Several journeys around Orkney

I’ve been in the Orkney Islands for several days, departing from Scrabster (Near Thurso) with stays in St Margaret’s Hope, Kirkwall and somewhere between Finstown and Tingwall. Total journey length including ferries, busses, walking and the world’s shortest commercial flight : 516 km. More to follow.

De-capping ICs for fun and profit, but mostly fun.

Some time back, a friend @codfishcatfish was building a GPS disciplined oscillator for radio measurements. Part of the circuit uses a MAX232 device to interface the low voltage digital signals to a PC serial port. He found his cheap (from eBay) MAX232s got very hot and failed in use. It was obvious the devices were …