richfiles

I mocked up a few iterations of the Rate of Rotation meters. For size reference, the 80 LEDs are spaced 1mm on centers, so this is about 8cm long. Since the segments are only 0.5x1.6mm, I think it might be a good look to light them in pairs. I want to light up scale ticks at half-ish brightness to create a pleasing set of graduations to define the center and overall size of the bar. I'm also considering dimly illuminating segments adjacent to the illuminated cursor to help draw attention to those highlighted segments. 80 LEDs per scale... Three scales... 240 total LEDs! It'll be a lot, but I definitely want to incorporate this scale, not simply for the aesthetics of it, but for it's usefulness. With nothing but these three scales, I could get out of a free spin relying on instruments only! Worth it!

Heh... I never noticed I got cut off here... What I would have said is that it would take 15-18 of those boards. How many depends on whether I separate red and green driver channels and whether or not I combine segments of different bars together or not. What's important though, is I just ordered 20 of these boards. That should be enough to handle everything... I hope... If I need to, I'll desolder the IC and use them on a custom board, or I'll just wire these boards to a custom board by way of either a backplane or wire bundle. The important thing is that I need to control 240 LEDs, and for some reason, the Soviets decided Green is common cathode, Red is common anode. WHY!?!? Anyway, looks like I snagged these from Ukraine just in time, back in early 2021. I absolutely love the segment size and shape. Nothing like common LED bar graphs. The green LEDs will be easy to drive, but the red ones will be... also easy! These chips are PWM, and they are set and forget. All I have to do is address the correct I2C address and set the PWM. For thee Red LEDs, I need only tie the common anode to positive, and invert the PWM. 0% PWM would be full brightness, and 100% would turn the segment off. When the PWM is in the high state, that's essentially off to a common anode device. The PWM being low means it's at ground, meaning current can flow between the low PWM state and the positive anode. It's actually really simple! This is the same technique I use to drive the bidirectional Red/Green LEDs in the DSKY keypad. (+) to (- ) vs (-) to (+) can be achieved with only two IO lines. I have a 6 day vacation coming up over US Thanksgiving holiday. I also have a root canal the Monday before Thanksgiving... Honestly, I'll be relieved. Yes, it's gonna destroy my wallet, but I'll be able to think clearly without an ever present pain distracting me. The highest priority though... I want to install the desk. It's been done for months now, but between work and life, there's always something... If I have to unplug my router to keep from being distracted... I'm gonna get this DONE!

Pfft... 2 weeks. Goodness... At one point, I was covering for someone's 2 week vacation! It's been kinda crazy at work... Anyway, I have a solid 7 day break coming up over US Thanksgiving. I'm hoping to get back to this project then. I am hopefully optimistic about this upcoming break, and about this apparent sale of Private Division and KSP by Take Two... I sure hope a good developer bought it. Maybe the Kitten guys? Who knows. Just hope it's anyone better than Take Two!

You got a stranger on the internet shedding a tear for your loss.... I worry about my own parents. they're both over 70. I've watched the gradual decline in their health, and it hurts to even imagine... I pray you have the strength to bear this sorrow in your life. Always keep her alive in your memories, and never forget how much you were loved by her.

I had started to go back and repair the dead links and images and formatting in my old Simpit Repository posts, right before the big announcement about the fate of KSP 2. I instead started archiving the pages instead...

Work is gonna be extremely busy for the next two weeks, so, I probably won't get around to tearing down the old desk right away. Just figured I'd add that. Got some hard deadlines I need to meet, and so I'll simply be busy. I'll obviously update once I get things put together.

