About Daths Garage

First of all I have to be honest with you! Daths Garage is not a garage or in a garage – at least not at the moment. There used to be a garage and there will hopefully be one in the future. 
The idea to DathsGarage.dk came late in the night, like many of my other ideas. A while ago my wife and I were assembling a puzzle called Grandad’s Workshop. That little puzzle reminded me about how much I like to be in my workshop or garage surrounded by gadgets and old stuff that I’m not sure what to use for. A place where I can relax, work on the projects that I like and just do whatever I feel like without asking anyone. This is my man cave. With Daths Garage I will try to open up my workspace and share my passion about hacking, making, electronics, retro computing, LEGO, programming, wood working and gadgets with the rest of the (online) world and share what I’m working on and hopefully you will like it and maybe learn something. Don’t expect to see new updates every week. I will not make updates on a regular basis like other bloggers or influencers but only when I have interesting new stuff to show and when my time permits. This work is done on a hobby basis in my spare time.

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Another association the puzzle gave me, was that many big American technology companies that I admire have been started in an old garage. This is also the reason that I feel very innovative when working in my garage.

The history before Daths Garage goes far back to my childhood. Below you can get a little insight to the history of the places that I used to have.  

My current workshop

At the moment I live in an apartment where there is a large basement under the entire building the same size as our apartment. One of the rooms, around 4 by 4 meters, has been adopted as my workshop with a small workbench and a lot of shelving for storage of LEGO, retro computers and a lot of different components and projects. It’s a great place because it’s near our apartment, has a great temperature because the room includes all the pluming for the central heating in the building and it’s dry and light. Unfortunately the room is not only mine but shared between the other residents in the building. So other people are also using it for storage and I need to clean everything up after myself to let them use the room as well. 

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Dad’s Workshop

As a child I grew up in a house in the countryside with lots of space both inside and outside. It had a big garage that was used as my dad’s workshop. Here I got the interest in taking things apart to learn how they worked or to figure out how to fix them if they didn’t work. I have disassembled countless tape recorders, cassette radios, VHS machines, old computers, copiers etc. It was a great place always with a great temperature because the wood and oil boiler to heat the house was placed here. Our cat and dog loved to stay around because of the temperature and always wanted to see what my dad and I were doing there. 

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My first garage

When I grew older I moved together with my girlfriend to a small apartment. There was a tiny unused garage next to the building that was not used by anyone, because it was only big enough to house a very small car. I agreed with the landlord that I could use the garage for a symbolic monthly amount. The room was cold, dark, leaky and eventually I found out that mice had been chewing on the wires of some of my equipment. But still it was a nice place for having my stuff and to play around with different projects which there wasn’t room for in the apartment. 

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The tiniest storage space

Afterwards I moved to another apartment in a bigger city where I was about to start on my education. Here I only had a tiny storage space in the basement of the building measuring like two cubic meters. I had to get rid of a lot of my equipment like the DDE Supermax backplane cage in order to fit it in the storage space and every time I needed something from it I had to move a lot of things around in order to get to what I needed. 

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The hidden attic

The next apartment I moved to was a small apartment under the roof of an old building. It didn’t come with any storage room – at least I thought. After a while I was wondering what was hidden behind the small ceiling hatch in the entrance. What I found was a great attic filled up with junk from former residents. Unfortunately there was nothing of value and no old electronics stuff. The best find was an old Ikea Catalog from 1984 and some old newspapers. After I had thrown all the stuff out and installed a walkway and put up some plastic under the roof I could use it as a storage room for my growing LEGO collection and electronics equipment. But since I could not stand upright because of the height it wasn’t a suitable place for working on my projects.

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My dream garage

The future plans for my workshop or garage is to buy our own house where we don’t have to share the place with anyone else. One of my big priorities is that the house needs to have a basement, workshop, shed or garage that can be used for my workshop.
The optimal solution would be a place that is insulated, dry, heated, electricity installed and with plenty of room for the workshop itself with the following equipment:

• A workbench with a tool board on the wall
• A white board for brainstorming, schematics and sketching
• Oscilloscope/logic analyzer, multimeter and multiple adjustable laboratory power supplies
• Storage shelves for my growing retro computer collection
• Storage shelves for boxes with electronics components and tools
• Room for my 3D printer and CNC engraer
• A cozy corner with a couch and The Circuit Board Table
• Hopefully enough space for my LEGO Train layout