Loopholes or Equivalent

Hello, and welcome to the macro fat engineering podcast. We're your hosts, Parker, Dolman.

And Steven Craig,

this is episode 251 are nearing up the end of this year getting there. Do you think 2020 one's gonna be better than 2020?

I think it would have to be. Yes. Let's just put it this way. Yes. Like it would have to try really hard to be worse than 2021.

Yeah, I think of this knock on wood here. The 2021 like the world will have to end.

2020 20 has been rough, and it'll be nice to see it go. Yes.

So last week, we were talking about wiring harnesses. And I actually posted some of the images from the wiring harnesses I've been working on, and immediately got feedback in our Slack channel, which is awesome,

of course. But if you post anything engineers will tell you their opinion

on it. That's exactly. These are good, good things, because I wanted to make sure all the specifications that I can put on there are there. And so that when I send these out, I don't get any, you know, emails back saying, oh, I need X information. So Jason G in the Slack channel said, I need to add the wire jacket temperature rating, because I don't have that. I guess that's whatever temperature the the jacket gets soft that because I think I've seen it's like 85 C or 100 C or 125. C. C is in Celsius. For Americans.

What else would it be?

Cats cats. I got 125 degree cat rating.

Okay, wait, why your jacket temperature rating. And then the number of strands

is, or I liked how he put it, which was a wire stranded Ignis. Which actually is a real word. At least Google didn't complain about

it. So I think no, no, didn't you provide the part number of the wire that you wanted to use?

No, I did not. Which is what he suggests is to go find wire that you'd like, and just put that say that part number or equivalent?

God, okay, I thought you put the part number because if you put the part number, then you don't need to include this information. In fact, it gets confusing if you put this information and the part number.

Yes, I think I'm going to actually remove my wire specs besides like the 18 gauge, and what kind of type it is, and then just put a part number. That's what I want or equivalent, because I don't really care what brand it is.

Sure, yeah, I think that's one of the most powerful words in engineering drawings is or equivalent, because it just like absolves you from going and searching for other things. We used to actually have my first company, we were ISO 9001. And we had policies around the words or equivalent. And most of the time the policies were include that if you can, just because it ends up being a convenient loophole in in ISO 9001, especially on bill of materials, if you have a bill of materials. And you put like a very specific resistor, part number. If you're playing by the rules, you wrote that part number, that's the part number you said you were going to use. But if you put that part number or equivalent, then that just opens up the whole world with a bar. Yeah.

You know, this inductor at 100 megahertz frequency is like this 10 Ohm resistor. This is equivalent.

That's actually something I've had some experiences in the past that have been somewhat annoying, like when you send out drawings or bill of materials, and you put very specific part numbers on it. And then what you get back is clearly not what you got the or equivalent. Yeah, you got Yeah, they assumed that part of it. And that's a little annoying. Like, frankly, I It's my opinion that draw engineering drawings are biblical truth to the engineer. Like, if it's on there, it must be done. If it's not on there. Don't assume it.

Yeah, yep. I agree. I like that biblical truth.

It's straight up scripture.

Me If you if you vary from the engineering drawing you turn into sand. A pillar of salt. Yeah, that's right. It's a pillar of salt. That's what it is. I got my I got my mythologies messed up there. And then he also mentioned, Jason G mentioned his labeling requirements, which I don't think I need any labeling. Because then that labeling the wires, they're just it's just a generic harness. But then treatment to pig tail end. I guess this is if you want like the pig tail ends, like pre the jacket sliced, you know, so you can pull it off for stripping the wires. I just want plain cut.

What do you do you want to do you want the stranded wires tinned though. So like, that's also treatment to the you know, I

just want just to just cut right through bare wire. Yeah, cuz there's gonna be cut the length in the pinball machine. So each wire is actually going to be probably eventually trim to length and the machines. So I don't know, I guess you just call out just what what do you do bare end? No.

