2026-04-03 22:00:00
Last year my aunt let me add her original Tangerine iBook G3 clamshell to my collection of old Macs1.
It came with an AirPort card—a $99 add-on Apple made that ushered in the Wi-Fi era. The iBook G3 was the first consumer laptop with built-in Wi-Fi antennas, and by far the cheapest way to get a computer onto an 802.11 wireless network.
2026-04-02 05:00:00
Today Raspberry Pi announced more price increases for all Pis with LPDDR4 RAM, alongside a 'right-sized' 3GB RAM Pi 4 for $83.75.
The price increases bring the 16GB Pi 5 up to $299.99.
Despite today's date, this is not a joke.
I published a video going over the state of the hobbyist 'high end SBC' market (4/8/16 GB models in the current generation), which I'll embed below:
But if you'd like the tl;dr:
2026-03-27 22:00:00
In my last post, I showed you to use FireWire on a Raspberry Pi with a PCI Express IEEE 1394 adapter. Now I'll show you how I'm using a new FireWire HAT and a PiSugar3 Plus battery to make a portable MRU, or 'Memory Recording Unit', to replace tape in older FireWire/i.Link/DV cameras.
The alternative is an old used MRU like Sony's HVR-MRC1, which runs around $300 on eBay1.
2026-03-25 00:00:00
After learning Apple killed off FireWire (IEEE 1394) support in macOS 26 Tahoe, I started looking at alternatives for old FireWire equipment like hard drives, DV cameras, and A/V gear.
I own an old Canon GL1 camera, with a 'DV' port. I could plug that into an old Mac (like the dual G4 MDD above) with FireWire—or even a modern Mac running macOS < 26, with some dongles—and transfer digital video footage between the camera and an application like Final Cut Pro.
2026-03-20 22:00:00
Today I posted a video titled The best laptop Apple ever made, and tl;dw1 it's the 11" MacBook Air.
I acknowledge in the video my pick is slightly subjective, and I also asked a number of other YouTubers which Mac laptop they consider the best (or at least most influential). If you don't want to watch the video, I'll summarize their choices here:
2026-03-13 22:00:00
Recently I came into posession of a few Apple Xserves. The one in question today is an Xserve G5, RackMac3,1, which was built when Apple at the top—and bottom—of it's PowerPC era.
This isn't the first Xserve—that honor belongs to the G41. And it wasn't the last—there were a few generations of Intel Xeon-powered RackMacs that followed. But in my opinion, it was the most interesting.
Unfortunately, being manufactured in 2004, this Mac's Delta power supply suffers from the Capacitor Plague. The PSU tends to run hot, and some of the capacitors weren't even 105°C-rated, so they tend to wear out, especially if the Xserve was running high-end workloads.
