I Like 8 Bits and I cannot lie
Being a blog about my adventures in Retro Computing
New Pickups
Picked up two new items this fortnight. Commodore 1804S This is often considered the “holy grail” of Commodore monitors. It supports just about any signal you can throw at it, including composite, s-video and RGB. This one I found while at my local maker space, Artifactory, in the “Virtual Recycling” pile. It wasn’t quite “in” […]
Power Supply Build for the CreatiVision
AKA the Dick Smith Wizzard So I recently built a replacement PSU for my CreatiVision. I have a working PSU, but it’s always best to have a spare on hand. The original needs 9V 1A and 16V 250mA. Thanks to some help from another collector (Hi Tim!) and some basic research, I was able to […]
Bits ‘n Bobs
Wherein I potter for 2 weeks. Lots of little projects this time. I kept working on the BBC Micro. I made up one of my Microbee ROM switchers and installed it. I now have 16 different ROMs to choose from. I also made a “Atari to BBC” joystick adapter for all those games where I […]
BBC Micro – An Update
As per the last post, my BBC Micro lived again, thanks to a replacement PSU. Unfortunately with more testing, it became obvious that it was unreliable. Some times it would boot to BASIC. Sometimes it would hang on a cursor prompt. Some times it would hang on an error about a Drive Fault and some […]
What else have I been up to?
So, other than converting my CoCo to NTSC, I have been working on a while bunch of smaller projects, before and after. GBS Control Case I decided to put the GBS Control in a “real” case. To that end, I literally photocopied the base of the GBS Control, imported the image into CorelDraw, and started […]
Converting a PAL TRS Colour Computer to NTSC
When I got my CoCoSDC, I was surprised how many of the games out there relied on NTSC Artefact colour to generate either some or all colours. It was close to 80%, and even higher in the more commercial games. After a while I decided I wanted an NTSC system. As I had 3 CoCos, […]
Total Joystick Madness
I have been busy 🙂 Now I have all the different computers working, it was time to get interfaces for them so they can fulfil their prime purpose. To wit: Video Games! Texas Instruments TI 99/4A I have a PCB design ready to go for this, but in the meantime, I decided to make a […]
Hippo Gnu Ear
Well, it’s a new year and I’m still waiting on things I ordered in November 😀 Firstly, you’ll most likely have noticed I moved to a new host. There are a few “goodies” I can get with the new host, including plugins, so I have moved. Last year featured a LOT of PCB design and […]
A Whole Lotta Nothing
I’m not dead. Honest! It has, however, been a long time between posts. Unfortunately I haven’t been working on project work as much as I would have liked, and I spent a long time waiting for parts to arrive for projects. CreatiVision Controllers (AKA the Dick Smith Wizzard) The new PCBs arrived. It took me […]
Working on the Haul
Well, I have the “haul” of old computers, and I’ve been slowly working through them TRS-80 CoCo With the 4 I had, all were using RF, and I knew one worked and one definitely didn’t work. I started by doing an S-Video Mod on the first one I picked up. With 2020 hindsight, this was […]
I am always interested in your old systems! Consoles and Computers.