Posts tagged "retrochallenge"

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The last ride of PC88 colour video

After a respin of the PC88 colour video board, the PC8801mkII now has excellent digital colour video out.

thumbnail for "A mystical journey to PC8801mkII colour video"

A mystical journey to PC8801mkII colour video

I’ve been using the monochrome video cable on my PC88 ever since I built it. Colour video was a little more complicated, so I ended up designing a bunch of adapters to try and get it to work. I’m happy to announce that one of those adapters has finally worked!

thumbnail for "PC98 - New floppy board, sound 'fixed,' more testing"

PC98 - New floppy board, sound 'fixed,' more testing

Now that the PC98 can load a game off a flash drive, there’s a lot more parts of it I can test. Today, I spent a few minutes putting together a new revision of the floppy board and inspecting the computer.

thumbnail for "Floppy adapter board works for the PC98!"

Floppy adapter board works for the PC98!

After I designed the first version of my PC88 floppy board, I thought it would be fun to put one together for the PC98 as well. Why do I need an adapter for a computer that already has 3.5” floppy drives? The PC9821AP2 I own has a 26-pin floppy drive connector, like a mid-90s laptop, and most standard IBM PC style floppy drives have 34.

thumbnail for "Revenge of the PC-8801mkII floppy adapter board"

Revenge of the PC-8801mkII floppy adapter board

In the last entry, I found myself with a working adapter board to allow a 3.5” floppy drive (like a Gotek) to work with the NEC PC8801mkII. This liberated me from having to source, organize and maintain 5.25” floppy disks, and opens a large library of software for this computer without having to hunt through the used market. However, like all good things, there were a lot of bugs with the old adapter.

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PC-8801mkII floppy adapter board

I wanted to get a Gotek working on my PC88, and after seeing that there were a lot of Japanese hobbyists who had managed to get an HxC floppy emulator working, decided it must be possible - even if not simple.

thumbnail for "SparcStation 1+ - have keyboard, will error"

SparcStation 1+ - have keyboard, will error

In a previous installment of the SparcStation 1+ saga, I got the machine to present a serial console to one of my other old computers, but couldn’t get any video out of the video card or boot to an actual operating system.

thumbnail for "Super Famicom Repair-O-Rama!"

Super Famicom Repair-O-Rama!

I bought a large lot of Super Famicoms off of Japanese auction for cheap, and set about trying to repair them. Almost all of them had problems.

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The C64 is alive!

A power supply arrived from Ray Carlsen, and it works great. I spent the time while I was waiting by soldering a really bad video cable. I only managed to melt one DIN plug in the process!

thumbnail for "Building a keyboard adapter for the early PC8801. (Part 1 - Research)"

Building a keyboard adapter for the early PC8801. (Part 1 - Research)

If all goes well, I will soon be the owner of an NEC PC-8801mkII “Model 30.” The platform is famous in Japan, as later models of the PC88 featured a ton of independent games, including many from developers who would go on to create games that were popular worldwide (Thexder, Snatcher and Ys all got their start on this platform). It also has a lot of trash, but neither of these things are interesting to me right now. I’d be happier just getting the computer to work (not least, because as a non-SR mkII, there are very few games I can enjoy on it anyway).

thumbnail for "Reassembling the Amiga 2500, Part 1 - Hard Card"

Reassembling the Amiga 2500, Part 1 - Hard Card

Things are starting to get hectic again with real life, but there was still some time recently to work on the Amiga 2500. My objective was simple: get the machine back together into a working box again so it is no longer spread all over my workbench.

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Commodore A501 memory expansion battery removal

When I first got my Amiga 500, it wouldn’t boot. Suspecting something was wrong with the A501 512K memory expansion, I pulled the card, at which point it did boot. It didn’t take me long to realize that battery corrosion had killed it.

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SparcStation 1+ - setup

My streak of actually trying computers that are in my pile continues with this SparcStation 1+. While it has been a very loyal and very handsome monitor/keyboard stand for the last few years, it would probably be more interesting as a functioning computer.

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Commodore 64 pickup

I picked up a Commodore 64 off the local classifieds. It came with a 1541 floppy drive, a bag full of blank floppies and tapes, the C64 itself, the infamous black finned power supplies that kill C64s, a Rixon modem, and a Nortel multi-line keyset from the 90s.

thumbnail for "Amiga 2500 keyboard refurb"

Amiga 2500 keyboard refurb

The keyboard I got with my Amiga 2500 had:

  • A broken right alt key,
  • A spotty (at best) return key,
  • And a numpad enter key that wouldn’t stay up, but did work,

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3d-printing accelerators amiga amiga2000 amiga2500 amiga3000 amiga500 apple apple-ii aquarius arcade atari atari-jaguar atari2600 atarist bandai basic-master batteries bungo calculator capacitors casio cdrom cleaning clone coco coleco coleco-adam colecovision commodore commodore64 compile computer console corrosion cpm crt dumping failure famicom flashfloppy floppy fm7 forklift-mac fujitsu game-gear games gemini genesis gotek guest-post harddrive hb101 hitachi homemade-hardware homemade-software ibm ique keyboard keyboard-converter kyocera lcd leako macintosh macintosh-classic-ii macintosh-lc macintosh-lc520 macintosh-quadra800 macintosh-se macintosh-tv magic-smoke mark-iii master-system mattel mbc555 mini5 mod modelm mouse mr-pc msx nec neo-geo nes nintendo nintendo-ds nomad octane operating-system pc-tv151 pc60 pc6001 pc6001mkII pc6601sr pc8300 pc88 pc8801mh pc8801mkii pc8801mkiisr pc98 pc9801 pc9801nst pc9801ra2 pc9821 pc9821ap2 pickups pippin pirate-hardware pizzabox playstation power-supply pv7 ram repair retrochallenge retrochallenge-april-2018 retrochallenge-october-2021 retrochallenge-october-2022 retrochallenge-september-2018 reversing sanyo sbc6809e sc3000 sega sega-columns sg1000 sharp sharp-x1-turbo silicon-graphics sinclair snes snk soggy1000 sony sparcstation storage sun super-famicom supervision tandy tandy-102 tandy1000 tandy1000ex tandy1000sx tandy1000tx texas-instruments ti83-plus tomy tomy-pyuuta trace-repair trs80 trs80-mc10 ts1000 video vtech-precomputer watara wonderswan word-processor x68000 x68000-ace x68000-pro zx81