Just call it just call out a note and write what you want on the end. And then you know, that's actually okay, that brings up another thing. I feel like, there's like this classic way of doing engineering drawings where people think you have to use like, really specific words and verbs. Yeah, stuff like, and there's like, a very specific way to say everything. And it seems almost like super academic. And in reality, it's a drawing is literally a piece of paper that shows someone how you want something done. So you can you can just write things on it, you know, like put in your Notes section, I would like the ends of these wires to be cut flat or whatever. I don't know. Like, it doesn't have to be super specific words, as long as you get the point across.

Well, that's also my problem. It's hard to get the point across that in my brain.

Well, sure, but But what I'm saying is like, there may be like a very specific textbook way of saying how to do that. Or you can just write a sentence saying how to do that.

And then Rojas I guess I need just the department Ross on it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't have to worry about it. Because this stuff is probably only going to be sold in United States, but there's no reason it has to be leaded. And also, if I call out a wire, and I'm already calling out the part numbers I'm using, which are Rojas compliant, it doesn't really matter. But let's just, I guess, put it on there and just make sure that whoever's building it doesn't have lead on their hands. I guess.

If you don't put it on there, you're gonna get a cable that's just covered in lead and cadmium and mercury, and it's just super heavy. And it's like, I didn't put the note on there. They dipped it in lead.

Just came in lead packaging.

It's like, it's like a cable that weighs a few grams. And it's hitting like 10 pounds of lead box.

Yeah. So I got an update. I'm going to put a part number, probably like an alpha wire part number, which is what Jason suggested. And then I will put a a note for the pigtail and because I did do like a detailed it just shows that being cut. But yeah, I put a note there that just says hey, it just cut ends. And then I'll just slap a little Rojas on there should be good to go. Maybe next week, I'll have some quotes to share with people see how much these things actually cost? Cuz it's like how

much do you think they're gonna cost?

The components are like, really inexpensive. Like you're talking like 10 cents for the connector and like a penny for the the terminals. And then they're getting gotta get crimped. And I'm going to order enough, they're probably going to use an auto crimper for it. I've actually never quoted this stuff out before us. I have no idea. I want to get numbers back and be like, Stephen, are these good? I

had no idea. You know, like, I mean, with any of these things. You're right. Most of the raw materials are just pennies. So you know, almost all the cost is in labor and shipping.

It's in labor shipping in the copper, because these are like six feet long. Leads.

Okay, yeah. Well, I can tell you, I got quotes for I don't remember, I think it was 250 pieces of five different cable assemblies and the cable assemblies were much more complex than yours. And all five put together were less than $20 in quantity 250. So I have high hopes. So I would I would, you know, divide that by five and you're like four bucks, a cable assembly. Now, that's not state stateside, multiply that times for that year to add stateside.

Well I actually I have a couple of suppliers here in the States. And then I have a Taiwan factory or place that I'm going to quote through as well. So that's also, if people didn't catch that last couple of podcasts is the pennant tar project is completely not China. And so the harnesses I'd like to not make in China as well. So we'll see how far I can get. It's been an interesting, interesting project so far is basically like, actually having to care about where you're sourcing stuff from

the the cable quotes I got were Taiwan. Okay, yeah, you could sort of expect that to know, generally, that range, I've also gotten small ribbon cable assemblies in, like, 1000, quantity, maybe 2000 quantity, and they were like 19 cents apiece, or something like that, for a ribbon cable with two ends on it.

I've done the ribbon cables before, but never this. I mean, we're talking like 18 gauge, 10, conductor, Molex parts, different colors, all kinds of different color. Yeah, that's another thing is I want different colors for each

one. So it's actually crimped ends that have to be pushed inside of a connector that comes Yeah.

And the thing is, though, is I'm going to, I'm just going to get them done in bulk. And then it's gonna be on the user, whoever buys the board or whatever, to remove a 10 and put a blank a plug pin in, because our boards are polarized. And then because there are 10 pin connectors, with one pin removed, so you can key it, because you know, like eight of the same pin. It's like, how do you make sure you don't plug the wrong one to run one? Key it? But having 12? No, it'd be like, 15 different skews for cables for a board? I'm like, No, let's just build one that fits everything. And then you just pull the key out and then put a plug in it makes

it easier you relying on the user to be able to do that.

