Embedded systems talking guy in Toronto (the Canadian one)
He/him. Searchable.
SparkFun Retired Products Archive Reference
In late 2024, SparkFun Electronics relaunched their website. They deleted roughly 20 years of archived product information, along with all associated datasheets, schematics and tutorials. Luckily, the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine has good records of the site, and I was able to recover links to 5934 deleted products. So here's the list:
https://scruss.com/blog/2025/03/13/sparkfun-retired-products-archive-reference/
Naturally, I spent so much time this weekend finding old links, archiving relevant files, dumping chips, checking that the GAL dump seemed reasonable, redrawing the schematic in KiCAD, and figuring out how one would reverse-engineer the board in KiCAD… that I forgot to test the chips.
I also don't even like the MCS-51 architecture that much, so I'm not sure why I did all this.
During 1 of 3 visits to Apex Surplus at Supercon, I found this tube of six Signetics SC80C31A chips from 1987. The tube was in the back yard, but in good shape - so who knows if they work or not.
To test them, I found an old board - an MCM51 Rev. A board from my alma mater, McMaster University. Designed by Ken Frost in the ECE department in 1994, this was my first MCS-51 board in undergrad in 2004.
I found schematics and docs, and dumped the ROM and GAL - all posted at https://github.com/rglenn/MCM51A
Sad to hear that Creatron Inc. closed their College Street store in Toronto yesterday, and are moving to online-only.
Even sadder to hear that the founder, Lawrence, passed away at the beginning of June. Hadn't seen him in years - I assumed he had retired after the North Toronto store closed, and I'm sad I won't get to chat about electronics with him again.
In case you missed it, yesterday I shared a very geeky blog post about IMUs and getting the highest sample rate when they're connected via I2C:
https://bitbanksoftware.blogspot.com/2024/08/maximum-i2c-imu-sample-rate.html
Need a USB hub with per-port power control, for reasons. Had trouble finding a currently-made one, so I started designing one. As you do.
I should have trusted the ewaste gods more. A very industrial-looking hub just appeared in the bin at work, and on disassembly, seems to have a power switch for each port. Very promising.
Stewart Russell
Taggart
Larry (Mr.Optimization)