exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

OK, running the ZX Spectrum emulator I'm getting random screen block corruption, almost as if blitting is failing... but the blitting is being done by the CPU on the TT!

Oh, and the symptoms I was getting when it was going wrong were that the desktop icons were screwed up, as if the images were shifted or rotated so that the right half appeared on the left and left half on the right. When trying to open programs you'd get error 35.

Ultrasonic cleaner time ;)

And poke around various points on the board to see if the corruption on the screen changes...

It's back to normal now it seems.

stephen_usher wrote: 23 Oct 2025 15:02

rubber_jonnie wrote: 23 Oct 2025 13:35 [How is the rest of the shell, the bodywork does look in quite good order overall?

Other than on the near-side rear door, just below the window (which I've treated and it's not got through the paint on the outside), it's pretty clean. It's had a few small areas patched up with welding but very little for a 25 year old car. There are a number of supermarket car park dents though.

Sounds like the majority of the work is hidden then, it seems to generally be pretty good for its age. So is it just the engine bay rot that needs sorting, or are there other issues such as the sills?

What about the rest of the mechanicals, like suspension and brakes, engine etc?

rubber_jonnie wrote: 24 Oct 2025 07:50 Sounds like the majority of the work is hidden then, it seems to generally be pretty good for its age. So is it just the engine bay rot that needs sorting, or are there other issues such as the sills?

Yeah. On the surface it looks clean.

As far as I'm aware it's just the engine bay at the moment. In the past the spare wheel holder has had to have some work done around the drains in the bottom and some other very small patches underneath. The sills are good.

rubber_jonnie wrote: 24 Oct 2025 07:50 What about the rest of the mechanicals, like suspension and brakes, engine etc?

With regards to the engine, it just needs some cosmetic work done. It's still got its "woosh" and still does 40mpg on a long run too. One of the constant velocity joints *may* be getting a little worn as there's some humming at high speed. Otherwise the brakes, steering and suspension are fine. I'd like all the old rubber bushes and the engine mounts to be changed though as at 25 years old the rubber won't be in tip-top condition.

stephen_usher wrote: 24 Oct 2025 08:55
Yeah. On the surface it looks clean.

As far as I'm aware it's just the engine bay at the moment. In the past the spare wheel holder has had to have some work done around the drains in the bottom and some other very small patches underneath. The sills are good.

With regards to the engine, it just needs some cosmetic work done. It's still got its "woosh" and still does 40mpg on a long run too. One of the constant velocity joints *may* be getting a little worn as there's some humming at high speed. Otherwise the brakes, steering and suspension are fine. I'd like all the old rubber bushes and the engine mounts to be changed though as at 25 years old the rubber won't be in tip-top condition.

Good stuff, I think with your budget you should be able to get it nicely sorted.

With regards to the bushes, have you considered polyurethane? I fitted them on a kit car I had and it made a big difference, though I do concede they can make the ride somewhat firmer.

I'll just go for the standard ones as addiing firmer ones may increase stress on the mountings etc.

stephen_usher wrote: 24 Oct 2025 13:07 I'll just go for the standard ones as addiing firmer ones may increase stress on the mountings etc.

Makes sense.

It was almost like being back at work today... well, work in the last noughties anyway.

Seeing as the ZX Spectrum on 16 bit computers was no-longer possible I've switched over to not quite retro for my display in Cambridge so need a couple of Sun workstations set up so I can use them to play games, specifically xpilot and netrek... maybe Quake & Quake II as well. (OK, maybe a 19 year old workstation is retro-ish and xpilot was originally written in 1991.)

Anyway, the Sun Ultra 45 was running its original copy of Solaris which has a few bugs which could affect the show so it needed to be upgraded.

The first major issue is the DVD drive... it doesn't like reading writable DVDs. Fine if you're installing from official DVDs but rubbish if you need to install from downloads. I found Solaris 10 U5 and U7 (the target, the last version before Oracle bought Sun and changed the licensing) online. I first copied the original drive onto a backup drive as it has the Sun Studio 11 compilers installed and licensed.

So, the rest of the day has been installing the new version of the OS and this evening upgrading to Update 7... whilst listening to "Sky 2" on LP.


And xpilot runs fine... :-)


Oh, and on the SAAB front, looks like good news as the restorer thinks he can do a good job on the car. It'll just cost money. :-)