I mean, the user is a manufacturer. So I hope they can do that. Oh, well, I guess you're right. I know the end user is not the person buying pinball.

For some reason I was I was thinking it that way. I was like that or no, that's a good idea.

The end user is a manufacturer an OEM, right?

Somebody who's going to be, you know, knee deep and wiring harnesses already,

already. Yeah. And these are more of like the generic ones that you buy when you're first starting out. And then when you're done with your design, you take the harness out and measure the length and get them all cut to length from the get go. And then you can do all your plugs then. And again and built that way.

Yeah. And if you say you get a client that's big enough, you could always make them a custom cable through your people who Yep, that has everything cut to length and stripped or whatever. Exactly. But, you know, maybe if there's quantity like 500, then you would do that?

Yes, yes. Yes. Let's see idea. Very cool. So, Raspberry Pi, a boot two stories continued,

continued. Yeah, and still sort of in the same place, but a lot more pseudos and Nanos available, how

frustrated are you right now, you know, what's your level? Why?

Intrigued is probably a better word than frustrated. Because I was trying to do something on a system that I don't know much about. I was trying to do something that isn't necessarily supported. So I was being quite ridiculous on this. Regardless. So here's what here's what happened, I went through probably five different methods of trying to get ERP next installed on a Raspberry Pi. And all of them failed for one reason or another. I think I dumped maybe 15 or 20 hours into this. So I put some serious time into this, and actually had a buddy do it with me. And we just kind of, we beat our head on a table. And a lot of the problems ended up being that ERP next is not necessarily designed to run on an ARM processor. And, and a lot of the software packages that run under the hood kind of complained about that, but there's workarounds, but there's not and whatever. So it was a fun little experiment. And I got a Raspberry Pi four out of it. And I got an I learned a lot about Linux and Ubuntu. So actually, what is really kind of, it's a bad thing I should say. It was really kind of got me wanting to do now is use a Raspberry Pi for something else is like really play around with it, because it's fun. Like it's actually a lot of fun to get into it. Like get under the hood. So I was not successful with getting ERP next installed on my PI. But I did the next thing which is actually I mean, it takes two seconds. I just want ERP next and got the 14 day trial. Oh, the cloud version. Yeah, I just wouldn't got the cloud version, which the cloud version is 50 bucks a month. which is not expensive in terms of, it's not cheap, but not expensive. If you've ever looked at ERP systems, that's as cheap as it gets, let's just put it that way. But for an open source, basically, what you're paying for is just the cloud storage, you're not paying for the actual software in a way,

you're paying for them to maintain it on their end. Exactly. So

I actually got into ERP next and started playing with it, just in the cloud system. And it's actually super cool. I really, really like it. I think ERP next is one of those ones, where if if I had the time to like, actually build a Linux computer, and do it properly, I might set up a server, that's not a Raspberry Pi, for this thing, because you could do so much personal stuff with it, like you could run all of your projects in it, you could do all of your bill of materials in it, you could do your own personal accounting in it. Even if you're not trying to run a business, it's helpful for a lot of those things. It's, so it's a full ERP system that is kind of open ended. And in a way I like that where everything is user defined. I mean, it's unbelievable how much you can use or define anything in that. So if you create a product or thing in it, you can define virtually everything about that. You're even down to like, how do you measure this things units? Like, am I buying 30 milliliters of this liquid? Or am I buying in units of each? Or do you have your own unit, so you can, you can create your own unit of measurement, and even meters? Yeah, you could do that. And every little module that's inside of it is configurable in that way. And so it's a little bit daunting, because it allows you to just set up your own environment, like it doesn't have predefined rules, you just create everything the way you want it, and you build all the dependencies the way you want them to be. So it makes it makes you run your projects or your system or your business however you want. And I kinda like that. I guess if I was running a business, I probably wouldn't actually like that I would want something that's already pre built. So I wouldn't waste my time making all these systems. But for me sitting in my basement, having fun with an ERP system, I thought that would be cool. Because I was I was thinking about like all the projects that I have lying around and money that I have stored up in projects. And I was like, if I have an ERP system, I know this is ridiculous. People are probably rolling their eyes right now. But like if I have these kinds of things where I can say like, oh, here's my inventory of projects, and here's my inventory of parts that go with my projects, that would be really

cool. So then your wife can audit how much your project is costing,

only if I give her the login information.

