Leaded Solder

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• October 26, 2022

  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.

• October 20, 2022

  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!

• October 15, 2022

  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.

• October 9, 2022

  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.

• October 4, 2022

  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.

• September 24, 2022

  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?

• September 13, 2022

  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.

• August 23, 2022

  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.

• August 2, 2022

  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.

• July 12, 2022

  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.

• June 21, 2022

  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.

• May 20, 2022

  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…

• May 3, 2022

  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.

• April 12, 2022

  Bluer than velvet were her SCSIs

  

  If you need a SCSI hard drive for your old computer, there are a lot of great options becoming available for a solid-state substitute. A great one of those options is the BlueSCSI, and I’m not just saying that because I won a free one. It’s because I won a free kit, so I got to put it together myself.

• March 22, 2022

  Call In The PROs When You Can't Flop (X68000 PRO Part 3)

  

  With a new power supply and the entire insect population of Honshu removed from its case, the swamp-bogged X68000 PRO can finally start up, but can it boot floppy disks? In this exciting conclusion to the series, we’ll jump through a frankly ridiculous number of hoops – many of them ultimately proving to be unnecessary – in order to make some disks and find out.

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