General Stuff(tm)

[rubber_jonnie]

A combination of myself (finding out that the Computer One OPD floppy interface blindly writes a string held in the ROM to the boot sector) along with Jobdone (from the QL Forum & Discord, who found the correct BPB parameters and hex edited the ROM) have got the One Per Desk now formatting floppies that the ST and MSDOS can reliably read and write to.

This should facilitate the use of more able machines to create content for the OPD to use/run.

Here's a text file copied onto an OPD formatted floppy and then imported into the Quill word processor.


IMG_3536.jpeg


And the ST reading the OPD formatted floppy.


IMG_3535.jpeg

Good progress, though I've not done a number of things I planned to today. But I did manage to fit new "rubber" feet on the Mega ST after scraping out the hardened remains of the originals.

Good work sir

[HigashiJun]

Looks good !

[stephen_usher]

@rubber_jonnie oops, I seem to have accidentally made a working OPD floppy interface for you.

IMG_3537.jpeg (432.48 KiB) Viewed 1248 times

I'll get it in the post in the next few days.

[stephen_usher]

Fixed the right shift key on the OPD using one of the Atari domes that rubber_jonnie sent.

Impossible to get it into the groove where the original dome sat so had to open out the groove and use epoxy resin to stick the dome into the correct location. Works fine anyway.

[rubber_jonnie]

@rubber_jonnie oops, I seem to have accidentally made a working OPD floppy interface for you.


IMG_3537.jpeg


I'll get it in the post in the next few days.

That is very kind of you sir!!

You must let me know what I owe you.

[stephen_usher]

Don't worry about it, the PCB would be scrap otherwise and other than a few TTL chips, a cheap EEPROM and a connector I got the rest for free from Paul Vernon's cache of stuff. (I even found four VL1772 chips in there.)

[rubber_jonnie]

Don't worry about it, the PCB would be scrap otherwise and other than a few TTL chips, a cheap EEPROM and a connector I got the rest for free from Paul Vernon's cache of stuff. (I even found four VL1772 chips in there.)

As long as you're sure

Thank you.

[stephen_usher]

Recently my Panasonic BluRay/Freesat box has not been able to pick up satellite channels.

My first thought was, "It's a capacitor."

Tonight I opened it up and... it's a capacitor. One very domed 330uF 6.7V capacitor with an orange blob on the top (knocked off before the photo). After extracting and testing it, the tester can't even see it's there, which means that it has no capacitance at all.

IMG_3538.jpeg (314.64 KiB) Viewed 1184 times

IMG_3540.jpeg (333.87 KiB) Viewed 1184 times

I fitted a replacement (50V) one and the box works perfectly.
Panasonic didn't even fit their own make of capacitor, instead using Elna ones which are the bane of Sony and Apple power supplies.

[rubber_jonnie]

Damn capacitors!

[PhilC]

I had a whole bunch of 10uf caps on that C64 motherboard that were short circuit. One would fail, then the next and so on until I’d got fed up and replaced them all.