Leaded Solder
Posts
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Lord of the Sord
Even after so many years of delving into Japanese 80s computers, there’s still some undiscovered frontiers waiting for me. Early on in my studies, I had heard stories about the Sord M5 and its Western VDP. Through the help of a good friend, I was able to get ahold of one, and then the first of many clone projects began.
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The VTech Socratic Method
We’ve had a lot of fun with VTech’s computers in the past on this blog. Usually, they’re relatively spartan computers with limited functionality, but they did make something very interesting in the late 80s. The Socrates is their hybrid video game console/computer design from 1988, and today we’ll start tearing into it.
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Let's say scram to SCART
Back when I was putting together the Minigun supergun, my project progress was halted for months by lack of a cable. Of course, that Mega Drive 2 SCART cable did eventually arrive – the fourth one I ordered – but in the meantime, I got frustrated. And when I get frustrated, I tend to build PCBs.
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Let's Make A Space Shooter With Nintendo Family BASIC
I picked up a complete Nintendo Family BASIC package for my freshly composite-modded Famicom. Let’s see if I can remember enough BASIC to take advantage of this package and build a horizontally-scrolling space shooter game. Oh, and fix the cartridge first, of course.
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BlueSCSI Goes Outside
While the BlueSCSI is great inside an old Mac, what if they were also great outside of one? The external DB25 form factor of the BlueSCSI v1 intrigued me, so I built one – the hard way.
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Junior Senior, Can't Defeat
Everyone gets everything they want. I wanted the cheapest Atari 2600 Jr on eBay, and for my sins, they sold me one. Brought it to my front door like parcel delivery. It was a real choice console, and when it was over, I still wanted a couple more.
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Building my own mechanical keyboard for the CoCo 1
Yep, it finally happened. The backwoods repair that I did to my Tandy TRS-80 Colour Computer’s keyboard membrane failed. Turns out that garden-grade self-adhesive copper tape and some electric paint is not a lasting replacement. Let’s do something that will last a little longer.
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Ascending Mount FujiNet
In case you haven’t heard of it, FujiNet is an ambitious open-source community project. Its intent is to be the only peripheral you will ever need to get for your old computer. That’s a lofty goal if ever I’ve heard one. I’ve been in and out of the project over the last few years, but I hadn’t actually gotten (or finished) any FujiNet hardware. Let’s revive my troubled CoCo1 with a cartridge that does it all.
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A PC-6001mkII keyboard replacement
My NEC PC-6001mkII has a very spotty keyboard. The captive-dome switches inside are too corroded or dirty to work properly, a common affliction of the model. Luckily, honet, a hobbyist in Japan, has produced a replacement PCB for the PC-6001mkII keyboard named P6KBPCB. I finally got my hands on one, and I’m going to install it.
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Do I have a Bad Adam?
What do you do when you get a diagnostics cartridge that doesn’t work? Make your own, to make sure your computer isn’t too sick to be diagnosed. And then you can diagnose the diagnostics. Why, how do you spend your Friday nights?
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A Backup Papicom
When you love a computer, sometimes you have to buy a second one of that computer, especially if it’s cheap. My justification? I wanted a good sacrificial test platform on which to do a bunch of internal PC-6001 mods, and I didn’t want to worry about frying my beloved first PC-6001. So, of course what I did was: pick up one that’s in better condition than my “good” one.
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You're telling me there's 64 Nintendos in there?
Once, I had a Nintendo 64, and now I have another. The new one is from a different country, and sometimes there’s a period of adjustment. Adjustment, and maintenance. Also, I build a bootleg cartridge.
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Oya, I've heard of mega-ROMs
Konami made some of the best games for the MSX computer platform. Unfortunately, the market being what it is, those cartridges have become expensive collectibles rather than cheap games, which takes all the fun out of it. Before we can build a bootleg cart, we need to understand Konami’s unique mapper.
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Turbo Typin'
Times are tough for the Sharp X1turbo community. While keyboards used to be thriving in the used market, nowadays whole families of hungry junk hoarders can go years without a single ping on their Yahoo! Auctions watch lists. We gotta do what we can to save the keyboards that we have.
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Giving my PC-6001 a LIFT
Most software for the NEC PC-6001 was sold on tape cassettes. Tapes are great, but they require a lot of patience. I do strongly prefer the modern conveniences of floppy disk and ROM cartridge. What do you mean those aren’t “modern?”
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