I’ve been having another go at learning to wire up ethernet cable, specifically CAT6 cable. I’d previously tried CAT5 years ago and gave up as I was useless at it. Well turns out one of my line testers was knackered, so maybe I wasn’t so bad at it after all?! Also I found this video which shows how to unwind the conductors using the spare bit of sheath that you’ve just removed - it really does the job and saves your poor fingers:

Well I’ve converted my blog from wordpress to static, so no more mysql/php on this server, just markdown. I must get around to adding some new content, not actually posted for over 2 years! I’ve been doing lots of stuff with QEMU/KVM and even some ESXi (yuk!) and not using VirtualBox anymore. See my github for various libvirt scripts including VFIO with macOS/Win10, AutoYast with SUSE, kickstart for RedHat, preseed for Debian, virt-builder for Fedora, nested ESXi; and also how to configure your host.

I’ve been experimenting with using non-standard pins on an ATtiny85. Using XTAL1 and XTAL2 is simple if you run off the internal oscillator at 8MHz/3.3v but I want to also use the RESET pin as D5/A0. When you re-purpose the RESET pin, you lose the ability to program using an ISP, so we have to use a high voltage serial programmer (HVSP) which basically applies 12v to the RESET pin to set the fuses.

I decided I wanted to play with shift registers, and the classic circuit for that is running a bunch more LED’s from a chip than the chip has pins, so I decided on an 8 pin ATtiny85 running 16 LED’s as a Larson scanner (Knight Rider or Cylon effect). I started out on breadboard which was a terrible mistake as I ended up needing two breadboards to provide enough space to run 16 LED’s via resistors all with a shared GND.

I’m thinking of making a soldering microscope from a Raspberry Pi (either a spare B+ I have or maybe a ZeroW). I had looked at Andonstar ADMSM201 or Lapsun 14MP HDMI 180x scopes, but they each have their limitations – crap software, tiny focal length requiring additional lenses, £200+ pricetags….. So looking at it, I just have to buy a Pi camera module with a CS mount and a decent lens.