And now for the Left Desk Segment! The big dilemma for me was removing the front panel of the left desk segment, so that I could mount CRTs into it. Since the entire desk build was done as an additive process, old screws can easily be covered by new constuction. To say I was concerned would be an understatement... The top desk and front panel were the first assemblies made! The crossbrace obviously needed to go, as it covered the screws in the lower desktop that screw into the front panel. At least those screws are really easy to access. Here is the inside view... and... Oh thank the Lord.... All my worries could have been mitigated by just peeking inside... EVERY screw is accessible! Why did I ever worry about this! Front panel is removed! Simple as! Now I can easily mod it. It's a clear shot inside, and what I'll do is mount a pair of drawer slides to either side, angled ever so slightly up. The upward angle will ensure the CRT drawer naturally stays closed, and will keep the CRT drawer from scraping along the lower desk. There is a problem though... That front panel was 100% structural! it was the majority of what was stabilizing the main lower desk! This NEEDS bracing! Paper templates to the rescue again! I just need to cut out a board to support the lower desk at both ends. Just a random shot of the removed front panel. Again, this will be made into a CRT drawer, but till then, it can just rest snuggly in place to cover the opening. Well... My choices were use the scraps I had, or go out to the storage unit. Scraps it is then! Like a glove! A perfect fit! I am using the old front panel to re-secure the lower desk exactly where it needs to be as I secure it. Screwed everything together and stained & sealed all the exposed wood. MUCH more secure now! Cross brace reattached. I am going to plane that wood block to the same gap as exists between the lower desk and the cross brace, and add additional reinforcing. This is an easy mod that I can add at any time, including after the desk is assembled. It's a tight fit, but it is possible to access from underneath, though not really needed, since the CRTs will now be serviceable by way of a drawer. Speaking of CRTs, I have extracted the small 3.5 inch color CRT from it's housing. Kinda crazy how compact they made these old CRT TVs... considering the parts really aren't that compact. Here is how these will be laid out on the front panel of the Left Desk segment. The small color CRT is in portrait mode so that I can use it for IVA/KSC Kerbal portrait animations. As I've mentioned before, the left CRT is from a Brother word processor. It's basically a "Punchcard CRT"... An old aspect ratio/size that conforms to the old IBM punchcard standard. They were used on early terminals and some early Hewlett Packard computers to make the machines compact. Still gives you 80 columns, but doesn't waste valuable VRAM showing a whole page at once... That's what scrolling is for! As you can see, this barely fits vertically! The more I look at this desk, the more I wonder if I ever properly measured things! spoiler... This entire desk was built off a single sketch with three actual measurements recorded on paper. That's it... Everything after was subsequently pulled out of my... brain... You have no idea how truly off the cuff this "design" was... Sorry for the blurry image. Took several shots, and my phone refused to focus at this angle... Adding any angle to the shots let the camera focus, and you can better see just how closely things line up. This image is flipped for your convenience. I just wanted to see how the desk would look with the CRTs more or less in place! I love it! I'm thinking more and more about it, and I think the best way to cut the bezel for these will be to toss my cheap router into the trash, and just mount the router bits into my mill, and carefully mill out the opening with the appropriate tapered bits. I think that'll work best. Now that the front panel is no longer IN the actual desk, I can mount it and do whatever I need to finish it appropriately. With that, the left desk segment is complete! I still need to stain and seal the cable suspension pillar which will attach to the left desk segment. All it does is string wires over a high traffic area, but this is just an attachment. I can now FINALLY disassemble the old desk and reassemble the new desk in it's place! It's done!

PROGRESS... I will split this into two posts... Right Desk Segment and Left Desk Segment... The monitor arm pedestal has been mounted! I'm really glad I decided to fancy it up a wee bit! If you look closely at both the image above and below, you will see a metal "sleeve" in the central monitor mounting hole. The monitor arm uses an M10 bolt to mount it to a surface. The included bolt was not long enough to pass through the desk surface and the pedestal. I got a longer bolt, which is fine, but I don't know if over time, the added bolt length might warp the bolt. Because of this, I purchased a 10mm steel capillary tube with a 1mm wall. This gives me 12mm diameter of steel vs just 10mm. The 10mm bolt fits snugly enough through the tube to not fall out by gravity, but can easily still be hand spun. A truly perfect fit! It's a kinda rough cut, but I wanted better access to the space under the desk, and blocked by the cross brace mount. The reason it is so rough, is I did not have access to my weak router or a jig saw... I roughed it out with a table saw. Jeb would approve. Also notched the cross frame brace. This just gives me better access underneath. I'm realizing I should maybe add another screw or two, since I cut down that particular board. I have no idea why it cut it through the second screw hole. Could have moved it an inch over... Important thing, is I can access the monitor arm mounting bolt now! This makes mounting monitors far easier! Who knew! Next up is the mini-ultrawide monitor that I want to fit onto the right side of the desk. I had a pair of old cheap drawer slides that I will never, ever use... So I used them as not drawer slides. Specifically, I trimmed the roller off the ends with tin-snips, and then mounted these internally threaded 10mm steel ball bearings to the ends. Bet the dude that filed patent 5785400 never expected his idea to be used like this! Thing about this screen, is that it is a touchscreen. I honestly want to be able to take advantage of that. I kinda sorta wanted a way to lay this screen flat, in case I ever wanted to use it in that orientation. Just checking my mounts didn't break anything. Also, lying flat. I'll likely find some rubber feet for it at some point. Here is the monitor mounted to the desk! How, you say? Magnets, of course! They worked so well for my keyboard, so I'll continue the theme of magnetically detachable things here! I created a template by placing the magnets on the steel balls and applying some paint to the backs, and pressing it onto paper. Ran the screws through the paper, and got perfect alignment. The magnets are small cup shapes that the balls secure nicely to. Cringe free video of the magnetic action... https://i.imgur.com/a6Cc2mN.mp4 I am so sorry, I was experimenting to see if people really do click on the cringe... I feel dirty... Anyway, it's getting so late that it's early... I gotta work tomorrow, and the site 502/503'd so frequently, I wasn't sure I'd be able to post at all... This marks the total completion of the Right Desk Half of my KSP instrument panel desk! Work has been insanely busy (both jobs), but I'll try to post the results of the left segment tomorrow... Spoiler alert... It's at the same level of completion as this half of the desk!

