Electronics hobby blog

Backing up a mini laptop with Clonezilla before installing Ubuntu

ezContents 18 March 2026

Sometimes a backup is just a good idea.
And sometimes it is the only thing standing between you and a painful reinstall.

In this case I had a small mini laptop running Windows 11 Pro that I wanted to use for Ubuntu and later for Home Assistant experiments. Normally I would just shrink the Windows partition, install Linux alongside it, and move on.

But this machine had a problem.

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Upgrading keychain with XIAO RA4M1 microcontroller

ezContents 25 April 2025

Mini Slot Machine with LCD and microcontroller

Today we are transforming this mini slot machine keychain into a digital version with an LCD screen.

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SDrive-MAX for Atari 8-bit computers

ezContents 23 December 2024

The Atari SDrive-MAX is a floppy disk emulator for the Atari 8-bit computers like 800XL or 130XE. It can replace your disk drive and cassette program recorder.

atari
retro

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3D Printing a Holographic Lithophane Logo

ezContents 24 September 2024

Creating a Lithophane Lamp Cover from a Logo Using White PLA on a Print Bed with Holographic Effect.

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How to TM1638 with Arduino Uno

ezContents 12 May 2024

A short tutorial on how to get the TM1638 module up and running by using the Arduino IDE and a library.

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Original Xbox 2TB SATA Hard disk upgrade

ezContents 28 August 2023

This blog post covers how to upgrade your hard disk in a soft modded OG Xbox to 2TB. It assumes that your system is already softmodded.

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Floppy disk notcher addon

ezContents 23 August 2023

3D print your own 5 1/4 inch floppy disk notcher add-on.

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Raspberry Pi Pico W Micropython Quickstart

ezContents 23 July 2022

To start with MicroPython development on the Raspberry Pi Pico W follow the steps below.

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Original Xbox softmod

ezContents 30 May 2022

Softmodding your original Xbox has a lot of advantages. You can run homebrew applications, run emulators for retro consoles, install a larger hard disk and run backups of your games.