The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning

Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.

Category: Oddities

Who’d’a thunk it?

  • The Embedded PC’s ISA Bus: Firmware, Gadgets, and Practical Tricks — Unleashed

    ISA Bus Book - Front Cover

    A long time ago, in a universe far away, I wrote a book that (barely) catapulted me into the ranks of the thousandaires. Time passes, companies get sold / fail / merge / get bought, and eventually the final owners decided to remainder the book; the last royalty check I recall was for $2.88.

    Anyhow, now that it’s discontinued and just as dead as the ISA bus, I own the copyright again and can do this:

    The ZIP files are disguised as ODT files so WordPress will handle them: rename to get rid of the ODT extension, unzip, and you’re good to go.

    The big ZIP has the original pages laid out for printing, crop marks and all, so this is not as wonderful a deal as it might first appear. Update: A kind reader (you know who you are: thank you!) applied suitable magick to produce the “reformatted” PDF for easier reading & printing.

    The little ZIP has the files from the diskette, which was garbled right from the start. I think all the cartons passed over a conveyor with a powerful magnetic latch.

    Note, however, that I do retain the copyright, so if you (intend to) make money from them, be sure to tell me how that works for you.

    Words cannot begin to describe how ugly that front cover really is, but Steve’s encomium still makes me smile.

    The text and layout is firmly locked inside Adobe Framemaker files, where it may sleep soundly forever. The only way I can imagine to get it back into editable form would be to install Windows 98 in a VM, install Framemaker, load up the original files, and export them into some non-proprietary format. Yeah, like that would work, even if I had the motivation.

    If you prefer a dead-tree version, they’re dirt cheap from the usual used-book sources. Search for ISBN 1-57398-017-X (yes, X) and you’ll get pretty close.

    Or, seeing as how I just touched the carton of books I’ve been toting all these years, send me $25 (I’m easy to find; if all else fails, look up my amateur callsign in the FCC database) and get an autographed copy direct from the source. Who knows? It might be worth something some day…

    The back cover has some useful info:

    ISA Bus Book - Back Cover

  • Corelle Fragments

    I fumble-fingered a plate, it fell between my tummy and the counter, and hit the floor edge-on. There’s a lot of energy stored in that stretched-glass ceramic layer! [Update: The glass is under compression.]

    Shattered Corelle plate on floor
    Shattered Corelle plate on floor

    The fragments tend to be slivers rather than chunks, all with better-than-razor-sharp edges:

    Corelle slivers
    Corelle slivers

    A bit more detail on Corelle in that post…

  • Triple Maple Spinner

    Back when I was growing up, I knew maple seeds came in pairs and finding a triple-seed cluster was a wonderful stroke of good fortune. Our young lady grew up knowing that same thing, of course.

    Tri-wing maple seed
    Tri-wing maple seed

    Turns out the maple tree near the end of the driveway produces triple-wing seed clusters on a regular basis; we find several each year.

    It hasn’t reduced the magic of maple spinners, but we no longer line them up along the fireplace…

  • Antenna Decoration

    Dragonfly on antenna
    Dragonfly on antenna

    This dragonfly decided that the tip of the 2 m / 70 cm antenna on Mary’s bike was the best  place around to survey the area; it periodically zipped off to snag a meal, then returned to stand watch again.

    Those wraparound compound eyes don’t miss much!

    Dragonfly on antenna - detail
    Dragonfly on antenna – detail

    A few weeks ago, a much larger dragonfly bounced off my helmet and snagged itself in the delay line coil near the middle of the antenna: the dragonfly’s head slid 1/4 turn around the coil and latched firmly in place. Amid much buzzing of wings and thrashing of legs, I managed to unscrew the poor critter, whereupon it flew off undamaged.

  • High Security Access Panel

    I was really, really tempted to pocket a key, just in case it might come in handy elsewhere… but I’d have to stand on the toilet and that’s just gross.

    Locked access panel - with keys
    Locked access panel – with keys

    Back in the day, I was third-chair lockpick in my college dorm and those piddly little locks weren’t all that difficult even then.

  • Opossum in the Attic!

    Quite some years ago, before I stapled a wad of steel wool in the hole gnawed in the corner of the garage door, the scrabble of little feet in the attic meant it was time to re-bait the mouse traps. Then, one night, we heard the scrabble of big feet in the attic…

    This is the point where the horror film audience starts chanting “Don’t open the door! Don’t open the door!“, but, to our credit, we did not don our skimpiest underwear before venturing into the attic. We didn’t encounter any zombies, either, but we did find this chap:

    Opossum in attic
    Opossum in attic

    This is about as far north as opossums get; their ears suffer frostbite over the winters and get all raggedy, hence the pink teddy bear aspect. These are not, however, cute and cuddly critters.

    The house has a full hip roof with a four-foot soffit over the patio, which must be the best place for a ‘possum to hang out:

    Opossum in attic soffit
    Opossum in attic soffit

    Some quick searches with the usual keywords suggested leaving the lights on and playing loud music, so we deployed several shoplights and a radio turned up all the way. It took two or three days, but eventually Mary spotted the critter on its way out of the garage… and now we don’t leave the garage door open any longer than needed.

    FWIW, the path from the garage to the attic requires climbing those shelves, scaling three feet of vertical plasterboard wall, then crawling through a (now securely closed) vent hatch.

  • Hot Melt Glue Burn

    I managed to slobber some fresh hot melt glue on my finger…

    Glue burn - after cooling
    Glue burn – after cooling

    It was whoop-dee-do brown carpentry glue from a gun that claims 350 °F output, so what looks like toasted flesh is actually the last remnants of the glue. The advice seems to converge around do not peel the glue (because you’ll rip the damaged skin and leave yourself with an infection) and keep the burn cool.

    After a few hours cuddling with an ice pack I figured I was probably going to live through this. The next morning the glue flaked off, leaving a mighty blister behind.

    Glue burn - blister
    Glue burn – blister

    Looks like something Piter de Vries might have enjoyed inflicting, had Frank Herbert only known about hot melt glue guns: “… there’s a sort of beauty in the pattern of pus-white blisters on naked skin, eh, Baron?”

    One should don all manner of Personal Protective Equipment before using a glue gun, but I bet you don’t, either.