Even more insidious, is it causes neurological degradation long before fatal doses!

Youtube figured out how to push ads on Discord embeds... Oh no... I'll have to now click to open them in my browser and let Ublock save me. Still annoying... On another note... An old pair of regulars came to the store today. Bad enough I had the Saturday shift today... They were waiting at the door before I had even arrived. The wife ends up wasting my time for 35 minutes as she expects me to fix her karaoke app, which is clearly having issues communicating with the app servers, ie... nothing I can do about it. Meanwhile, I have another customer walk in. Before I can go and help him, this woman's hubby decides to chat up this new potential customer, who mentioned coming by to set up a new cell phone plan. This guy literally talks the potential customer into going down the street to a different cellular provider... DUDE... BRUH... Are you kidding me!? Those two come to the shop, noticeably unwashed, take up 35 minutes of my time for something I had stated repeatedly was out of my control... And they literally drive off another potential customer by actively talking them into checking out other cell providers in a shop that sells PCs, electronics, tech support services... and CELL PHONES!?!? DUDE! Just leave! Go away! Just completely disrespect me and drive off customers. Oh my God, why not just make my Saturday shift AWFUL!

Small update. I built the pedestal to raise my monitor arm by 2 inches (close to 5 cm). This is simply so that I can mount the monitor to the desk, and know the arm is high enough to not collide with the console. It's made from scraps leftover from building the desk, so the wood grain, thicknesses, etc all match up with the rest of the desk. For all of six seconds, I thought of cutting plain rectangles and trimming the sides... Then I decided to take the extra steps to make it fancy! The taper of the lower section kinda gives me the vibes of the stepped desktop sections, and the rounded bit is the same as the front edges. I think it looks quite nice, and I look forward to mounting it! I have also extracted the CRT from the old Brother Word Processor. I'm realizing that the time to mount it was last year, when I was cutting the first desk pieces. Basically, I need to fit it into place, and I need to do it the hard way, or the even harder way... I really only have two realistic options... I could fully disassemble the left desk segment (additive construction is a real kraken if you need to modify literally part number one). That would allow me to pull the part I need to modify off and work on it incredibly easily. The other option is to remove the lower brace and cut an opening in situ. This is harder, cause I need to make precise cuts in awkward, tight spaces and angles. If a tool slips, I risk marring the rest of the desk. One thing that I did do, was to cut the bezel out of the original Word Processor housing. The mounting holes for the CRT are on the back too. I have an *awful* router that's not up to the task, but I also know where I can borrow a better router... If I use a follower bit, I could mirror the opening. Those bits have a bearing the same diameter as the cutting path, and they will roll along a template... Like this bezel, and perfectly mimic the edge. If I screw the bezel to the wood, I can use a straight follower bit to cut the opening, and then use tapered follower bits to follow the opening and cut the bezel edge. The big catch 22 is that i need to screw the bezel down... and the inside of the desk doesn't have clearance for the router... I'd have to have screw holes on the outside surface... I do not like that one bit... My one option might be to find a follower router that has the bearing at the tip of the cutter, and not the base. I could screw the bezel to the inside, then plunge the bit and cut till the bearing meets the bezel on the inside. It might work, but I also risk mangling everything... It makes me nervous... I absolutely adore the crazy form factor of this tiny ultrawide CRT! There's honestly a funny reason for it's specific size too! It's got some crazy roots! This little widescreen CRT will fit right in with my 49 inch LG 5120x1440 ultrawide and my 3840x1100 mini-ultrawide on the desk step on the right side. So I mentioned roots... Both this CRT's dimensions and the Intel's success have roots in the CTC Datapoint 2200 "smart" terminal. The Computer Terminal Corporation (CTC) Datapoint 2200 was a serial "smart" terminal, but could function as a small stand alone computer as well. The 2200's CPU wasn't one single chip, but rather many small logic gates tied together on a motherboard to create a multi-chip processor. CTC contracted Intel and Texas Instruments to try and develop their CPU architecture into as few chips as they could, ideally, one chip. TI tried but ultimately failed to create a viable chip. Intel succeeded, but were delayed... Datapoint went on with a multi-chip processor for their next model, not using Intel's chip. Intel and CTC still were in an awkward situation. While delayed, Intel did succeed in creating the one chip CPU... But CTC no longer needed it. CTC and Intel came to an agreement. CTC would keep their money, and Intel would get access to the CTC Datapoint 2200 instruction set. The Datapoint 2200's instruction set was the model for the Intel 8008 CPU, and it's instruction set was expanded into the Intel 8080 CPU. The 8080 instruction set was then further expanded to support 16-bits and became the x86 instruction set used in the 8086 and all of it's successors. This is the instruction set that forms the core foundation of every x86 or x64 CPU in use in modern PCs today! CTC GAVE it to Intel! The 8008, 8080, 8086, 80186, 80286, 80386, 80486, the Pentium, II, III, 4, Core series, Xeon... They ALL share those roots in the CTC Datapoint 2200 ISA While that's a pretty neat bit of computing history... That still doesn't answer the glaring question... What is with the funky widescreen CRT? Why was the screen for a terminal built in 1970-71, in an era where most CRTs were far more boxy and not wide... Wide? Turns out the reason was simple... It needed to be the width of a sheet of paper, so you could see a whole line at once. Since memory was so expensive and limited then, not displaying the whole height of a page saves video RAM. Just scroll and pull in lines from main RAM as needed. It was modeled after a very familiar shape in the computing world... For the era... The screen is sized to the dimensions of a standard IBM paper punchcard! This squat CRT proved popular on a few machines, including some of Hewlett Packard's PCs, economy data terminals, and word processors, such as this Brother model. Long after the IBM punchcard had gone the way of the dodo, this CRT form factor carried on in niche applications, until LCDs truly replaced the CRT for good. While this tech might be well and thoroughly obsolete, I absolutely adore the old look, and want to reuse this tech for my Kerbal controller project. I mean, look at how narrow this skinny lil' guy is! I just love this CRT! It'll pair nicely with my little 3.5 inch color RCA CRT. In portrait mode, it's width is nearly the same as this CRT's height. Perfect! <-- skinny

