Playing with something new old school.... Can someone spot what exactly this is?

I gave that a go on Vice the other day, super impressive stuff!

Duouk2000 wrote:

I gave that a go on Vice the other day, super impressive stuff!

Yup... An amazing achievement. Love it. 😜
Sadly not compatible with Epyx Fastloader Reloaded. 🙁

brostenen wrote:

Duouk2000 wrote:

I gave that a go on Vice the other day, super impressive stuff!

Yup... An amazing achievement. Love it. 😜
Sadly not compatible with Epyx Fastloader Reloaded. 🙁

Yes it is and many people thought it was a fake up until release. Ye have little faith in the mighty brown breadbin.

Indeed. Imagine if that had come out in the 80s, it would have been full on war from Nintendo 🤣

Duouk2000 wrote:

Indeed. Imagine if that had come out in the 80s, it would have been full on war from Nintendo 🤣

The war has already been and gone:

https://games.slashdot.org/story/19/04/23/191 … n-years-to-make

cyclone3d wrote:

The cat or the monitor? 🤣

Both! Though I'd question someone buying pussy online.

gca wrote:

Duouk2000 wrote:

Indeed. Imagine if that had come out in the 80s, it would have been full on war from Nintendo 🤣

The war has already been and gone:

https://games.slashdot.org/story/19/04/23/191 … n-years-to-make

Yeah.... At least the cat is out of the sack. It will be shared everywere and between anyone interrested. A bit like the story behind Giana Sisters. Nintendo squahed that, back when C64 was hot new hardware. When I saw this game was released, then I thought that Nintendo were not going to war again.

Oh boy was I wrong. You can emulate hardware, and the original game will always be what people seek. And then I thought that honestly. It will only be interresting to those that actually use original hardware. Because... Well... Once you emulate systems and own no real hardware, then why play this game when you can emulate the original hardware and play the original and best? This move from Nintendo makes absolutely no sence, unless it is 100 percent only about protecting IP.

Received today the Scart adapter I ordered for my Amstrad CTM 644 monitor. To try it out, I connected up my ZX Spectrum. Looking pretty good and a much better solution for the Spectrum than the LCD TV I was previously using. Just waiting now for my Light Gun to arrive, which was the main reason I wanted to get the Spectrum working on this monitor. 😎

badmojo wrote:

Bancho wrote:

Currently everything goes through the MX300

AWE32 Line Out --> MX300 Line IN
EWS64 Line Out Internal Header --> MX300 AUX IN

Beautiful looking build and love the sound options 😎 Have you tried a mixer instead of passing through line ins of other cards? I didn't know myself after investing in my little passive Rolls - so easy, particularly if you start using MIDI from one and FX from another.

Thanks dude! I haven't tried a mixer yet although looking up the mixer you mentioned looks to be a really good alternative! I'll look at picking one up as a number of my builds always feature more than one Sound Card 🤣

Starting to fix my Iwill ZMAXdp power supply.. fuse blown due to a short on one of my molex splitters. (instantly popped the fuse -- no other damage noted besides for the fuse scorch marks) Recapping it while I'm at it, since one capacitor is suspect (pre-existing), and they're low quality. I'm also thinking I might be able to transfer the guts of another new high quality power supply into this one -- maybe a SFX or Flex-ATX size power supply if I can find dimensions of the inner boards. This Iwill ZMAXdp power supply is custom made specifically for these machines, so finding a replacement isn't an option since only a few thousand were made and not many survived. These computers ran hot exhausting all air through the PSU, many were used for small servers at high load, and I can find a lot of stories online of people saying their power supply burned out quickly.

Edit: Just took apart a Shuttle power supply I had laying around from a SK41G that I upgraded to a Seasonic -- the Enhance ENP-2320 Flex-ATX size power supply is a perfect fit -- actually gives a little more room inside the Iwill power supply for a better fit. The Enhance board is a shorter length, but exact width. I now have an upgrade path if necessary. All I would need to do is mount it in there, then extend a few leads like the 24-pin connector. 😎

Replacing the guts would have been plan A if ever I was in your position.

Plan b would be using new high-temp caps and mosfets.

