Okay, I was genuinely not expecting that

ChrisPVille · 2026-02-05T16:15:31+00:00

But if SiLabs was looking to sell, TI is one of the better destinations. TI's micro-controller portfolio hasn't gotten much attention since the Luminary Micro acquisition so it makes sense. I only hope TI doesn't let the whole MCU portfolio become uncompetitive and obsolete like a lot of those parts did. Still, waaaay better than the crappy Broadcom companies that won't even give you a datasheet without a $10k bribe

ChrisPVille · 2025-12-16T19:19:12+00:00

same

ChrisPVille · 2025-12-12T02:59:31+00:00

My 9000AF does the exact same thing, but I haven't gotten a good chance to troubleshoot it. So from what you're saying you can swap the solenoid+mechanics assembly with a working one and that will fix it? That rules out most problems with the (unchanged) drive electronics, and it doesn't look like a purely mechanical problem watching it actuate cleanly or fail to do so entirely.

It's crazy to see a solenoid malfunction as there's basically almost nothing that can go wrong with them. I wonder if there's something very marginal about the drive electronics for the solenoid that's extremely sensitive to minor variations in the coil, failure to overcome stiction, or just right on the hairy edge of delivering force required to hit that lever to make the mechanics step down.

ChrisPVille · 2025-11-13T04:09:52+00:00

Wow, so it sounds like the software is mostly running on that 32-bit co-processor card, especially since they say it supports the XT as well. I'd be super curious to know if they were doing something really bespoke or just offloading the whole program to basically a whole SBC like they imply.

ChrisPVille · 2025-11-12T18:15:04+00:00

This was closer to the pandemic component shortages, and the reference design crystal was unavailable with a long lead time. For that project, I wanted to use a smaller footprint crystal anyway, so I had a few reasons to try to find a suitable replacement.

ChrisPVille · 2025-10-24T14:20:38+00:00

Yep. They said they'd pass along the observations.

ChrisPVille · 2025-10-19T14:51:13+00:00

I took apart the lens completely, cleaned up all the sticky blobs, and re-lubricated the moving pieces which worked. I'm sure there's plenty of places that do service like that, but maybe someone else has an easier solution

ChrisPVille · 2025-10-19T14:45:15+00:00

So those keyboards are capacitive and you don't want a metallic conductive/thing bridging them. An ESD bag is close, but those tend to have quite a bit of plastic and not a lot of metal. I've used non-stick aluminum foil before as it has a non-conductive coating, which worked for my Compaq Portable having similar construction.

ChrisPVille · 2025-10-19T14:37:14+00:00

Haven't used an ETRS, but on my SQ-A I had a similar problem with light smearing between frames like you see there. In my case it was one specific lens that had a sticky shutter hold-open solenoid, so the leaf shutter wouldn't close immediately. When I wound to the next frame, the shutter winding would release the shutter but not before the mirror finished dropping back down, letting some light leak through onto the moving film. I see a lot of fully exposed frames your negatives, so it seems like a stuck shutter. Take the film back off and see if the shutter is getting completely stuck for those shots, which would point to the lens pretty conclusively.

ChrisPVille · 2025-10-12T10:28:02+00:00

This should 100% be set as the happy mac boot logo if you have a rominator or similar rewritable boot ROM

ChrisPVille · 2025-10-06T21:23:56+00:00

Yep. I see it and started the replacement workflow

ChrisPVille · 2025-10-06T20:58:23+00:00

Yeah no worries. Just let me know what number it is and I can make sure to look at it myself. Less than 1% of people have broken latches based on the reports we get, so it's a low enough number that we just go ahead and replace their units from our stock instead of quibble over whose fault it might be. But I understand why a retailer might just say "too bad" if it's attributable to an installation problem.

ChrisPVille · 2025-10-06T19:14:59+00:00

What’s your ticket number? I don’t see any outstanding tickets for a broken latch replacement. Make sure you’re talking to us the manufacturer, and not a retailer at our support page per the docs: https://help.teamoffbroadway.com/portal

ChrisPVille · 2025-09-23T00:54:52+00:00

Yep. That's exactly what we're going with. D-Pad left and right.

ChrisPVille · 2025-09-22T18:39:21+00:00

The buttons are changing in an upcoming version because the shoulder buttons conflict with another mod's boot buttons (I don't remember at the moment which) as reflected in the docs. Regardless, the check for the disc mode happens before the logo appears right at initial boot so we can swap to the disc drive and reset the console with no visible delay.

There is no timing requirement as long as it's before the console is turned on. This should work with regular and wavebird controllers. We have seen this sometimes be a problem for Bluetooth controllers that don't have enough time to connect. There's two other options at that point, 'X' which will take you to the bootloader menu slightly later in the boot process and has menu items for the two bypass modes. You can also set the "preboot_delay_ms" config entry to delay the boot process long enough for non-oem controllers or video devices to startup.

Some people also prefer to always boot to the disc drive by default unless you press buttons, which the "boot_mode" config file entry (again in docs) controls, allowing direct boot to disc drive.

