Blondihacks

Ghosts of the past, I/O errors, and big dreams.   A while back I did a Part I on digging through the old pile of

So you wanna buy a drill press…   If you’re at all interested in machine tools, a drill press is a really great place to

So many old hacks. Where are they now?   Blondihacks has been running for seven years now, and it’s been quite a ride. I have many,

Sometimes, you just need a place to set down your adult beverage.   My recent metalworking posts have gone over well, so I thought I’d

Not everything you read on the internet is real.   I think the hacking community online has a bit of a File Drawer Problem. This is a

Or Possibly An Artisan Solar Bird Oven   Every so often I get the urge to make something ridiculous. During a conversation with a regionally

Readers send me stuff.   Here’s a first for Blondihacks- reader mail! I’ve been doing this blog for many years, and have received a lot

A new entry into the Apple II solid state scene.   The Apple II retrocomputing scene has some excellent solid state storage options already, including

But wait, there’s more.   Hey everyone! I wanted to say, “thank you” to all my Patreon patrons. You are the ones who make this blog

For once, wishing a computer was slower.   A little while ago, I went on a semi-epic (sempic?) quest to fix the beep in my

Digging up treasures in mom’s basement   Over the holidays, I took the rare opportunity to dig through the stockpile of childhood belongings in my

Fixing 30yo ROM bugs… for real this time.   You may recall way back when I started my Apple II ROM Tool project, that I had

Attempting to close the loop on my 30yo ROM hacking efforts.   Last time, we got the Apple II ROM Dumper to the point where it

A side quest to explore old code.   Something I’ve been wanting to do ever since acquiring my Apple IIc Plus at KansasFest is to dig into

Getting access to a better world.   I have a project coming up that needs a lot of I/O and USB support. I could do

Now with 100% more Twitter   Hey Blondihacks readers! It’s been a very busy summer here in Blondihacks labs. I wanted to drop everyone a quick

Wrapping up the prototype for retrogaming on the go.   A while back I started working on a gamepad for Apple II-series computers. It’s now

Stand back- I’m going to try SCIENCE!   My PrintrBot has been chugging merrily away for me, and while it works, the preparation of the

Delicious, delicious crow.   Yep, that’s right. Despite all my preaching in this blog about how 3D printers are overrated and not ready for primetime and

Taking classic gaming on the road.   Teddy Top has been proceeding nicely, and my IIc Plus is getting increasingly portable. However, there’s one key

Data on the go to go with my screen on the go.   With the basic Teddy Top now up and running with a nice

This idea may yet see the light of day.   A while back, I had this idea to create a thing that would turn an

How far we’ve come from where we were.   It’s an auspicious occasion here at Blondihacks. You see, my Philips Sonicare Elite toothbrush died. Why

Taking a basic case to school.   Sometimes the simplest hacks are the most satisfying. I recently gifted a snazzy new iPad case to my father. That meant

Making something that sucks.   After my poor result from attempting to 3D print the rather large Teddy Top prototype, I thought I’d give vacuum

Sometimes a magic bullet ricochets and kills you.   Ever since beginning the Teddy Top project, I’ve had it in my head that I wanted

Attempting to determine why it sucks so very much.   Like many hackers and tinkerers, home automation is a subject of irrational fascination for me.

A tale of fourteen fails.   Sometimes a project goes so smoothly from start to finish that you’re left feeling all warm and fuzzy, and

What’s new is old again.   Sometimes, an idea seems so great that you just can’t let it go, even though you should. Today’s hack

Upcycling my own crap for once.   This isn’t a hack per se… more like a hacklet. It’s a quickie, and thus is free for

We need eggs, but the chickens all died in 1992.   Last time, I gave my IIc Plus a little checkup, then proceeded to try booting

Playing doctor with an oldie-but-goodie.   As regular readers may recall, I recently attended KansasFest for the first time. In addition to being a big

A one-click build pipeline for rapid iteration on Apple ][ software.   In addition to meeting lots of amazing people, the recent KansasFest left me with a

Braving inhuman humidity for the love of 8 bits.   This year I got talked into attending KansasFest for the first time ever. To be

A quick tour of Blondihacks World Headquarters.   I’ve had a number of requests for a look at my workspace, so I figured I’d finally

Rescuing yet another almost-great product.   One of the running themes here at Blondihacks is rescuing products from the landfill when they “barely fail”. That

Pushing the boundaries to see what blows up.   I can’t ever leave things well enough alone, so while working on Veronica’s input system, I decided to

Hey loyal Blondihacks readers,   I wanted to take a moment to talk about the advertising content on this site. You may have noticed that

An arcade “cabinet” to hold my arcade controller.   A while back, I decided my life was missing a homemade arcade control panel. Well, it’s

A fun little afternoon project.   Recently, the fine folks over at Adafruit Industries asked me to build something with their parts and write about

This is what happens when there’s nothing on TV.   I’ve been listening to a really great podcast lately called No Quarter. It’s all about

Homebrew etching of double-sided PCBs.   Etching PCBs is a topic I’ve covered quite a bit already, here and especially here. You might think I’ve