Leaded Solder
Posts
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Soaking it in with the SK-1100 Keyboard
If you’ve been following the Soggy-1000, my clone of the Sega SG-1000, then you know what it needs most of all is a keyboard. The original Sega SK-1100 keyboard is hard to find, but I still managed to luck out and get one at auction. Let’s plug it in and find out if it still works.
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A Mini5 Hello World
Yes, it is finally time to sit down with the mini5HA again. My goal was to figure out how to make a working program for CP/M using its built-in assembler, and I wasn’t going to give up until I had at least a “hello world.”
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Roll the Tape
The NEC Bungo mini5 PWP-5SX Japanese word processor that I’ve been working on this month came with an instructional VHS tape explaining how to use its near-infinite multitude of features. Here’s how I captured that tape.
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NEC's Tetris Processor
Tetris is a classic time-waster, both in and outside of the office. What good is any computing device if it can’t play this game? Tokyo System House certainly thought so, and ported it to the NEC mini5 line of CP/M-based word processors. Let’s preserve it for future generations and then see what it’s like!
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The Case of the Dead Mini5SX
In order to get a copy of Tetris for the NEC mini5 series of word processors, I had to buy it along with a whole word processor set from the previous owner. This LCD-based mini5SX is sleek, attractive, surprisingly heavy, and broken. Very, very broken. Let’s see if we can fix up this grey beast, and dump its ROMs.
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Mini5 Word Crusher
Used Japanese word processors have been a tempting siren for me for years, but I’ve avoided them so far due to the huge shipping weight and my general illiteracy in the language. What if those word processors could run CP/M and had a CRT? Ah, now that’s a different story.
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Bad video RAM had Sanyo seeing red
My PC-incompatible Sanyo MBC-555 is now working, although it still looks like it fell out of a garbage disposal. Beyond its nasty exterior appearance, the video output isn’t particularly good either. There’s red garbage all over the screen. I decided to tackle this problem first, before getting my hands, face, cat, and desk sticky with epoxy.
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Call In The PROs To See Things Clearly (X68000 PRO Part 4)
A small update on the X68000 PRO that was saved from an inglorious death over the course of the last three articles. It’s gotten a video configuration that works properly. I know, that’s way cooler than painting the case, right?
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An SG-1000 II gets a second chance
As we’ve covered before during the clone saga, the Sega SG-1000 was an unfortunate casualty of the Nintendo juggernaut. But surely the redesigned SG-1000 II would do better, right? No.
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Sanyo Triple Five
Even though I seem to have terrible luck with x86-based computers, that doesn’t mean I have to take it lying down. I can go out there and cause even worse things to happen to me. Like, for instance, buying a broken super-budget PC-incompatible from 1982.
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Another try at fixing the Magic Smoke SE
A few years ago, I got the “Magic Smoke” Macintosh SE. It was a pretty rusty machine, but otherwise looked okay inside. However, when I plugged it in after a (very) cursory inspection, it made ugly noises, failed to start, and then spat out a little bit of magic smoke – hence the name. Ever since then, it’s been a really small piece of furniture. I’m going to rip it apart and fix it.
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A Supergun for All Seasons
Playing arcade games at home. That’s the dream, isn’t it? Maybe get a little Columns action on the desk you usually use to do taxes? Perhaps you can even make a little test bench, get a bit of board fixing going? Yeah, that’d be really cool. Too bad nothing like that exists, and especially not well-tested and open-source. Wait, it does? And it is? Well, then, we’re just gonna have to build one.
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Soggy-1000 ][
![Thumbnail for 'Soggy-1000 ]['](/thumbnails/soggy-1k-v0.2-assembled-boardshot.jpg "Thumbnail for 'Soggy-1000 ]['")
Once I got the Soggy-1000 playing SG-1000 cartridges, the next thing to do was to extend it. In this phase of the project, we’ll take that leap from “interesting” to “slightly ridiculous,” by adding the feature I’m most excited about – at least until I get excited about a different one – the SK-1100 keyboard connector.
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SG-1000 Ways To Leave Your Original
The SG-1000, being Sega’s first home console, has appreciated quite a bit over the years. Its price is now faintly ridiculous, especially when you consider its successor, the relatively inexpensive Mark III. Luckily for us, this console is made out of off-the-shelf components, virtually all of which are also found in the ColecoVision. If only we knew someone who’d cloned the ColecoVision…
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More Memories of Pictures
Back when I did the recap, power supply recap, and trace repairs on the Bad ADB Mac LC, there was something missing. Even after all that work, I was only left with a measly 16 colours at 640x480 resolution. That’s not enough colours at all, but luckily it’s pretty easy to fix.
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