Went through some of the hardware from my recent scrap lot purchases to see what I got.
I found an Avance Logic ALS100 non-plus with a genuine Yamaha OPL3 chip. Seems that they usually used clones instead of the real Yamaha chips, so that was a nice surprise. Still have to test it though.

Today I received an Amiga 1200 and have finally added an Amiga to my collection -

So I've been working on this all day. Doing a bit of cleaning inside and out, boy this thing was filthy. Also installed the 8MB Fast RAM upgrade into the trapdoor slot.

It sure is a learning curve getting one of these setup with a 16GB CF card running ClassicWB. Especially since I read/watched 4 different setup guides and each one was different and missed crucial steps. Finally figured it out and got it up and running. Doesn't help that WinUAE can be such a cantankerous piece of software, but I got there in the end.

Tested out a few games so far and all seems well on that score. WHDLoad working well etc, I just need to start configuring it all properly and then load on the rest 0f my games to the card.

The only issue I encountered was the keyboard, with several keys not functioning. I opened up the keyboard and it was pretty filthy inside there, but most notably the membrane showed signs of corrosion along several traces (something has clearly been spilled into the keyboard over the years and allowed to just sit there). I'm not even going to bother trying to fix it, I've just ordered a brand new replacement membrane instead.

PTherapist wrote on 2020-01-30, 19:36:

Today I received an Amiga 1200 and have finally added an Amiga to my collection - […]
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Today I received an Amiga 1200 and have finally added an Amiga to my collection -

So I've been working on this all day. Doing a bit of cleaning inside and out, boy this thing was filthy. Also installed the 8MB Fast RAM upgrade into the trapdoor slot.

It sure is a learning curve getting one of these setup with a 16GB CF card running ClassicWB. Especially since I read/watched 4 different setup guides and each one was different and missed crucial steps. Finally figured it out and got it up and running. Doesn't help that WinUAE can be such a cantankerous piece of software, but I got there in the end.

Tested out a few games so far and all seems well on that score. WHDLoad working well etc, I just need to start configuring it all properly and then load on the rest 0f my games to the card.

The only issue I encountered was the keyboard, with several keys not functioning. I opened up the keyboard and it was pretty filthy inside there, but most notably the membrane showed signs of corrosion along several traces (something has clearly been spilled into the keyboard over the years and allowed to just sit there). I'm not even going to bother trying to fix it, I've just ordered a brand new replacement membrane instead.

Wonderfull.... Wish it was me.

Same here. Prices are higher than car parts for my dad's hatchback.

The retro thing I've been doing today is making replacement CMOS batterys (not paying £6.99 for one on eBay) using the existing lead, some conductive tape and some heat-shrink tubing!

(Not sure if it's allowed) but if you want to see how I did this then here's a link to it on my personal blog: https://www.retrocomputing.co.uk/2020/01/how- … d-380e-type.htm

Few minutes ago, i was soldering on a older revision 3 xt-ide 8 bit controller card. The pcbs i purchased a few years ago, but after problems with my weller wsd-81 soldering station i quit for a while.
1 week ago i purchased a cheapass soldering station which performance a lot better then the weller one.. (dont know whats its wrong with the wsd-81 base) maybe going to sell it and look for an other option.

Today i also repaired a 1.2MB floppy drive controller board. I needed 2 new electrolic capacitors.

Also being busy with a socket 5 motherboard that iam going to use in a oldskool pentium non mmx 133mhz build. The RTC still seems to work. But have to replace the simm sockets. Simm socket 1 is damaged, wasnt possible to repair the connecting pin. Also the other sockets are in a state thats better to replace them as well.. Now waiting when the new simm 72 pin sockets will arrive here.

Officially the board will support till pentium 100Mhz because the multiplier seems to be fixed on 1.5.. With an cpu vrm upgrade socket it is possible to run a 133 Mhz processor on this board. Higher the board wont recognize.

Getting this dually build going..

Did a bit more software configuration on my Amiga 1200, a few settings tweaks etc. Crucially I'd forgotten to add the Kickstart roms into the Devs folder for WHDLoad, so rectified that also.

Aside from that, the only other retro-related activity today - I flashed the firmware of my Gotek drive to the FlashFloppy firmware and swapped out the display for an OLED display. I used the USB flashing method, much easier than having to solder & connect up a Serial connector. Haven't got much use for the Gotek at the moment, but it could come in handy in the future and of course the possibility to use it with my Amiga should I ever need to. It may be useful for PC booters on my XT build, I'll have to test it out.

wiretap wrote on 2020-01-31, 03:54:

https://imgur.com/wRV33Y6h.jpg […]
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An impressive beast of a tower.

Drinking wine and making upgrades!

I had my Amiga600 on the table today. I had to figure out, why it gave yellow screen some 99 percent of the times when powered on, and a few times it gave red screen. The issue (already knew this before hand) was tied to the a6095 memory module that I have in the machine. Or had. I took the module out some time ago.

As it turns out. The issue is related to the machine, running with Kickstart 3.1.4 and the a6095 module at the same time. When running with Kick 3.1.4 and the module jumpered to disabled, then the machine will start. And as it turns out, running the machine with kickstart 2.0 (37.300), then the machine runs fine with the module, and the memory passes at least 3 cycles of memory test in Systest.

So... There is a memory issue with 3.1.4 and I simply can not understand why, because it used to run fine with that setup for some time. Now I need to do extensive temperature tests, in order to see if the module becomes hot or not, when running with Kickstart 2.0 (37.300)

bjwil1991 wrote on 2020-01-30, 20:29:

Same here. Prices are higher than car parts for my dad's hatchback.

You can say that at least two times.... 😀 Those prices have just gone through the roof during 2019.
Up to double the price now, since Jan 2019.

The beast tower lives.

And got a new retro license plate..

wiretap wrote on 2020-02-01, 04:06:

The beast tower lives.

Holy crud. And there's even a bay still free.

Maybe I'll put a card reader in there, 🤣. I have a beige one.

Replaced Toshiba 5005-S504 hinges to more durable from Compaq Presario 1800T laptop. Cover is now slightly higher, but not critical, they hold very firmly. Replaced keyboard to pretty transparent blue, bad bios battery and DVD-rom as well. Changed hdd to ssd 120Gb. Now with GeForce 2Go graphics it's ready to any Windows 98 and even some Dos era games!

wiretap wrote on 2020-02-01, 04:06:

The beast tower lives. […]
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The beast tower lives.

And got a new retro license plate..

Is it just me who's sad you've got a microcontroller based fan module instead of an old school bay bus?

A little late (mainly because I finished really late last night and needed to sleep). I managed to get a Dell XPi CD keyboard working again by cleaning the contacts on the connectors/cable then after discovering that a few of my vintage HDDs are dead I found a 540MB drive that works fine (a bit smaller than I would have liked) and installed Windows 95 on the laptop.

Only thing left to do for this one is to find a working CD drive, or work out how to repair the current drive. It reads the TOC off the CD so I can run "DIR" but as soon as I go to open something from a CD it fails.

Still in the process of cleaning and maintaining all my MS Sidewinder joysticks. Currently working on this 3D Pro, which had quite a bit of dirt and even the steel balls inside were rusty. Fixed most parts and started re-assembling.

After getting my Master System plugged in and working, I ended up pulling it apart in order to check for anything looking wrong, and to blow out all the dust. The system is looking rather nice now, and I now have a reason to use the cables that came with my “High Definition Graphics” VA3 Genesis again. They’ve been sitting in a drawer ever since I got my 32x.