Schrödinger’s Cable
The short PCIe ribbon was missing—until it turned up with the packaging.
Record date Sep 26, 2026 · Published
The AI HAT+ was ready to join the stack, but its supplied 30 mm PCIe ribbon initially appeared to be missing. It was eventually found taped to or with the packaging. The project immediately had a name for it: “Schrödinger’s Cable.”
The joke stuck because that tiny interconnect mattered. The camera’s longer ribbon and the HAT’s short PCIe ribbon had different jobs, and having both on the bench did not make them interchangeable.
By the end of the session, the HAT was level on its spacers and the cooler had clearance. We stopped there, with power-on validation explicitly pending. Finding the cable solved the inventory mystery; proving the accelerator worked would wait for the next session.