That's why we said, oh, I have all this money in parts. And I'm like looking around all my jeep parts and tools. And I'm like, that's something I never want to think about ever.

Actually, no, no, what I would totally do, I would I would turn to my wife and I would be like you can audit anything you want. You first have to learn Linux to get into. Yeah, I guess that's a good way to, to, you know, kind of what's it called them? Bury your money into projects and then just hide them in your system? Or I guess I would I would be laundering my money into into all of my projects.

But through an OS.

From my wife. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know. It's pretty cool. You know, it's funny with with all of the all of the capabilities that ERP Nex has, there's one thing that is kind of lacking. And I'm so surprised. ERP next doesn't have official revisioning. Which, for something like running a business, especially manufacturing business. There's nothing on there that says like this part is Rev. A, this part is Rev. That's

like, the most important thing. Okay. For me, that's like the most important thing.

I agree for me like this. That's all that's pretty much to the point where I'm not going to use this. Even just for fun, just because it doesn't have rev and Rev B. It doesn't have provisioning, and it just make a different SKU. I think, no, I don't, I don't fully know, because I haven't dove deep enough into it. But I think what they're the concept is if you create, because it's so customizable, and because it's so like you set up everything the way you want it to be. I think the way they have it set up was if you create a new revision, you just create that revision from scratch every time you create a revision. So that means if you're creating a new revision of a part with an with, where you roll the bomb, you have to you have to import a bomb fresh from scratch with the changes. And then if you make a new revision from that, it's not like it doesn't adopt anything from the previous revision you just do. Do it from scratch, and you name it, Rev. Rev. C. And I get that there's some kind of purity behind that. That means that everything is individual and unique. Nothing is tied together unless you say it's tied together. But I think that also invites a significant amount of error and chances for error. Yes, it does. I want to I want to let you off the good things from the previous revision and get rid of the bad things.

You want to iterate. Improvements.

Right, right. Yeah. That's know the weakest link in the chain is me by fall. Exactly.

Yes. Yeah. So that's all I really liked about GitHub and stuff, because that's what that's how GitHub works is it only records? You put the original in, and then you record changes? after that?

I mean, GitHub would allow you to do what I'm saying to?

No, no, I'm saying from revision history kind of stuff. That's how GitHub works. I'm not saying use GitHub for hardware, because it actually kind of sucks. But I think that's how it works is it works on a change basis. And that's actually interesting is how the that's how the McWrap platform works, too, is when you upload all your main stuff. That's the original stuff. And then all the changes you make. It only records the changes of what was changed. And so that you can click like little little clock symbol in the interface, and you click it and you can compare different revisions that are that the platform has recorded for you.

You know, stuff, something that would be really fun. This would be really great. If you wanted to come do a future podcast with there's two stat numbers. I would love to hear about confab just for fun. First of all, don't write these down on what is what is the project? You don't have to say what the actual project is, obviously, but which project has the most number of revisions? And how far down the line is it? Is it like 10 revisions down the line. Is it like 800 versions down the line? And then the second thing is, what's the oldest active project on Maxim? Which one is like it was entered in a long time ago? And it's still being made today?

Yeah, like, or just the longest span between like first revision and last revision? Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Which might be weeks, we only started doing the revision stuff like two years ago. But it would be fun to see. Oh, you could do you like when a PCB was created, and like the longest between PCB in the last order that use that PCB? Yeah. Because then that's technically still active? Well,

what I wonder is like, are there people who entered in a PCB five years ago, and are still just clicking buy on that same PCB?

I know that answer is yes. Because that does pop up. And I'm like, that's just that's old. That's pretty old. And then I'm like, wait, I'm still at this company Still? Still, oh, seven years, man, October, we already said on the podcast, couple episodes go.

