Custom PC, Issue 118

Custom PC Issue 118I hinted last month that there were changes afoot at Custom PC, and this latest issue is the result: my regular two-page interview column has been replaced with Hobby Tech, a new four-page extravaganza celebrating the best of the hacker, maker and retrocomputing communities.

In other words: it’s a column where I get to waffle on about the sort of things I do for fun these days. While getting paid. What’s not to like?

It’s likely to be a couple of issues before the column gets into its full swing – the idea is that it will evolve into a 21st century update of Jerry Pournelle’s old column from BYTE magazine, which has long been one of my favourite pieces of content. I’m no Pournelle, but hopefully I can rustle up something that will keep the readers entertained each month.

So, onto the column itself. This month, the focus – as evidenced by the issue’s cover splash – is on the work I’ve done turning a Raspberry Pi into a low-cost NAS. Taking the form of a tutorial, this part looks at how I used Btrfs, SSH and a pair of external hard drives to create a low-cost, low-power destination for my backups and miscellaneous files. If you’re struggling with “page allocation failure” messages in your Pi’s kernel log, it also includes advice about that.

That’s only two pages, however, and Hobby Tech is bigger than that. So, there was room for a quick review of the excellent ExpEYES Junior developed by the Inter-University Accelerator Centre in New Delhi as an educational aid. Connecting to a USB port and driven by an open-source Python toolkit, the device acts as a programmable power supply, four-channel storage oscilloscope, microphone, analogue-to-digital converter, signal generator and more – and comes with the components required to perform 50 experiments.

Finally, for the retrocomputing enthusiasts, an explanation of how I turned a second-hand Amiga A1200 – purchased, incidentally, from Custom PC’s sister website bit-tech.net – into more than the sum of its parts. Those who follow me on Twitter will be aware of my work in that regard: fitting heatsinks to prolong the life, replacing the plastics and keyboard, upgrading the Kickstart ROMs, installing a CompactFlash hard drive and connecting the system to my home network.

If that sounds like something of a hodgepodge of topics, then that’s probably because it is; the link between them all is that they’re all subjects about which I am extremely passionate, and I hope that comes across in the column.

I’m very keen to get feedback on Hobby Tech, as is editor Ben Hardwidge: it’s a new direction for the magazine, and something of an experiment. Please, if you’ve read this month’s Custom PC, leave a comment with your thoughts either here or on the magazine discussion forum. Likewise, if you’ve got any ideas for topics or devices you’d like to see covered in future Hobby Tech columns, let me know!

Custom PC Issue 118 is available pretty much everywhere, but if it isn’t then grab a digital copy from Zinio or an equivalent service instead.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.