General Stuff(tm)

[PhilC]

Good luck with this one @stephen_usher. I’m always a little reluctant to take on a project someone else has been working on.

I just need something to tinker with and keep me occupied. So, the more broken the better. ;-)

Yeah I an understand that. I have a huge pile of stuff that needs that kind of attention

[JezC]

Yeah I an understand that. I have a huge pile of stuff that needs that kind of attention

You may not be the only one ;)

I probably need another lockdown to even start to make a dent in the pile :lol: :roll:

[stephen_usher]

Well, I've got it chiming....

[stephen_usher]

Hmm... Hatton's sale is dangerous...

60 quid off list price...

It would have been wrong not to... :lol:

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Once I have a complete floor in my outbuilding... and I've built the baseboards... and I've bought and laid the track... I'll be able to run it properly rather than on a test track on the carpet.

[stephen_usher]

I'm back down in Cornwall continuing to bring stuff down from the loft.

Today's highlights are:

Finding my Dinky USS Enterprise.

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And, if I had a Betamax VCR I'd be able to watch the original cut of "Return of the Jedi"

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[stephen_usher]

Given the conversation about the NetUSBee this afternoon I thought I'd modify my unit with the power-up mod using an MCP-101 chip.

Unfortunately RS (as usual) didn't have the through-hole version in stock, with a lead time telling me that they'll never have it in stock, so I went for a surface mount version. Hopefully it won't be too small to solder wires to.

[stephen_usher]

Oh. The surface mount versions of the MCP-101 are teeny tiny. This is going to be "fun"*.

*For certain values of "fun".

[stephen_usher]

I tried out the NetUSBee reset hack today...

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Use the used capacitor pads for GND and Vcc and put a bodge wire to the pad of the resistor which used to be connected to the RTL8019AS's reset pin from the MCP101's RST pin. (Forget the other bodge, that was a previous hack which didn't do anything.)

Well, it still doesn't work on the TT, but it is an improvement as most of the time the chip's ROM data with the MAC address can be read, which is more than it used to.

I'll bring down one of the other machines from the loft to see if it still works on an ST.

[stephen_usher]

Still works on the STE.

Though I've discovered that the STE's reset capacitor needs changing, and it's quite a faff getting the lower shield off. Not today.

[stephen_usher]

So, it seems that I've already added a capacitor on top of C102 to try to delay the reset.

I think that it's time to replace both C101 and C102. I can do this from the upper surface so don't need to remove the base shield. I'll have to wait until the Sun goes down though.