I was never a fan of the Take Two take over... I think I always expected the worst... I had no idea how far down the rabbit hole "worst" went! My biggest fear was that KSP would end up in IP Purgatory, like old games like The Neverhood... Where the IP is owned by a company that doesn't care to even make the original game available. Never once did it occur to me that the forum could possibly be a casualty of Take Two... My old website hasn't been updated since 2015, due to the host retiring most hosting services. It still exists, but I don't have FTP access. It was around that time that I started playing KSP (2014), and I became very active in the Simpit Repository. In 2017, I started my own Simpit build thread... I still am building. My last post was just a few minutes ago. Honestly, since my own web page kinda died the stagnant death of non-updating, this has truly become my second home online. If it goes... I'm gonna miss y'all!

Got the small single outlet mounted. I'll secure the wire into the corner later. It's a polarized outlet, and neutral/hot have been double and triple checked as correct. You can see a simple lamp plug end inserted into it below. Simple as. On a side note, after cleaning most of what was on the old desk, and doing a little cleaning in the kitchen, I opted to do another project. I gutted a pair of Gen 4 iPads for their LCDs, and made a pair of nice monitors from them. One has the housing flipped, so the controls are on opposing sides. The plan is to mirror the pair of iPad panels from my workbench to this new second set, so I have the same screens available for my workshop's desk. You can see one of the two screens powered up. They both are tested, and work great! I'll mount the vesa mounts to a pair of rails, and mount that to an arm. The cases are really nice, though I have no plans to redo my homemade one... I like how homemade it is. Again, I streamed it, so if curious, you can see just how a pair of iPads are turned into a pair of monitors. As a final note... I saw the post about the status of the KSP forums... I hope that they continue to be supported for a long time, but I still have my worries. I have just backed up this entire build thread, and I hope to back up more of my posts. I really do hope that this corner of the internet doesn't just up and disappear, but... Take Two is... Not a company I have ever trusted.