But yeah, like getting getting no, that would be fun. Just to know, like, who has not who you can't say who? But some board? Actually, it's actually whom some board holds the record for the most revisions. How many revisions is that?

Yeah. I don't think a lot of people pay attention too much to the revision system and macro fab, because it's like, you can only see it by clicking that history button, because then from versions, because versions are what you make when you want to make like a clone or change the PCB. But like revisions is like your iterative changes, like, oh, I need to change a part, or change a specification, and then oh, record that change as a new revision. So Well, I always

felt that when I was working at macro fab, a lot of the a lot of the way macro fab was being used was, oh, I need a board, go to macro fab. load everything up, press buy, and then forget about macro fab for two weeks. And then No, no, seriously, I know you're right. It arrives. And then it's like, oh, macro fab. I remember that now. But I'm sure I'm sure it's volved quite a bit since I was there. Now, where there are people who are logging in almost daily and checking information and using Mac fab as more of their day to day system, as opposed to just when I need to order a board.

It has because back then it was we just did printed circuit boards. PCBA. Now we do a lot more

now up system support as a whole thing, right? Yeah. So I mean, previously, it wasn't the purchasing manager who was the one blogging on the Mac fab all the time. It was the engineer by logging on to macro Feb and buying their boards, now you can give your information to your purchasing manufacturer or nominee, purchasing manager and they do the purchasing at mag fed. Which that was, that was always a long term goal. And

yeah, I Oh, we still do the engineering stuff, too. It's just we do both now.

Well, there was there was different tools set up for different users.

It's like a different world over their purchasing managers.

What do they even do?

I don't know. Buy stuff. Actually a press give me a credit card

a good purchasing man. Gosh, when I keep saying manufacturing, purchasing manager is invaluable. Like those guys. They they sweet talk their way into buying stuff at prices that you can't even believe.

Yeah, you're saying purchasing manufacture? And I'm like, Hey, is that the federal government printing money? Hey,

welcome to the Mac, Feb engineer. We're making Lane political, make awful jokes, and laugh about everything. Yes. All right, what's somehow

got there from Raspberry Pi four, but whatever.

This is a meandering podcast. Yeah. Yep.

All right. Next topic is The Untold Story of a bug that almost sank the Dream Cast North American launch.

I feel really bad for the for the one character in this story. Yeah. Because you know, the stress was like through the roof

through the roof. Yeah. So the Dreamcast so let's do this. It's wind back the time clock. So the Dreamcast was say goes last was Sega say is a manufacturer a hardware and was a hardware software manufacturer for video games. And the Dreamcast was kind of like their last hurrah because they the previous console was the Saturn, it was not received well did not sell well. And so this was kind of like their last hurrah of building a console video game console to retain ground from the tendo. And at the time, PlayStation was starting to come out. And so there was a apparently a interesting bug in the hardware layout for the Dreamcast, but only the North American version, which I thought was really weird that they made a completely different board revision inside the Dreamcast, because on the outside, they look the same to me.

They will I think they were the same external, but I believe with power management and things like that. They changed the board. Yeah. So they changed everything.

Yeah, but so this, this story is not much about the bug, but like, the story of how they found the bug or figured it out. Because it was a, it was only with certain games, and it was completely random. Like, they were dumping all the debug states and all that stuff. And it would just happen, when like, we like just, it just randomly happened. And apparently what it was, was the audio IC does inside the Dreamcast had a floating input pin on the North American version. And it was pulled to ground in the Japanese version. That's the thing I was getting. That was, why would that change? Why would the audio circuit change between those two versions of the hardware?

Yeah, I don't know. It must have been something about the datasheet for that audio, I see recommended something or whatever. Like yeah, you would think that they would just adopt the exact same PCB and only make the changes they needed to.

Yeah, exactly. I would say that you would only do the changes you need to but basically somehow in whatever version maybe it was it was originally floating and they saw the probably the footnote of this thing that says hey, you should probably ground this pin out and they got changed in a revision that didn't get pushed to the other version

I that that makes a lot of sense.

Because Because you You're probably right there's probably a split between so I think Jap Japanese main lines is their 120 volt but they're like 50 hertz or is that somewhere else?

