Had a lot of time

In which the site owner is a bit lazy.

So I haven’t died, and I haven’t stopped working on systems, but I have stopped posting. This will be the “bullet point edition” of all the things I’ve done.

• Broken the CreatiVision. The clock circuit is totally b0rked and I managed to break a unique component on it. Current plan is to replace the clock circuit with a modern version. This is “work in progress”.

• Built another ‘Bee MultiROM and updated the documentation on the website. Much nicer now.
• Determined my VZ200 is very dead. Will need to open it up and diagnose what is wrong with it. Symptoms are some very odd graphics

No idea what any of this means.

• Passed the Amiga 1000 and 2000 on to another collector. They were big, and broken, and I realised I didn’t have the space to store them or the time to fix them.
• Built a new outside case for the CIAB Microbee. It looks great. When I can, I plan to borrow a Cricut from some friends of mine. I’ll then use it to make stencils so I can put recreation artwork on the side of the case.
• Serviced all the keys on the CIAB Microbee. What a horrible job that was. I got a pretty good pipeline working on them in the end.
• Ordered 5 x BlueSCSI v2 from JLCPCB. These came all assembled except for a few through-hole components. Swapped one. Sold two. These are awesome!.

• Purchased (For a very good price) another Microbee (A colour non premium model) with three Microbee Disk Systems. All presumed non working.
• Made an extremely janky connector to connect the new Microbee to one of my CGA to VGA connectors. Hey. It worked, OK?

• Purchased a Parker Brothers Merlin. Had one of these as a kid. They’re awesome! (It’s not too old! You’re too young!)

• Mounted the BlueSCSI in my Quadra 950. It’s now quieter but I need to buy some suitable fans to make it even quieter.

• Converted the first of the Microbee Disk units over to use a newer 10V rail and added a Gotek in a nice 3D printed shell. (Huge thanks to Shane for printing these for me. You are a champ!

• Replaced all the keys on the Colour Microbee. Man I hate those keys!

• Got a NeoGeo! This is a cartridge based arcade machine. I have since partially “consolised” it by adding an insulated sheet to the bottom, and getting a “SuperGun” adapter so I can run it from an ATX PSU. I have also found a suitable video scaler so I can run it on a modern display. This is so awesome! I even built a temporary joystick for it so I can play the only game I currently have. (Aero Fighters 2)
  (Another huge thanks to Shane for this too!)

• Got a Kung Fu Flash off my mate Matt. He even printed me a 3D case for it. This compliments my other multicart solutions nicely and means I have one for every c64 I own now.
• Got a Concerto Cart for my Atari 7800. This is good as I gave my old Atari 2600 to my dad (Who appreciates it very much)
• Upgraded the Amiga 600. I installed the Kickstart 3.2 ROM image to my ROM switcher (Unfortunately my KS1.3 has stopped working. I’ve got a bunch of new EPROMs so I’ll try burning a new version in the next few weeks), and installed a Workbench 3.2 on the CF “hard” disk.
• Installed WHDLoad on the Amiga 600. Loads of games that run directly from the Hard Disk 🙂
• Rebuilt the janky Colour Microbee video cable as a proper cable with connectors and everything!
• Rebuilt the rather unforgiving Apple IIgs video dongle as a proper cable with connectors and everything!

• Rebuilt the Amiga 600 PSU to use a better solution. I moved the output cable to the same side as the power switch and replaced the power cable with an IEC socket. This is so much more practical.
• Rebuilt the noisy Mac video cable solution I was using (That involved a dongle, a short 15 pin extension cable and a VGA extension cable) with a dedicated Mac video cable. This was made by getting an old VGA cable, cutting off one end and then incorporating all the gubbings from the dongle into the shell of a 15 pin connector. Now I have noiseless video directly from the Quadra.
• Made a cable to allow me to plug TTL (Eg Microbee) video sources into my Amiga 1081 monitor. Works fine, other than the picture being a bit big for the monitor. Initially I’d made this to plug into the 1084, but that doesn’t seem to sync properly.
• Tried fixing the Apple IIgs keyboard. Unfortunately the fix didn’t work and I suspect it has a bad keyboard encoder chip. I have lots of ADB keyboards, but I just liked the look of this one (Thanks Greg!) so I might see if I can source a replacement encoder somewhere.
• Tried making a “smart” video cable for the NeoGeo with a sync splitter. (LM1881). This just didn’t work at all. Will need to revisit with the scope on the desk

So not dead, just quiet 🙂