There are four three lights! As you can see, the lights are installed, and I feel incredibly dumb for not literally doing this last year. Finally figured out exactly how to do the electrical interconnection between the risers and the top shelf. I even found some parts that make it incredibly simple, and will keep the loose wire runs short. I found a tiny outlet that I can screw down to the riser, just below where the top shelf mounts. It's just a matter of plugging them together once assembled. I actually ended up completely rewiring the light before splicing in the plug Tomorrow, i'd like to actually have a go at trying to measure the desk for mounting the monitor arm. That will involve assembling everything and fitting the console, to ensure the arm can't hit the console itself. Unfortunately I have to tear the right side back apart to access underneath to bolt the monitor arm down. After that.... Assembly! Honestly, the biggest hassle won't be assembly, but disassembly of the old desk. ................ Leave it to insomnia... Literally did not sleep Friday night... At all... Finally crashed sometime after noon on Saturday. Slept through all of Saturday, and I'm pretty shot today. I'm still making good progress, but not as much as I wanted. Working on mounting the mini outlet part to the riser, and I have a good idea on the monitor arm positioning. Had the most stupid simple idea... A pedestal. Literally cut a square of wood and stain it, just to make a riser for the arm. It's quite simple, and won't take much effort, but I do need to cut the parts. I should cut trim too, so I end up with no endgrain. It delays things, but it lets me mount the arm closer to center, and pretty much eliminates the chance of hitting the console. As for timing... Less than ideal. This was my big long free extended weekend to get things done... Ruined by poor sleep... Ironically, I did get a little bit of old desk cleanup done Saturday morning, once I abandoned hope of sleep, and occupied myself. I expect to fully get the old desk cleaned up today. I happen to have a series of cables that cross the room, suspended on a pole... I'm not gonna reuse the old pole. Instead, I'm gonna cut a new oak one, stain it, and mount it to the corner of the desk. Gotta get that cut and stained as well. Honestly, between the pedestal and the pole, I still have enough little things to still do. Next weekend is Pokemon Go Fest, So I'll probably be occupied most of the weekend, and I work that Saturday too (only 3 hours). I also have 50 Hall Effect Commutator boards to solder for my part time job... Heck, even the local fair is this week... As much as I hate to say it, unless I have a burst of sudden post work energy during a weekday... This might be delayed by a bit... I'm gonna try and make sure the post and pedestal parts are cut, sanded, stained, and get those mounted as soon as possible. The good news, is that once I have those bits dealt with, the job honestly ends up being simple. I may yet manage it. We'll see...

Built a bunch of adapter boards for the RCTP today. Those are five different EPROM programmers, a 30-pin RAM tester, and a Commodore 64 cart adapter. Also got the SD card reader added to the RCTP itself. Simple, but incredibly useful! Gonna keep it short here. Next week, I only work 2 days, then have 5 days off. I am committing myself to getting the desk swapped into place.

Not directly KSP related, but I built a Retro Chip Tester Pro! https://8bit-museum.de/sonstiges/hardware-projekte/hardware-projekte-chip-tester-english/ It's a pretty neat tool that was originally designed to test vintage memory chips, but has been expanded to support a wide variety of additional functions. It can test not only memory chips, but also test logic chips, test ROMs (against a checksum database), dump ROMS and EPROMS, write some EPROMs, and more! Recently, there has been some limited support for extracting the logic configuration of PAL/GAL chips! There's many dozens of adapter boards to add additional support too! I spent 11 hours building this, and it was worth every minute. I did record the whole process... It's not edited down at all, so... Yeah... Feel free to skip around a bit.

Left desk leg is wired up too! I'll have a total of 6 available outlets on the front legs, and one pair of outlets under the desk switched by the switch on the right leg. The construction of the electrical boxes and mounting of the outlets is identical to the other side, just with two outlet pairs, and no switch. Look Ma! Nuffin' blowed up! I will also be adding a 4 foot long 15 outlet power strip under the legs. The 4 outermost outlets at either end will be where the riser power strips and the front leg outlets plug in. That gives me the 6 outlets on the legs and leaves 11 outlets remaining under the desk. An additional 12 outlets are on each riser... That's 41 outlets and 2 switched outlets! It's a LOT of outlets, but it means I have plenty room to plug in a few monitors, a few computers, and LOTS of bricks! Oh, there are so many small bricks! Lighting here was dim, so the quality wasn't as good, but you can see the power strips mounted to each riser. Pay no mind to the extra wide hole for the power cord... I only wrecked a drill bit hitting a screw and had to move a hair to the side... At least the other side had perfect hole placement. I'll use a brush to dab a little stain down the hole to "fix" it. So, small issue with the lighting... the cables that link one light to the next are too long to fit the narrow gap between each fixture. The solution was simple. Remove the socket from the two endmost fixtures, and hardwire the cables internally. ... it's two pics cause the three fixtures are too long for my workbench, so imagine the gap between them is longer. Now the plugs reache only as far as they need to plug into the central fixture. Also got a new switch and that second order of guards I had mentioned. Note the tininess of the left switch. They also make Space Shuttle style guards sized for smaller toggle switches, and that, is a smaller toggle switch. Why the attention on this switch? It's a locking toggle switch! You have to pull the lever up to be able to move. https://i.imgur.com/nL8WWz4.mp4 === Now, for something entirely unrelated.... Birb. This is birb. Heh, anyway, I watched over a friend's bird while he went on a fishing trip, but that was but merely an excuse to play with some obsolete, but very fun tech. We had a bunch of unsold inventory that had been sitting on our shelves for ages, some items were from 2015-2017. A few were older yet. We got authorization to mark those things down to "any price that moves them"... and my coworkers and I promptly "made shelf space". I bought a pocket projector, a sketch pad that can send your sketches to your phone over bluetooth with a single button press, and a Fuji "Polaroid-like" camera. As basic as this camera is, I genuinely love it! It's kinda this Lofi analog toy that I can hold and point and shoot, and I kinda miss that physicality in photography. Best of all, it gives me almost-instant, but not instant results that I can physically hold in my hand, that I can watch fade into being. The film all expired in 2020, but seems to still work just fine. For size reference, that's a 2.5" SSD the photo is sitting on. Just a tiny birb in a tiny off-brand "Polaroid". I love it! Honestly, spending a whole $22 on this and 120 shots worth of film packs was totally worth it for the experience of reliving pre-smartphone photography. All my photo albums just end after graduating high school. I was an early digital adopter. I never knew how much I missed the physicality of photography. Maybe I'll go buy some glossy paper and print out a few of my favorite photos... === I also acquired a Retro Chip Tester Pro kit (and by kit, I mean I got a circuit board and I had to go buy all the parts) The board features a ZIF socket that can accept THOUSANDS of different kinds of chips. It can test chips, read ROMs and EPROMS, program EPROMS, check known ROMs against a database of checksums, and a lot more! The manual is over 300 pages, between the instructions for use, assembly, bill of materials, and all the possible accessories that can be built to expand it's testing capabilities! I found an appropriately sized 3 ring binder and even organized the sections of the manual with index-tab sheets. This is analog tabbed browsing, folks! I also have experimented with streaming... I did a 4 hour soldering session about 2 weeks ago using a recycled and wiped iPhone 6s literally taped to my workbench as my camera. The soldering was for my second job, but it was fun chatting while working... Even if I did more chat than work! LOL I definitely wanna try streaming the assembly of this chip tester. Might try to do that next week at https://www.twitch.tv/richfiles I plan to try streaming any future work on the Kerbal controller. Right now I'm only set up for overhead workbench recording, which is fine for most projects. Maybe someday, I might try to expand on my capabilities. I enjoy showing how I build these kinds of things. Video makes sense.

