exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

stephen_usher wrote: 12 Feb 2025 10:35
Yes, it makes it easy to do a live composite and switch between screen layouts and inputs.

Cool.

stephen_usher wrote: 12 Feb 2025 10:35 The machine on the bench is my STFM with TF536 installed. I had to make an external keyboard for it from one of the damaged cases Exxos was giving away back in 2020. I can't believe that I did this four years ago!

Ahh, that makes a lot of sense now I see it from other angles. Good use for a broken case :)

I haz done video!

*SPOILER* Would help when diagnosing mouse/joystick port problems if I could remember which was which!!! ;-) *SPOILER*

Decided to do a few tweaks to the STFM motherboard which I picked up last week. Removed the (far too short) floppy cable and fitted a socket and moved the floppy power wires over from a strange place, connected to resistor leads by the PSU socket, to the header space further to the rear. Also disabled the on-board RAM so I could fit 4MB into the Marpet RAM upgrade.

I then proceeded to change the links so as to use 2 ROMs as I don't have a set of 6 ROMs for a newer TOS, merely two. Forgot about the need for the 74LS11 so got confused by the ROMs not working. *sigh* Reverted and back to TOS 1.0 again. So I've ordered some 74LS11s from eBay.

Another day without a postal delivery. I know that I have some 1st class post on its way in addition to the "1st class" parcel post for the 6850s.

Royal Mail deliveries in Oxford are a complete joke.

stephen_usher wrote: 18 Feb 2025 16:18 Another day without a postal delivery. I know that I have some 1st class post on its way in addition to the "1st class" parcel post for the 6850s.

Royal Mail deliveries in Oxford are a complete joke.

Trust me, it's not just Oxford.

To be fair 90% of the time it's good, but the other 10% is not great.

Other than over Christmas it's been the opposite statistic here, 90% rubbish and 10% good.

During some of last year I was getting a delivery once a month, which caused a few problems with bills arriving late and missing the payment deadline, also some medical docs late as well.

Services to customers are really great here, and Japanese postal service is not an exception.

I feel really sorry for you guys when I read such stories.

It used to be good here until it was privatised and sold to greedy corporations just over 10 years ago.

stephen_usher wrote: 18 Feb 2025 16:22 Other than over Christmas it's been the opposite statistic here, 90% rubbish and 10% good.

During some of last year I was getting a delivery once a month, which caused a few problems with bills arriving late and missing the payment deadline, also some medical docs late as well.

We had similar issues, not as bad as once a month, but once a fortnight is bad enough. It's definitely improved, but could be better.

stephen_usher wrote: 19 Feb 2025 00:11 It used to be good here until it was privatised and sold to greedy corporations just over 10 years ago.

Pretty much the way many things go here sadly. Profit over performance and an almost captive audience so they don't care about making service better that much.