ilike8bits

Not a lot of “Productivity”

So despite starting several projects, I only got on successful project achieves this past week. Firstly, I received some ROMs to use with one of my Apple II clones, as it wasn’t received with them installed. Unfortunately the power supply has chosen now to fail so I’ll need to strip it and see what IContinue reading “Not a lot of “Productivity””

So I was quite unwell this week…

So what did your kids get you for father’s day? Mine gave me a cold! I had two days off work, and to be perfectly honest, I probably should have taken at least one more day off as well. Despite being “Death warmed up”, a friend put me onto something that had been dropped intoContinue reading “So I was quite unwell this week…”

A Weekend Off

I decided not to push things this weekend. I had some “job” related stuff this weekend so I wanted to take it easy. I still managed to get in some small project work. First project I worked on was I’m trying to set up a project to use an Arduino as a translator between Megadrive/GenesisContinue reading “A Weekend Off”

Being the Microbee

I got the PC85 Microbee working 😀 First up, I am, once again in debt to the Retro Communities to which I belong. The people over at both Microbee Technologies and MSPP (Especially Brad) who provided advice, pointers and general assistance as I got the second of my Microbees working. Now, the fault I wasContinue reading “Being the Microbee”

The PET Lives!

Liiife! Give my creation…. LIIIIFE! So today my SRAM arrived, really well packaged and very promptly (So hats off to ScribblyGum Technology for that) and I thought, since I won’t be able to use my workbench for the next 3 days, I’d have a stab at replacing the SRAM tonight. It was a battle toContinue reading “The PET Lives!”

Deliveries

I’ve put the Microbee away for a bit. I’ve done a lot of work on it, and it’s a LOT more stable. Not completely stable and I’m yet to work out why. (I’ve desoldered the connectors between the boards and completely replaced them. I’ve also replaced the ROM socket for the IC27, which was greenContinue reading “Deliveries”

2 Bee or not 2 Bee

Couldn’t resist THAT bad pun 🙂 So I’ve got a couple of days of leave, and now that my wife has plied me with Yum Cha, and I’ve done my first non retro repair around the house, I thought it was time to start working on another one of my retro-computers. Sorry, not the PET.Continue reading “2 Bee or not 2 Bee”

Some Experiments Fail

Today I tried a little experiment and it almost worked. Unfortunately it didn’t work well enough. I like the size and feel of gamepads these days, despite being raised on traditional joysticks. In the past I have hacked a couple of Genesis / MegaDrive controllers, purchased cheaply on AliExpress but I have always found themContinue reading “Some Experiments Fail”

Of Bees and PETs

Another quickish update on two of my systems. Microbee The Microbee is happily working now. I swapped out an underpowered PSU for a more “meaty” one and now it’s booting reliably and is able to load games off my nearby Android phone. I just use the built in Android playback app to playback WAV recordingsContinue reading “Of Bees and PETs”

Another update on the Microbee

So I have now tested the Microbee with software and I can report I have successfully loaded several old tape games. It did highlight two issues: Two of the keys were not registering at all. I carefully desoldered them but couldn’t work out how to get into them at first. They seemed quite different toContinue reading “Another update on the Microbee”