I'm quite annoyed that Apple prioritizes their tablets and phones, over their consumer laptops and iMac, over their Pro and Studio desktops... I get it... Financially it makes sense to give the greatest support to iPhone and iPad, and then to the Macbooks, iMac, and Mini. Cater to where the greatest number of sales are... But professional and power users are exceptionally left high and dry with hardware updates... Mac Pro users know that the "pro" in Pro stands for "prolonged waiting". Both the Mac Studio and Mac Pro are now TWO GENERATIONS behind... Behind the tablet!? I get the technical reason (yield and scalability of a new process) for putting the M4 inside a tablet first, but could they SERIOUSLY not even bump the "pro" machines to M3? I've been using a first gen M1 Studio since I finally replaced my old Hackintosh that got zapped by the transformer that fell into a sink hole in front of my place, and I am still happy with this machine... It runs well, but I also bought the literal lowest end version of the release version of the Studio... I'm in a far better place financially, and I was feeling like it was time to step up to a new one... I was quite impressed with it being able to easily fullscreen Baldur's Gate 3 at 5120x1440, and I was just as impressed running Palworld under CPU/GPU emulation (Wine+Rosetta handled executing x64 instructions on the ARM64 CPU, and Apple's GPTK did a stellar job translating the Direct X API to Apple's Metal). If a first gen M1 could do that, I felt ready to see what the newest chip could do. I was waiting for WWDC for an announcement that simply never came. I'll still wait for the M4. I want my upgrade to be worth the expense (and oh boy... With the Apple Tax, it'll be expensive). Definitely a PROlonged wait... I'm also getting quite disgusted at the absolute inability to upgrade anything anymore... Again, I understand the benefits of having RAM and storage be part of the SoC... Yes, it's blazingly fast, but there has been a long line of computers all through history that had differing tiers of memory speed. Nothing wrong with having fast SoC RAM, selectable only at purchase, but still include an externally facing memory I/O controller and RAM slots, to allow for slower but higher capacities for future upgrades. It's 100% a choice to not support this feature. Apple is all too happy charging a $200 Apple Tax on a measly 8-->16GB upgrade, or a 256GB-->512GB storage upgrade. It's absolutely obscene what Apple charges for bumps in RAM or storage. They couldn't do that if they had RAM slots. It's annoying how much I like using Mac OS, cause the company behind it is just plain awful. They've never returned Target Display Mode back to iMacs since moving to the 5K displays. The first gen 5K iMacs, like, I kinda get it. DisplayPort didn't yet support that resolution at full refresh rates, but the very next iteration DID support it... but to this day, nearly a decade of iMacs with STUNNING displays will never be able to be repurposed as beautiful monitors after their CPUs become long obsoleted. Just eWaste. Apple, the green company that loves to make eWaste. Apple loves recycling, cause they can pretend the Reduce and Reuse parts of the old slogan don't exist. Ugh. === On an entirely different subject than Rotten Apples... I really wish the place I worked for would hire another tech. When I started, we had 4 full time workers, 3 techs and a front desk person that handled more of the inventory and logistics stuff. Now we are down a tech, and the front desk person is semi-retired, down to 2 days a week. She's being retasked with logistics stuff from OUTSIDE our area, so her time is even less able to be utilized. While mostly holding on, occasionally, things will get busy, and things fall behind. Even when we are keeping up, it's just more stressful... Walkins, back room, phone support... Add occasional onsites and internal tech support, and it's easy to see where having 2 vs 3 people could be stressful. I still love this job. It's great, but I do come home a bit tired, a bit burned out... It's been approximately a year since I started my KSP instrument panel desk build. I ONLY JUST NOW finished the electrical work on that desk, and STILL need to take the old desk apart and replace it with the new one. (I'll try and have an update on that soon). It's just hard to do projects when all you wanna do is crash and veg out in front of youtube after a long day's work. I know part of it is just getting older. Less energy and all that... That's not even COUNTING my second part time job. I've always loved that job. If I could have done that full time, I would have, 100%, but it's typically only the scarcest of part time. Most months, I'd only do about 12-14 hours in a 3-4 week period... It's usually just good for a little extra spending cash. We just got orders for parts that we haven't done since October 2021! I'd been doing that job with far more hours during the pandemic, till parts shortages caught up with us... Now that work has become more hectic at my primary job, things picking up again at the part time job are becoming very... much... I can 100% handle both jobs, and I like both jobs, but at the same time, getting up at 8am, going to work at 9, leaving at 5 (sometimes 6) and grabbing a bite to eat, only to go and work another 3-4 hours at the machine shop makes for a day with no real free time. I do enjoy youtube videos while working... I like to put on stuff like documentaries and such, tech channels, whatever sound like a good listen. It's not like I get no me time while working that second job, It's just the timing was rough. I suppose I should try and sleep. I'm gonna force myself away from work and personal projects to spend time with family tomorrow... That's another thing being so busy robs from me... My parents are in their 70s. I would definitely like to spend all the time with them that I can. I know that time keeps ticking. You never know when your time will come... I just learned this week that a cousin of mine just lost his son in an oil rig accident. His son was only 24, about to get married. Just like that, gone. My cousin lives nearly across the country from me. The last time I remember seeing him, I was the older cousin, showing a little kid his first video game (an Atari 2600). Sure, there was occasional updates, but I feel like it wasn't even that long ago being shocked that this grownup was that little kid I showed my video games to... Now enough time has passed that his own kid grew up. I never met his son. Not once. I haven't been to the state where he lives since 1992, and the last time he was here where I live was the late 80s. Outside of pictures, I have not seen him in 32 years. Try to set aside a little time now and then for those you care about. If you don't, you might just find out time came up and passed you by. Don't let the years go by like that. You can't buy time.

