He's just this guy, you know?
My old Kindles With Amazon having ended support for many older-generation Kindle devices, I thought I d go back and make sure that my existing Kindles will still be usable for the foreseeable future. Up until now, I ve been using a 2nd generation Kindle (yes, literally the Kindle 2, released in 2009), and my wife has Continue reading Brain dump, May 2026
That s right this little device is what stood between me and the ability to run an even older piece of software that I recently unearthed during an expedition of software archaeology. For a bit more background, I was recently involved in helping a friend s accounting firm to move away from using an extremely legacy Continue reading Defeating a 40-year-old copy protection dongle
What do I do with old Android phones that I d like to keep around for testing purposes, while no longer worrying about the long-term fate of the lithium battery inside them? Here s what: I take the battery out, make sure it s fully discharged, and surgically remove the controller logic board from the battery (don t try Continue reading Brain dump, October 2025
As a bit of background, one of my hobbies is helping people recover data from old tape cartridges, such as QIC-80 tapes, which were a rather popular backup medium in the 1990s among individuals, small businesses, BBS operators, and the like. I have a soft spot for tape media; there s something about the tactile sensation Continue reading Using Claude Code to modernize a 25-year-old kernel driver
Up until this point, DiskDigger has been built for the .NET Framework, with a user interface that uses Windows Forms. I ve written before about my feelings on WinForms that it s a perfectly good, tried-and-true technology which, as ancient as it is, seems to have outlasted numerous other UI toolkits, for the simple reason that Continue reading DiskDigger + Avalonia UI: a success story
In the course of my hobby of restoring old computers, I sometimes come across a laptop that has a broken floppy drive. This is almost always true for much older floppy drives that use a belt mechanism for spinning the disk, instead of a direct-driven spindle motor. These floppy drives are just the worst: the Continue reading Brain dump, June 2025
Time to mention some great updates in the newest versions of DiskDigger, as well as its cousin FileSystemAnalyzer, which is my internal tool for tinkering with various file systems. ZFS I ve been embarking on a bit of self-study of the ZFS file system, specifically its on-disk structures, for the purpose of forensic analysis and opportunities Continue reading Software update roundup, February 2025
I ve had some fun recovering data from two different types of SyQuest disks: SyQuest SparQ and EZ 135 cartridges! These were made in the late 1990s, and were meant to compete with Iomega Zip and Jaz disks. These types of cartridges come from a weird (and short) era that came after the reign of floppy Continue reading Brain dump, January 2025
Macintosh PowerBook 100 Restored another vintage laptop! This time, the patient is a Macintosh PowerBook 100, which came from a dear friend of mine who allowed me to restore it after recovering the data from its hard drive. The PowerBook 100 was clearly intended to be a lower-end model (even though it still had a Continue reading Brain dump, October 2024
Custom IDE adapter for CP-4021 drive As part of a special data recovery project, I needed to read the contents of the hard drive from an ancient Compaq LTE 8086 laptop. This hard disk, which is a Conner CP-4021, is quite an oddball. It has an unusual form factor: it s a 3.5 drive, but it s Continue reading Brain dump, September 2024