I believe they're 50 hertz but also some of the some part of the country actually runs on DC. Interesting. Yeah, but they're 50 hertz

and I don't know if the Dreamcast is an external power supply or not, which would completely throw out this theory it doesn't that we're having it has internal Okay, so I was one of those cool kids that bought a Dreamcast and got the play like for video games. So

I had I had a I had a catalog like the Dreamcast was legit. Yeah, Crazy Taxi. I know actually, that was one that I did not have. That's the one everyone had. Crazy Jaaxy was was fun. I did play it, but I did never actually own it. No, I had Sonic Adventure one and Sonic Adventure two I was an RPG kid, so I had Skies of Arcadia. Oh, that's why you had a Sega then. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Like evolution, I had some cool games.

So that's, that's our working theory now though, is because the power differences, there was a split somewhere in the hardware line. And then this hardware bug got fixed down the line and it didn't make its way back over to the other part of the branch. That's theory we just came up with, probably not right. But it actually wouldn't make sense and it's kind of the simplest solution of why that would happen. But anyways, so this floating input pin why does it matter? Because a lot of times you can just leave input pins floating and doesn't really matter. Well, it was the MIDI input pin to this audio IC and if it in this audio I see if it detected MIDI on that pin. It would flip to MIDI mode while the Dreamcast haven't MIDI mode and so it would just crash the software immediately. And it could happen randomly. They would have randomly basically whatever random noise would look like MIDI code it would trip this IC right and so they fixed it by this is the interesting is they fixed it by reap by patching the software because it was too i gonna I'm gonna bet you is because this is a CD CDs are dirt cheap the reprint compared to having to open up a couple million Dreamcast and solder a wire.

Well, okay, and in particular, if Yeah, exactly. If you have to solder a wire that's game over. And by the way, in this story, this was this was found out and solved by one individual. Yeah, that's why I was saying earlier is like, God, this must have been super stressful. And I don't remember exactly how it played out. But like this, this individual was trying to get help from someone else. And that person was like, got later I'm going on vacation. This sounds like a you problem. That was bad. douchey that's Oh, yeah. I Yeah. But so this one individual this let's call him a hero is the name is bird bird. Yeah. Okay. Bird was responsible for making sure that Dreamcast launched on time. And and apparently it had to do specifically with game with Midway Games games made by Midway, which they were involved in launch titles for the Dreamcast. So it would have been a massive, embarrassing failure if they launched this entire new system, and it could randomly fail. That

when the moon was in some clarity with the Earth, well, I'm sure

Okay, so that floating pin was Hi, z. So any kind of em noise that just happens to float by and just trigger whatever gates are on that pin? It's game over. Right? Yeah. So they basically rewrote a portion of the driver that accesses this chip. And, and told it to effectively ignore that.

Don't do not never flip into MIDI mode. Never.

Crazy? Yeah, actually, I don't know. I, I read a little bit of the article, but I don't think I read it intently enough to know this. Did they fix the firmware on the PCB? Or did they fix all gaming software? It was the games that were affected. Oh, okay. So technically, it could still affect other games if they didn't implement this.

Correct. But they fixed the driver that was on the CDs.

Okay. So this driver was probably provided in all the developer kits and said it probably in in comments somewhere don't change this code. Yeah.

But yeah, so they basically had to throw away a couple million CDs and reprint them. But yeah, it's interesting to think about, like, a bunch of CDs is cheaper than soldering a little tiny little wire.

You know, I think there's one thing to learn about this in terms of like, development and design work. Even if even if you know what a pin state is supposed to be. I think it is worthwhile to both configure that in hardware and in software, like at the beginning of your code, have pin defined states for your entire process, or whatever your stuff is. Don't ever make assumptions about that. And wherever necessary, if not everywhere, if you can apply that in hardware, and then you avoid these kinds of issues. Because adding, you know, I know this is a completely different skill. If we're talking about millions of units shipped, a resistor does end up making a difference in the cost of things. And if you're going to a price point, you don't want to apply tons of hardware, extra hardware that isn't necessary. But if you're, if your quantity allows for it, have your pull ups and your pull downs that do matter, everywhere and make sure that your code has pin state definitions for everything. Because you want to initialize into a state that you are 100% comfortable with, right? I don't know, design tips.