And the leg has been reinstalled into the right desk segment. I just need a cover plate to close up the desk lighting outlet. That outlet is switched by the light switch on the right front desk leg. https://i.imgur.com/RKavg1y.mp4

Not big updates, but I redid the electrical for the right desk leg, cause I was unsatisfied with it. The light output has an internal strain relief, and will go to an outlet box that all the lighting can plug into. The outlet box now reuses the cords from the pair of power strips I got for the vertical riser posts, and i will attatch removable plugs to the end of those cords, which were cut down to length to save on cable clutter, and allow the cords to be threaded through holes in the desk. The old desk's long workbench power strip will now be located under the desk.the teo endmost outlets on that long power strip will power the leg outlets and riser outlets. Been busy with spring cleaning, so only did a bit with the desk's electrical. Work's been busy, so I haven't had much free time. Partly why I finally got the switches. Now is a good time, money wise, to splurge on parts. Might stop at the harware store tomorrow and try to find what I need to finish up the legs. I bought a miniature trim router for doing small work, like the other leg, and the openings I need to make for it's outlets. It should be notably faster than the dremel was. Depending on how easy it is to work with, I might go ahead and moint the CRTs I have in the left desk segment, while things are still dissassembled.

Minor update. The switch guards were cheap enough when ordered with the switches at the quantity discount, that I just opted for all switches to come with guards. Originally, I was gonna make my own guards... Then I was gonna order guards and only fill in every other odd switch... Like so: [_O_] O [_O_] O [_O_] Since every switch has guards, I figured I could use the guards saved by only filling in every other guard to provide the needed guards for my other switches. The thing is, I also have realized, The guards have cast bases, and so a switch with a guard and without will look visually different. I don't like that. Would it work? Yes... But these guards look so great, I WANT to fill in every space now. What I will do, is I will follow the manufacturer's milling guidelines to remove the guard from one side of some of the guards. This will permit them to butt up together, and form a continuous line of guards. The first guard is intact, and additional guards in a grouping are modified. [_O_] _O_] _O_] _O_] _O_] This ensures they all look the same, including the cast bases. This also means I won't have any leftover guards for the Case New Holland International toggle switches I got from my local Case IH farm implement dealer. As such, I have ordered a few additional guards for those CNHI toggles, since I had always planned to use them on the panel. It was worth it to spend a little more so every toggle has a guard, vs every other odd one.

