If you're new to the forum or the scene, come say hi here!
Stop quoting this post I don't need the constant notifications THANKS
Hey everyone — long intro warning (like huge!! Extra extra but thats me!)
Hey! This place is awesome! You already know your boy Nacho Macho had a link, and you’re doing exactly what I’ve been stacking up projects to do. I don’t know how far you’ve gotten yet, but I definitely need a smidgen of help (the great people never become great without others ).
So here’s the 411 about me.
I’ve been taking things apart literally since before I can remember. My mom said I used to climb up on my grandparents’ farmhouse roof in Romania just to take my toys apart so I could see how they worked!!
So naturally… I took everything apart.
I don’t know about some of y’all, but I’ve personally been around long enough to use Bleem! as an emulator before emulators were really a thing. (Yes, I still have OG copies/backups on one of my old laptops and DVDs. And if you know emulator history, they actually had something that was legally legit and basically made systems absolutely buyable — which of course made enemies.)
Originally, I was a diesel mechanic and built PCs on the side (yes, before building PCs was cool ). But I couldn’t stay a mechanic forever. I went back to my mentor — who I originally asked to mentor me in electronics engineering when I was 17 — and told him I needed to move fully into electronics. My love for it was deeper, and I didn’t want to wake up at 65 feeling unfulfilled.
So within the past two years, I went from fixing electronics on the side to full-blown mad scientist mode. (Whether the “genius” part applies depends on who you ask — but I’ve been called Tony Stark on Reddit, and someone said my room looks like Dexter’s Laboratory… minus the sister )
Right now I’ve got:
A few 3D printers — including building a Voron from hell that is gonna be 95%aluminum parts
About 2½ CNC machines (the half is becoming a big all-metal monster and is almost done)
Three 3D scanners (could use help dialing these in):
2× Microsoft Sense RS300
1× 3DMakerPro Seal Lite with Smart Handle
Tablets, laptops, PCs
A thermal camera for electronics(recent)
A trinocular microscope (recent pickup)
Waiting on an electronics analysis machine (former lab unit)
Multiple soldering and microsoldering setups including a Weller WX1 (finally found a wand cheap, thank god)
An Achi IR6500 BGA machine
Working on two Mitsubishi MoveMaster II RM-501 industrial robotic arms
Yes — I named them Honjo and Yoshi if you know Japanese history
A decent collection of gaming systems focused on advanced modding and preservation
I also recently picked up an HPE ProLiant DL380 server — Gen10 internals in a Gen9 shell. It’s loaded with drives but light on RAM and currently only has one processor. My goal is eventually to host OG games that no longer get support — strictly as a community preservation project.
Which brings me to something I care strongly about:
I genuinely don’t like piracy when it’s just stealing with no intent to support the developers. I personally try to own at least one real copy of anything I run or preserve. Let’s be honest — people who pirate games blindly are a big reason modders and preservation communities get so much hate. Just because I want full control of my hardware doesn’t mean I support disrespecting the people who built the games we love. As an engineer, I always respect the devs and believe they deserve real sales when their work is enjoyed.
Anyway — excited to be here and looking forward to learning, contributing, and collaborating with everyone.
I’ve also recently picked up a few interesting platform pieces for research — including three ES (engineering sample) chips and a PC clone of a Titan system. My interest there is strictly hardware analysis, documentation, and preservation-style work — understanding platform architecture, thermals, power behavior, and long-term reliability rather than anything sketchy.
I’m also waiting on a pretty serious FPGA PCIe card so I can start doing deeper hardware interface and custom logic experiments. I’ve collected a lot of rare mod PCBs along with firmware and schematics for many of them — I’m big on preservation and reverse-understanding how things were built so that knowledge doesn’t get lost over time. And iv got so much more but this post is already uhhhh extra extra lol and you can directly hmu on Reddit or Discord so just look up the same SN
Thanks again ya'll
Cat N. Aka RestingElf
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