Whoops, I did it again! VIC-20 on the way...

[BennehBoy]

Going OT slightly (OK, quite a lot), but speaking of computers we used in our youth, my first job out of Uni was as the IT technician in a high school. I spent a lot of time working with BBC master & various Archimedes models. I inherited a non working Econet network with Acorn Filestore which I got up and running, later upgraded that to one running on an Arch, then later upgraded all the Archimedes onto thin wire ethernet, connect to an NT server. I'd love to get my hands on some of that stuff to play about with.

[rubber_jonnie]

Going OT slightly (OK, quite a lot), but speaking of computers we used in our youth, my first job out of Uni was as the IT technician in a high school. I spent a lot of time working with BBC master & various Archimedes models. I inherited a non working Econet network with Acorn Filestore which I got up and running, later upgraded that to one running on an Arch, then later upgraded all the Archimedes onto thin wire ethernet, connect to an NT server. I'd love to get my hands on some of that stuff to play about with.

After leaving the RAF I became a field service engineer for a company called Research Machines, looking after IT in schools across Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex.

Some of my first jobs were remote booting Windows 3.11 machines on a coax network with a Microsoft OS/2 server providing the RPL services. Interesting times!

You know you could get some Arch stuff quite easily, it's out there

[BennehBoy]

We had some RM stuff also.

I did a lot of work on remote booting when I worked in a University, we used boot roms and had dual BOOT machines where on first netboot they would download a local WFWG & Win95 image, the machine could be locally or remotely rebuilt from that, or re-imaged from the network. It was surprisingly quick, all delivered from Netware 4 servers. All dead tech these days.

[rubber_jonnie]

We had some RM stuff also.

I did a lot of work on remote booting when I worked in a University, we used boot roms and had dual BOOT machines where on first netboot they would download a local WFWG & Win95 image, the machine could be locally or remotely rebuilt from that, or re-imaged from the network. It was surprisingly quick, all delivered from Netware 4 servers. All dead tech these days.

Yeah, I did some Netware too, hideous!!

[BennehBoy]

Have you bought any cartridges yet?

[rubber_jonnie]

Have you bought any cartridges yet?

Not as yet Though I did look up Omega Race and it is quite cheap.

I'm looking at options for RAM carts with SD included.

[BennehBoy]

Ooh, that sounds interesting, I'll go search...

[stephen_usher]

But nothing beats being able to browse 1000's of choices at the push of a button

I don't disagree, but there is still something magic about flipping through a big clunky plastic box full of floppies, especially if they're 5.25", which have a unique smell not found anywhere else.

So, maybe a project... A box which looks like a floppy drive into which you can slide fake floppies with a bar code at one end.

You push the fake floppy into the "drive" which presses a microswitch and causes the system to scan the bar code and select the correct floppy image on the intelligent storage device, making it available to the computer as a virtual disk.



Of course, if you're rich you could go for RFID tags.

[rubber_jonnie]

I don't disagree, but there is still something magic about flipping through a big clunky plastic box full of floppies, especially if they're 5.25", which have a unique smell not found anywhere else.

So, maybe a project... A box which looks like a floppy drive into which you can slide fake floppies with a bar code at one end.

You push the fake floppy into the "drive" which presses a microswitch and causes the system to scan the bar code and select the correct floppy image on the intelligent storage device, making it available to the computer as a virtual disk.



Of course, if you're rich you could go for RFID tags.

I seem to recall somebody did something like this for I think a NES RPi recreation. They made a whole miniature NES and added miniature cartridges that did something as you describe, possibly using barcodes.

The whole thing was pretty cool and I have no doubt something similar could be done for a disk drive Just needs somebody with more time and skill than me

[rubber_jonnie]

I had an interesting problem with the VIC last night.

Whilst saving to cassette, the internal fuse blew, a 3A/250v antisurge. I had no 3A replacements, and couldn't find my little bag of fuses, so I nicked a 2A one from an old ST PSU. That blew too, though not surprising as rated 1A less.

Both fuses were old though, originals as far as I could tell.

It was then I found my little back of fuses, but they were also 2A, however they were new, and so far it's been just fine.

I've heard stories of fuses 'aging' and wondered if this may have been the case, and wondered if anybody else had experience of this?

I now have the correct fuses on order