Just had a coworker leave for another job. It's gonna be rough being down a person for the forseable future. Due to the nature of my work, there is no such thing as 2 weeks notice. We deal with customer data and communications, so once a person says they are on their way out, they are pretty much given their exit interview and escorted out. It took me 2 months to go through hiring. That's not including the time they collected applications. I JUST TODAY got the reproduction NASA style toggle switches for my KSP instrument panel... Just today... The day after I learn my workload is going to increase 50%, and my free time is probably going to lithobrake into the Mun...

They arrived! The toggle action feels SO GOOD! The tab levers are definitely metal! These things are top quality! If you want some for yourself, I got them from southbridge_massachusetts on ebay (can also reach out to Perihelion Design to buy direct). Today is Thursday... I started COMMUNICATING with him LAST THURSDAY! The turnaround was PHENOMENAL! HIGHLY recommended! this is how they came shipped. It seems to save space in the box. I can't wait to put these to use!

Oh wow! They shipped already! Like, not even tracking number waiting on a shipping label... They LEGIT shipped! I thought it sounded to me like the guy said he would need a little time cause he had to make them... That was THURSDAY! Either he had a few on hand and only had to make a portion of them, or he worked through the weekend to get these out! Very impressive! One thing that differs with these is that there are no double switch guards. I may need to pop some of these on my mill and basically machine out the corners and guards on one side, so that they can interlock. I want tight switch spacing... |O|O|O|O|O| <--This |O||O||O||O||O| <--Not this As you can see in the pics, the guards stick out a bit past the edge of the switch guard base. If I mill the diameter of the guard loop, then I can make strings of these that interlock with each other, and I think it'll look good. For my auxiliary Action Group panel (separate from the main panel), I'll have to mess with the shuttle style guards and just see how they look. Might do the wider spacing on those. All the action group and control toggles will be tied to digital inputs and rather than send a fixed state based on the toggle position, they will change the state for every toggle action. Basically, Turning the toggle on would act like pressing the associated key on a keyboard. Toggling it back to off would be the same as pressing the keyboard equivalent button again. I will have a button on my DSKY, probably called "State Inhibit", which will allow toggling of the switches without sending a command to KSP. This solves the problem of toggle positions not matching between different vessels. Last thing I want is to change vessels, and have all my solar panels retract cause a toggle was off on the previous vessel. Instead, the toggle remains in it's position, and the vessel state remains in it's state. I can still read the state of every command, so I can also do something like have a red LED that lights up of the toggle position is opposite the read state position. If I inhibit the toggle action, and flip the switch, the red light should go out, and the switch should now match my vessel configuration. If I switch to a vessel and need to react fast, I can still toggle the switches in the opposite orientations, and it'll still register. I don't *have* to correct the switch positions to match the vessel state. I just can if I want to. Makes for a much simpler to implement system. Allows me to correct vessel change state mismatch at my leisure, but still instantly react in an emergency vessel change. I'm actually really excited to have these switches on the way finally! It's been a long time, and I think things are gonna start feeling more real once things begin to come together! One thing I do know, is that making the control panel is gonna be an insane part of the project! I have several of the panels I plan to use, but i really also need to get it just right. I can only screw up so many times before I run out of panels to cut. Probably gonna be a lot of hand nibbling and filing. If I use power tools, I'll surely cut from the bottom, and be extra careful! Backlighting alone is going to be an endeavor of madness, especially if I want every switch to have different lighting zones!

Good news! I appear to have found a second source for NASA styled switches, and I am in active communication with them. The price is good, and I can get switches with the correct tab lever as well as my choice of Apollo or Shuttle style wickets (guards). The real choice now... Is Apollo or Shuttle style. Now that I'm finally at the point I can purchase, I need to commit to one style or the other. Tough choices! Hmm... I do like both styles, and every single person I've asked in person seems to prefer the Apollo style... I was considering doing 20 action groups using a mod. If I do that, maybe I can just put 10 shuttle style switches on an overhead panel with my Atmosphere Density meter and huge VFD. Much like the old ORDEAL box, it can be a "last second" addition to my console, and thus could justifiably "work" with a different style switch guard. That would let me enjoy the best of both worlds. I might consider that. I'd need: 22 Switches with Apollo Guards 10 Switches with Shuttle Guards I could order an additional 4 Apollo Guards by themselves, but I don't think I'll even need to do that at all if I am simply using every other guard to flank odd numbers of switches. 5 switches only need 3 guards. 3 switches only need 2 guards.