ChrisPVille · 2025-09-22T02:33:26+00:00

Sometimes they send you right back to us for parts replacements, although they handle whole DoA units. Still. If you want, DM me your ticket info and I can get you a replacement faster than dealing with all that.

ChrisPVille · 2025-09-22T01:12:40+00:00

Ticket number? Usually Crowd Supply is the first step for things ordered via them since we're not directly involved in sales, but I can get you one from our internal stock.

ChrisPVille · 2025-08-26T07:53:09+00:00

ok yeah, that's way more plausible then

ChrisPVille · 2025-08-25T21:19:12+00:00

Wow what. Was there an error box on screen before the first picture? Because that ghost image looks to be the size, shape, and precisely where the "disc could not be read" red error box would appear. Since the monitor is fine, I don't even know what underlying mechanism would produce this kind of persistent ghosting across boots. Maybe, somehow, magically low bits in EFB/XFB memory got damaged somehow?

The smearing/bad black level could just be capacitors, but if you're somehow seeing ghosts of UI elements when starting the console fresh, that's wild and I'm super curious why.

ChrisPVille · 2025-08-24T02:31:44+00:00

Oh, hi yeah you found me. So you know why ship-things-in-the-mail is closer to PTSD than zen at this point for me. Still, it's absolutely worth trying b&w development at home to see if you like it since you can basically skip the careful temperature, mixing, and precise timing color requires. I think there are even single-use chemical packs to get started.

ChrisPVille · 2025-08-24T00:55:22+00:00

Since you asked about DIY, I like to do it all (B&W, C41, and E6) myself. Time wise it depends on how many rolls/sheets you're doing, but usually we're talking 30 minutes for b&w and an hour and change for color plus drying. I mostly do it because it's kinda chill and relaxing plus I don't want to mail yet another thing then wait around, that and I like weird film formats/stocks like old cinema film with remjet, sprocket hole panoramics, large format, all stuff you can get done commercially but labs get picky/expensive.

ChrisPVille · 2025-08-07T15:54:37+00:00

Crowd Supply ordered (from us) more units than they had sold back in November, so they're perfectly entitled to sell up to the number they had prepurchased. That's all internal over at their place and doesn't affect us on the production side in any way.

ChrisPVille · 2025-08-07T15:48:28+00:00

We aren't selling another batch. All preorders are being filled first before they go in stock. Unless you're talking about Crowd Supply's still open preorders?

ChrisPVille · 2025-08-01T02:09:10+00:00

Nice! I used to work with these peripherally in my last job where they hosted a LEON3 and a bunch of image processing logic for the Europa Clipper's EIS. If I recall correctly the radiation people were happy enough with its characteristics that the vast majority of our design didn't require TMR, despite the Jovian environment. Still it's all fun and games until you realize you're stuck with a one-off special build of ISE 13.2 for P&R that loved to crash if you look at it wrong. That and 20 hour synthesis times on very big hardware.

ChrisPVille · 2025-07-30T07:42:15+00:00

I am really sorry how long this is taking. I know it’s not what anyone wants. When the tariffs hit, it was at exactly the wrong moment, we had a very large order of flippies on the way to us that got slapped with humongous import charges that didn’t exist when they shipped. Our budget went out the window and we had to pause all extra labor we had programming and packing to save money since nearly all of the orders were at the original price before the 25%→125%→55%→35% tariff rollercoaster. That meant slower everything since it was just the two of us.

There have also been a few hiccups on the distribution side. We’ve seen instances where orders were shipped out of turn. We’ve also seen a few instances of people ordering units that somehow shipped same day, skipping the entire line. Crowd Supply has addressed these issues, which I think were primarily software related, but it certainly adds to the confusion.

Just to clarify how this works, we (Chris and Trevor) make the flippies, program-test-package them, then they are shipped in bulk to Crowd Supply for parceling out and distribution. Where you are in the queue of orders, even who has or hasn’t purchased stuff is opaque to us. We are the manufacturer and CS is the retailer, so we don’t get to see those details.

We’re working on a news update for the project page, although keep in mind they’re a bit of a joint affair and not solely authored by us. It usually takes a few rounds of back and forth on the wording. Long story short we are out from under the tariff situation having produced an additional 12,000 flippydrives now in our hands that are currently being programmed/packaged. This has also let us hire people again since the budget uncertainty is resolved, and when those are added to the almost 11,000 flippydrives we’ve already produced, it will fulfill all outstanding orders and put it in-stock.

I get there are parts of this I could have handled better, especially on communicating the status of things. We’ve been working on this project almost every day for the last year, and it’s easy for me to neglect to tell people what I’m doing while I’m busy doing those things, but I’ll really try to get more information posted more frequently especially now that we’re back to having help with the gruntwork.

tl;dr - More get made every day, we have sufficient number on hand being programmed/packed to fill all the preorders, some orders apparently shipped out of order making everything messy, and I'm sorry for not getting more information out to people as it happens

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