I’ve just installed WordPress on my new site, and I have no idea whatsoever about how to use it. I’m sure it’ll come to me, but if it doesn’t, this is going to look really bad.
Now I know how to insert a paragraph in a block without starting a new block, which is good. SPOILER: It’s Shift-Enter.
As you may or may not have gathered, my intention is to post up some retro computing content, as I like to take photos, and document things that I do in the workshop, partly because I have a bad memory, so I can go back and look at stuff occasionally to refresh my memory. I also like sharing what I do, and if my prevarications and screw-ups help someone else avoid making the same mistakes, then I’ve achieved something.
I’m not an expert by any stretch of the imagination. I used to work in the gaming industry in the 90s as a graphics artist, and have always been interested in computers from my first ZX81 to my follow-up C64, which was when I got into graphics and games design, later working on the Amiga 500, Atari ST, and lastly the Sega MegaDrive/Genesis. I think I did graphics and design for 10 or 11 games overall, although you’ve probably not heard of any of them. I studied art to A Level, but thought my skills weren’t going to cut it as computers became more capable of producing realistic graphics above those the A500 was capable of. I decided to return to the real world at that point, and that was a long time ago.
I have no electronics background, and as a result I have to learn as I go, which seems to work a lot of the time, but inevitably results in the occasional screw up. I’m self-taught in just about everything I do with a computer, so if I ever blame my teacher, you know who I’m talking about. I’ve got a reasonable track-record of repairing electronics around the home, and am reasonably efficient with Windows, but I’d like to leave that in the rear-view since it became a giant data capture exercise.
Over the years I’ve found that in some aspects of retro computing, there’s an assumption of knowledge from those that have it, and an element of looking down upon those that don’t. I’ve experienced it myself because I made a mistake and bought the wrong GALs from someone on a forum. They told me I wasn’t capable of doing the thing I wanted to do, and should get someone else to do it for me. Where’s the fun in that? By the end of the week I’d bought my own programmer, and burned the correct 16V8 GAL chips I needed for my A4000D project.
I’ve got some electronics books to read, and hope to be able to use my tools more efficiently as time goes by. This is the tool list so far:
* Pinecil Soldering Iron
* Duratool ZD-915 Desoldering Station
* 858D Hot Air Rework Station
* Duratool DO3318 Soldering Tweezers
* 200 x 200mm Hot plate board pre-heater
* Xilinx DLC9LP JTAG FPGA Programmer
* XGecu Pro T48 Universal Programmer (GAL)
* LCR-TC1 Multi-Function Component Tester
* MiSTer Floppy & GreaseWeazel 3.5″ Floppy tools
I’ve ignored all the manual tools, consumables and so forth, but as you can see, I have all the gear and no idea. I want to get myself a decent oscilloscope soon, as I picked up a cheap one and found it really tricky to use and set up. I’ve got my sights set on a RIGOL DS1102Z-E, but haven’t yet pulled the trigger.
What am I interested in? My first “love” if you like is the Commodore Amiga, but I have a collection of other retro computers that includes the following:
* Sinclair ZX81 Series 1 with curvy traces, restored to functionality with a new keyboard.
* Sinclair ZX81 later series, upgraded and restored.
* Commodore C64 Ultimate. The new FPGA one in a brown breadbox case.
* Commodore C64C in unrestored condition.
* Commodore C128 in unrestored condition.
* Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48kb restored & upgraded.
* Spectrum Next, on a boat from China as I type this.
* Atari 800XL, restored and upgraded, although that is currently hiding from me.
* Atari STFM in unrestored condition. Needs retr0brite. eBay purchase that didn’t document a cracked case, and disappeared when I raised a dispute, so eBay refunded me.
* Atari STe 4096, restored and upgraded.
* Amiga A1200 Individual Flicker Fixer Mk.II, & ACA1220 Accelerator.
* Acorn Electron, restored and upgraded. Gifted from a friend.
* MiSTer FPGA retro console in an acrylic case.
* MiSTress FPGA retro console in black Amiga case
* Apple Power Mac G5 Dual-CPU 2.0ghz restored and upgraded, but it’s a PCIX model, so a bit finicky. Currently running OSX 10.6.8
* Apple Powerbook G4 A1010 unrestored as yet, as it arrived this week. No idea whether it works, as it didn’t have a PSU. That’s on the way.
I’ve got a couple of PCs too, one for gaming, the other for doing “stuff” on, a few laptops from the Windows XP era, The Core Duo Toshiba 17″ running pretty nicely on Linux Mint at the moment, which has made it my daily driver laptop, as the other is old and clunky by comparison – an IBM Thinkpad T60 I was left by a neighbour who moved away. Both have been fitted with SSDs and maximum RAM, and I even managed to pick up a docking station for the Thinkpad for pennies, which is fun to trip over.
My current projects include the following:
* Amiga A4000D Replica based on ReAmiga A4000CR. Case, parts & board have been acquired. Build is unstarted.
* Amiga A1200 ReAmiga using an acid-damaged board as donor. It’s part built, but I have an issue with the timing crystal not giving me the right numbers yet. Still working on that.
Amiga A1200 ReAmiga utilising some of the same parts from the other board, which I socketed to make swapping the ICs easier.
* PiMega 5 set up and working.
* PiStorm 32 Lite board with either a Pi3, or Pi4 for use with one of my A1200s. Still in the process of setting that up.
As you can see, I certainly don’t shy away from taking on complicated things that are currently beyond my skillset, and that’s ok. I’ll get ’em sorted eventually.
Well that turned into a long rambling thing. Sorry about that!
If you’re viewing this several years later and I’ve still not posted anything, I’ve wasted some money over the years, but no time. I’ll take that as half a win. If you’ve just read this, I’m sorry about that. I planned to do more, it just didn’t happen.