A Grand Day Out

[PhilC]

@rubber_jonnie great to see you have it working.

I’ve yet to spend more than 5 minutes at a time messing with Cp/m

[rubber_jonnie]

@rubber_jonnie great to see you have it working.

I’ve yet to spend more than 5 minutes at a time messing with Cp/m

I have to say that CP/M on the 128 is as ugly as sin!! I also need to get my head around disk swapping with the SD2IEC as it would be a huge help if I could.

That way I can swap the disks for CP/M around and see what's on the others. They are recognised by the 128 as CP/M disks, but not bootable like the CP/M master disk.

I need to figure out the RGBI cable too so I can try the 80 Column mode as well.

[rubber_jonnie]

So, first test of the SD card cassette unit today having just received the missing cable.

Here it is fitted and playing the BASIC wav file:

IMG20240222144139.jpg

Waiting patiently:

IMG20240222144142.jpg

And reaping the rewards :)

IMG20240222144413.jpg

I'll try a few more things when I have time, but this is a good start.

Sadly the colour isn't a match, but overall I'll take it:

IMG20240222145048.jpg

[PhilC]

@rubber_jonnie that looks so much better than I imagined it would at that price.

btw, got the package today, thank you sir :)

[rubber_jonnie]

@rubber_jonnie that looks so much better than I imagined it would at that price.

btw, got the package today, thank you sir :)

Yeah, it's 3D printed and not the best quality I've seen, however it works well enough and fits in very well, so I'm happy.

Glad you received the RAM2E card ok, don't forget to get the config tool from here: RAM2E II Config tool.

It's pretty self explanatory and the card should be set to 16Meg already. I know it says 8 Meg, but trust me it has 16.

[stephen_usher]

Looks good to me. :-)

[rubber_jonnie]

Looks good to me. :-)

I had to do a little trimming, and the edge bevels don't quite match those on the MZ-700, thought it could be a better match for the MZ-800 with which it also works, but yeah, it's not too shabby.

And the same guy does a tool that converts all the software into WAV files for use with it and it works a treat. Came with a lot of software baked into the tool.

[rubber_jonnie]

So, some more C128 love today. I pulled the remaining single wipe sockets and replaced with dual wipe. Old sockets shown to the rear of the board.

IMG20240224114137.jpg

The desolder gun did an epic job as once I'd desoldered, three of the sockets dropped out before I could flip the board back over, and the other three just needed a bit of a wiggle as they had bent pins. No trace damage at all, a very clean removal. I did put fresh solder on all the pins before desoldering too, which seemed to help a lot.

The C128 board seems to be quite robust and relatively easy to work on.

And once done I dropped all the ICs back in:

IMG20240224131018.jpg

And last but by no means least, the case had a nice warm soapy bath :)

IMG20240224135817.jpg

I'm very pleased with the result.

The keyboard also got a clean, but given how well the case came up, I'm thinking about if I should attempt to retrobrite the keys. One thing that does need a little work is the C128 video output, which has jailbars and dot crawl. As it goes, the C64 part has a very nice picture :)

Very pleased overall with this machine, thanks @PhilC for letting me take it off your hands :)

[PhilC]

@rubber_jonnie you can get a Lumafix for a C128. It’s a pain to set up but can improve the jail bars no end.

[rubber_jonnie]

@rubber_jonnie you can get a Lumafix for a C128. It’s a pain to set up but can improve the jail bars no end.

I think you sent me a Lumafix PCB, but it may have been just for the C64, not sure.

I'll go and see if I can find one :)