The Big Mess o’ Wires website has a new foundation and updated look for 2026, cleaning out the cruft and junk. It’s a familiar story. Over the years, the site accumulated loads of customizations that tended to complicate updates. One…
For three years, the ADB-USB Wombat firmware sat quietly at version 0.3.9. Everything worked well for most people, most of the time, but the key word in that sentence is “most”. My customer support inbox had many stories describing specific…
The Wombat is great for adapting USB keyboards and mice to classic ADB Macintoshes, and ADB keyboards and mice to modern USB computers. But what about game controllers? They’re not supported. It’s an often-requested feature, but one that’s not as…
Mea culpa time here. Since the beginnings of the Wombat there have been reports that certain USB keyboards and mice weren’t recognized by the device. Nothing happened when typing or moving the mouse, and the Wombat’s activity LED didn’t blink.…
Nobody enjoys troubleshooting non-working hardware, and I’m no exception. Every time I ask a contract manufacturer to assemble a batch of more Floppy Emus, there are always a few that don’t pass QA testing. What happens with those? For several…
Planning for the 2026 edition of Mactoberfest Meetup is well underway. This year’s event will take place on Saturday November 7, 2026 in Belmont California. We’re planning a glorious celebration of all things related to the classic Macintosh, with other…
How do you go about troubleshooting a misbehaving microcontroller circuit? A few months ago I manufactured a new batch of Floppy Emu disk emulators. A number of them failed QA at the factory, with a set of symptoms that I’d…
The Yellowstone Universal Disk Controller for Apple II computers is now back in stock! Thanks for everybody’s patience – manufacturing took much longer than expected. Yellowstone is a universal disk controller card for Apple II computers. It supports nearly every…
For everyone in the San Francisco Bay Area, Mactoberfest Meetup is back by popular demand! After a successful event in 2023, we took a few years off, and now we’re returning on November 7 to the same historic church venue…
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