2026) Expert Reviews
Getting a baby to sleep through the night is one of the biggest challenges new parents face. I remember those first few months when every … Read more - 10 Best Gravel Bikes for Long Rides (May 2026)
There’s something magical about loading up your bike with everything you need for a multi-day adventure and disappearing down a gravel road. I discovered this … Read more - 12 Best Mountain Bikes for Beginners (May 2026) Expert Reviews
Mountain biking is one of the most exciting outdoor activities you can pick up as a beginner, and choosing the right best mountain bikes for … Read more - 12 Best Cookware Sets for New Homeowners (May 2026)
Moving into your first home feels exciting and overwhelming all at once. I remember standing in my empty kitchen five years ago, realizing I needed … Read more - 10 Best Cold Plunge Tubs for Athletes (May 2026) Recovery Guide
After six months of testing cold plunge tubs in our home gym, I can tell you that not all ice baths are created equal. Professional … Read more - 10 Best Cargo E-Bikes for Family Errands (May 2026)
Swapping the family car for a cargo e-bike has become one of the smartest moves we have made as a household. Running errands with two … Read more - 10 Best Cast Iron Skillets for Outdoor Cooking (May 2026)
Cast iron cookware has been the outdoor cooking choice for generations, offering unmatched heat retention, durability, and versatility. Whether you’re cooking over a campfire, using … Read more - 10 Best Infrared Saunas for Home Use (May 2026) Buying Guide
I’ve spent the last three years testing home wellness equipment, and infrared saunas consistently rank as one of the most effective investments for health. After … Read more - 10 Best E-Bikes for Commuting (May 2026)
Switching to an electric bike for your daily commute can transform your entire morning routine. I spent three months testing commuter e-bikes on my 12-mile … Read more - 8 Best Jack Stands for Lifted Trucks (May 2026) Ultimate Guide
Working under a lifted truck feels completely different than working on a stock-height vehicle. You need more reach, more capacity, and above all, more confidence … Read more - 17 Best Automotive Creepers for Mechanics (May 2026)
I spent 15 years crawling on cold concrete garage floors before I discovered the value of a proper automotive creeper. That first weekend working under … Read more - 10 Best Mechanic’s Tool Sets for Home Garages (May 2026)
Building a quality tool collection for your home garage transforms frustrating automotive projects into satisfying DIY victories. After researching and comparing the top mechanic tool … 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.