Buying a high-end monitor and then plugging it in with whatever cable came in the box is something most people do without thinking twice. HDMI is everywhere; the port fits, and the picture shows up, so everything seems fine. The problem is that there are plenty of issues that no one talks about. The cable and port you're using matter more than most people realize, and HDMI specifically has some limitations that aren't obvious from the outside.

Having your files safe somewhere on the network doesn't help much if a completely blank machine can't even see the network yet. Getting a dead computer back to the point where it can talk to anything needs to solve a hardware recognition problem before the operating system exists to solve it. Early NAS handled this surprisingly well, and understanding how they did it makes it easier to appreciate why modern tools, for all their efficiency, usually can't fully replace what those older systems got right.

You might just have a solution if you need an extra-tiny board for your do-it-yourself electronics projects. Moddo has made what it says is the "world's smallest" Arduino-compatible board, the Pinch.