First post, by SquallStrife
- Rank
- l33t
So I spent Saturday afternoon building a switchbox for my two old-world Macs.
I used the enclosure of a faulty GameTheater XP breakout box. Two 6-pole 2-position rotary switches, and some of my leftover VGA cable. I used two separate switches, because once you go above 6 poles, the switches start getting expensive. It works quite well, the image is very bright and sharp, and ghosting only starts to occur above 1024x768.
There is a minor issue with the monitor sense functionality. I tied together the sense pins of both inputs, due to not having enough free pins on the rotary switch, but this seems to interfere with the way the sense works, because when both systems are connected, they will only display at 1152x870. If I unplug the monitor lead from one of the systems, the other will function correctly, and allow me to choose resolutions (as per the DIP switch settings on the adaptor). So perhaps a third switch is required. Eep.
The other little mod I did was to add a much-needed power switch to my ZX Spectrum+. Just for fun, I used an illuminated switch. It's pretty cool!
The barrell connector on the Speccy motherboard is linked to the rest of the system on both sides of the PCB, so I had to remove the connector, cut the traces, and reconnect it. Once that was done, a few wires and bam. A Speccy with an on/off switch AND a rest button! 😀
The last thing wasn't really a "mod" as such, but I used some leftover shelving to build an alcove for my Amiga A1200 to live under my 1084S. This allows me to share the 1084S with the 4 systems it supports, in a space-effective way.
VogonsDrivers.com | Link | News Thread