Yea, the caps and fuse will only take a few minutes to install, but the rest is a real mess -- getting to the MOSFET hardware is difficult -- they're glued in, and pretty much the whole power supply would have to be desoldered. If the fuse and caps don't solve it, I'll swap in a Seasonic Flex-ATX power supply since it will be a perfect fit.

Received today the Cheetah Defender Light Gun that I ordered, so today it's some light gun action on my ZX Spectrum.

Seems to work great on the games that originally came with it. Of course typically it doesn't seem to like games that claim support for the Magnum Light Phaser instead. Good old lack of standards. Fun to play around with, nonetheless. 😎

Restored this Acer 6311-KW keyboard. Haven't tested it yet.

What it looked like when I got it... began to pop off some keys.

Filth...

All keycaps removed

Cleaned up!

Cleaning the keycaps was a pain.

Underside label... more info about the keyboard here: https://deskthority.net/wiki/Acer_6310_series

Had five of these beastly beauts and two have found homes. Number three had some surface rust at the bottom so a quick white vinegar bath and the rough side of a sponge, a good rinse in the bathtub, a dry off with a towel and air compressor and boom, smooth as a baby's bottom. No structural damage to the metal. Time to build her out into a working machine again.

Told my wife I think she's only slightly prettier than this case. Anyone have a floor I can sleep on tonight?

Bad photo, but you can see the rust at the bottom.

Blemished, but not damaged. Looking much better.

Found a fake K6-2+ and thinking whether to buy it . It looks like he was a 450mhz model before.

Completely tore down and cleaned an old AT case and a Dell Dimension XPS D333 tower PC. I have also done a (near) complete restoration of the Dell, the only issue being one of the 3.5" expansion bays. The lower bay seems to require some kind of caddy device to install a floppy/zip drive in it? Mine is missing. I also lack the cover for it and standard covers don't seem to work, if anyone has one of these towers and could post photos of what needs to go into the lowermost 3.5" bay I would be very glad.

appiah4 wrote:

Completely tore down and cleaned an old AT case and a Dell Dimension XPS D333 tower PC. I have also done a (near) complete restoration of the Dell, the only issue being one of the 3.5" expansion bays. The lower bay seems to require some kind of caddy device to install a floppy/zip drive in it? Mine is missing. I also lack the cover for it and standard covers don't seem to work, if anyone has one of these towers and could post photos of what needs to go into the lowermost 3.5" bay I would be very glad.

Can do.
Won't be until next week tho, work stuff before i can get my retro off again =)

Having done a *lot* of tidying up the spare room recently, I've at last found time to get working on my backlog of actual projects.

First off, I have a nice So3 voltage interposer that lets me run an Am5x86 CPU on any regular 5V 486. That's exactly what my ECS EISA board wants. Unfortunately it was missing a big MOSFET when I got it. Soldered that on a while ago, but that MOSFET urgently needed a heatsink. Of course, despite having a lot of dead boards etc, none even remotely fitted the MOSFET. So today I took a big aluminium heatsink from the linear VRM of a dead So7 board, got out the dremel and cut it to fit. Don't know what they put in that aluminium, but it was HARD to cut through - but with a bit of perseverance I got it shaped the way I wanted it:

Next there was my Asus PCI/I-P5SP4 board, an So4 board with Pentium 60. Of course its Dallas RTC was dead. Fortunately it was socketed and I have a replacement. Bigger challenge: the plastic tab the socket lever rested behind had broken off. The system worked when I held down the lever, if not, not. After messing around with various clips that either didn't do the job, or risked short-circuiting stuff, on a hunch I tried a rubber washer from some anti-vibration mount for a HDD around the lever. It worked - enough friction to keep the lever where I wanted it, without risking anything else in the process. Still one to-do though: the fan on the heatsink was completely dead. I replaced it with another, but it's noisy as hell (well-used low-end Target fan that's already 20 years old...), so have ordered a few Gelid fans to sort that out.

While I was at it I tested my 512MB PATA DIsk-On-Module. It works perfectly (at least after an FDISK /MBR to remove Grub to let DOS boot). I'll be ordering more of these things 😀