Oh, why don't we get I want to what John Bird did over there. We're all experienced, I'm actually on his website right now.

If you want to, if you look at his resume says Save the dream cast. Yeah. You know, actually, he's the kind of unsung heroes that are behind the scenes, and I'm not trying to get gushy here or anything like that. But like, if you're going to become an engineer, these are the kinds of things that you get assigned to you. And you do deal with these kinds of things. And you don't get any praise for that. Like, the community. The video game community doesn't come out and say, like, this guy saved everything. It's just like, well, you know, he's an engineer and like, you fix the problem. Good luck, or good job. Here's the next one, you know.

So he worked at 3d. Oh, oh, did he really?

Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, I got to go. read up more about John bird.

Let's get him on the podcast. I'd be fun. All right. All right, what's next. So I get just got some cool repairs that I have on my bench right now that I want to talk about. And one of the reasons I want to talk about them is because of the area, the service manuals are great for these, I love them. So I actually have a Roland TR 606. It's a drum matrix, which the way they have it printed on the actual unit is a like one word drum matrix. And it's just like a little like beatbox drum box that like dramatics, German, or something.

I'll put it right, if I saw that, that's how I would pronounce it because there's no space.

I need to look up how it's actually spelled. But so I've got a Roland TR 606 little drum machine on there. And then I also have a Korg Polysix, like full keyboard synth on my, on my bench. And I'm going to be cracking these things open here, I think on Thursday. And and I want to take a bunch of pictures of them. So I'm gonna post a whole bunch of stuff and the progress on the Slack channel. So if you want to see the guts of these things, if you're one of those guys that just likes to see old vintage electronics and stuff, check out the Slack channel. I'm going to be posting in the repair jobs as I go along. I also have addicts I have both of the service manuals for these things. And they're like, the old school service manuals that are all like photocopied in. And none of the pages are straight. No, no, everything is crooked as hell. And you can see the creases in the paper. It's just Oh, they're gorgeous. And I'm sure if you could smell them, they probably smell like but and they're just awesome. I love these old service manuals. And in fact, the service manual for the Korg poly six. The last page is like handwritten scribbled words that you can't even read and phone numbers. What like, Why did somebody like who had this was like, Well, I'm going to include this page to why I don't know. There's just some names and some phone numbers. And I love this old stuff. You'd call them. Yeah, just find out who it is. International numbers, are they? Yeah, I thought they I thought they looked American. No, they're so so this this Roland TR 606. This drum matrix is actually a pretty cool feat of engineering because it's pretty compact, and it's small. It's all through hole. And it's multi layer, multi PCB layers, all like crammed together, I'll take some pictures and put it up on the Slack channel. It's just looking at it being like, oh my god, like some poor engineer had to sit there and stack all of this up. It's just a nest of wires and PCBs folding in over each other all through hole. And there's something kind of beautiful about it, but also a nightmare. And that one right now like so it functions but everything triggers together. So when you try to trigger, you know, the kick drum, it triggers all the drums. So it's just if you listen to it's just like boom, like everything goes off at once. So, uh Hopefully I'm just hoping that that's somewhat of a trigger bus issue. Obviously somehow, like, the processors, everything's getting cross tucked in a way. I'm not entirely sure. I haven't really cracked it open yet. I'll do that on Thursday. But I'm hoping it's something simple, where it's just like, everything got mixed together somehow,

and does it all at once is a cockroach decomposing on the circuit board somewhere?

I've had that happen. That's a true.

No, that's why I brought it up. Yeah.

And then with the Korg, Polysix, just doing some cleanup in an a recall, which the recall on these old service manuals are they're just fun to follow, because they're usually pretty easy. But it feels like you're, I don't know, hacking something crazy. So check it out. Thursday, evening time, mountain time, I'll be posting a whole bunch of stuff as I go along with it.

