The age of Aquarius

[stephen_usher]

[stephen_usher]

Crossed fingers emoji is

• Unicode: U+1F91E
• Short code: :crossed fingers:

Unfortunately no magic smoke Unicode emoji.

[rubber_jonnie]

Crossed fingers emoji is

• Unicode: U+1F91E
• Short code: :crossed fingers:

Unfortunately no magic smoke Unicode emoji.

@exxos should definitely look for a magic smoke emoji!

:crossed fingers: he can find one

[sporniket]

@exxos should definitely look for a magic smoke emoji!

:crossed fingers: he can find one

When I read "magic" I propose

magic-smoke.gif (420.92 KiB) Viewed 3049 times

source

edit : that said, a little bit heavy

[stephen_usher]

sick-computer-icon-260nw-227620936.jpg (9.71 KiB) Viewed 3046 times

Something akin to that?

Or based upon this?: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File ... n_fire.svg

[rubber_jonnie]

@exxos should definitely look for a magic smoke emoji!

:crossed fingers: he can find one

When I read "magic" I propose
magic-smoke.gif
source

edit : that said, a little bit heavy

[rubber_jonnie]

sick-computer-icon-260nw-227620936.jpg

Something akin to that?

Or based upon this?: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File ... n_fire.svg

I like the 2nd one and this one too:

smoking-computer.jpeg (13.58 KiB) Viewed 3043 times

[rubber_jonnie]

OK, it's be a while since I posted anything 'proper' and whilst feeling ill I decided to have a quick look at my Aquarius mini expander, which I was never able to get fully working previously.

I burned a new ROM with USB BASIC (Supports USB sticks) but decided to just go back to the basic ROM/RAM board, removing the AY8910 sound chip and CH376 module. That all fits nicely into 64K since BASIC is 32K and the games are 16K each. I might have to fit some switches for ROM selections though to make it easier than jumper selecting that requires the expander to be removed to switch options.

It seems that the main issue is a poor connection in the ROM slot, but I'm happy to say after a bit of cleaning I now have 3 working ROMs:

USB BASIC

Burger Time

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Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.

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I may go and do a deeper clean of the ROM slot though and also see if I can reflow the pins on the socket as it does have the capability to flex as the design is simple and not mechanically strong.

That's a big win, especially since the 32K RAM expansion is also working. Next I need to fix up the CH376 USB device, for which I now have a couple of spares. I'm just going to use an IDC cable for now so I can play around with it until it works rather than soldering it in.

[rubber_jonnie]

OK, so I just grabbed the schematic for the Micro Expander and checked the connections for the CH376. They are off by a long way.

This is the schematic:

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and closer up:

IMG20260714142605.jpg (189.52 KiB) Viewed 170 times

And this is the pinout of the CH376:

IMG20260714142543.jpg (217.13 KiB) Viewed 170 times

So I'm going to need to adapt this for it to work properly. Explains a lot though.

[rubber_jonnie]

Interestingly it seems the wiring was fine, there seems to be a discrepancy with the schematic, however I have split the CH376 out and put it on the end of a cable and it's like having a little floppy drive connected.

The cause of the errors with the USB stick not reading turned out in the end to be a bad CH376 module, the replacements I bought work just fine, how annoying is that!!!

The culprit is on the right:

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And some gratuitous shots of it just working

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