I can't wait. I'll be following along. Awesome. So I got another weird article I found or this isn't really an article. This is a product I found that's for sale. It's the BL six the coolest asterik console ever. Actually, I just noticed I have two video gamey Thai style articles. But this is a a six pack of beer like what would be like a cardboard carrier for a six pack of beer. But it is not. It's a transformer more than meets the eye. It's got a projector in it and two Raspberry Pi's. So you can play video games and drink cold beer at the same time. Why can you drink cold beer? Because it's actively cools your beer down?

And it looks like a six pack of beer?

Yes. I think the let's see

the BL six it says one half koozie one half projector and one half gaming console?

Yeah. So it's it's actually an auction. I think they only built one of these. It's being donated the proceeds of going to the National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation. Program. I guess I don't know too much about that. But it's also a buy button. Budweiser.

Oh, this is actually Anheuser Busch that is doing this.

Yes. Oh, that's cool. But what I wanted to point out is I kind of like the like, whoever I want to see this in real life. Because it like the attention to detail on this thing is amazing. Like it has like a blue band all the way around the bottom that lights up it and like, I want to see how like the build of this because it

looks really cool. It's very clean. Like whoever did it did an excellent job.

But the this this part right here is six built in games. Like like, wait, what like, like the but six built in games like Tekken, seven SoulCalibur, six, and RBI Baseball 20. And I'm like, you listen. Three, six games. Why don't just list the other three? And what is like, is it like, it's a game of like Tekken seven.

Also, if those are the three games that you're like, you know, showcasing I'm like, I don't know if I really want

but it's two console. Two controls included two built in koozies that actually keep your beer cold. I bet you the using automotive Buck

coolers may be

ABCs. Oh, we got talked about that too quick. Oh, we'll talk about probably next week, Chris Gamble's got a new thing called ABC. Where this contextual electronics stuff I don't know too much about I just saw that tweet about a couple days ago or not know yesterday.

What's it supposed to be? I don't know. But coolers?

No, it's I was actually that was funny enough. That was the first thing I thought though. was like, oh, Mater, Buck automotive Buck coolers. But no, it's a modular prototyping system. I think. Okay, I don't want to put too many words in my mouth because I don't really know besides the pictures I saw on Twitter. Yeah, the BL six. I'd like I really wanted to see the build, like build like a 30 minute long build video of this. I'd be like all over.

Nice. So that is there only

one of them. I think there's only one of them.

It has six days, 13 hours, 50 minutes and 46 seconds left to go. And there are 37 bids on it. And it is $2,071

Yeah. Interesting. Interesting. Probably I want to see the build log on that. Just like how it works and how they built the chassis because it looks really good.

Oh, that's cool. Like, okay, so the controllers slide into little, like foam holders and then a beer can slides over them to conceal them.

Yeah, there's a lot of attention to detail with this build. Yeah. Although

two beers, one for you and one for your buddy is nowhere near and Well, I think you can put four

beers in, it's okay.

But it may only have two active cooling spots.

Yes. Swap over. Yes cycle.

That's great.

Okay, so before we wrap up, we're going to have Ben Jordan of Autodesk. On the podcast. I think we're going to do it the week after Thanksgiving, which will be the first of December. I think that might be right, or it's next week. I don't remember. That's actually really important. I should look that up.

We'll put it in the Slack channel.

I'll look it up live. We'll do it live. I should we should say what what day we're actually gonna be doing it on Tuesday after Thanksgiving, so December 1. So the podcast episode come out December 2. So why is this important? Well, Ben is a project manager, a product manager, and is responsible for the eagle product over at Autodesk. And so get your Eagle questions in Slack early so I can add them to the list and get them ahead to Ben. beforehand.

This is Mr. Eagle himself.

Mr. Mr. Eagle? Both top hat.

Yeah, throw your three questions in the Slack channel. And we'll sift through them and maybe it'll get on the show.

Yep. And that was the Mac fed mentioning podcast. Oh, do you have anything else even?

That was the macro fed engineering podcast? We are your host Stephen. And Parker Dolan. Take it easy.

Later, everyone. I guess that was the end.