exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

Well, had nothing in the post yet, no e-mails, also no response from the ebay seller who I asked if they had been contacted.

The SDA website has an online contact form that I filled out, I received an e-mail telling me in Italian to call their Italian free phone number - I can't imagine that would go very well.

:(

Whenever things have come via national postal services in the past, they've always been handled by the post office here and I get a letter through with a link to pay online. The tracking number isn't recognised by the PO website though.

Could be an expensive lesson this.

Is there no SDA UK contact at all, because your parcel does at least seem to be in the UK going by your screen-grab of the tracking.

Those reviews for SDA are particularly terrible I have to say! I've had stuff from USA, New Zealand, Poland and Russia and aside from long delivery times I've never had to pay charges. Is it possible that they have contacted the seller regarding those?

I do hope it doesn't turn out to be an expensive lesson, plus it could potentially mean a nice retro machine now gets stuck in storage until the end of time :(

Ugh, yeah, I just did some poking around myself and came up totally empty. Their Italian website does at least have support number information written in English, so presumably one can get English language "support", but how supportive it will be is anyone's guess. Wish I could offer more than just "good luck"! :|

I wrote too soon. Postie just rocked up and I have a letter from ParcelForce (my tracking number shows nothing on their system) asking me for 28 pounds VAT + 12 quid handling. I already paid the VAT on the purchase via ebay, so no idea why I'm being double bubbled.

Anyhow, I'll pay it and see if it rocks up, then try get the VAT back from ebay - fat chance I expect.

Some other goodies arrived today though....

Master-41 FDD, this is a 1541 clone - I need to make up a PSU to test it, but they are supposed to be pretty reliable drives.


A replacement copy of my Scarabaeus floppy disk which somehow got eaten during my fixes on the 1541's.


I'll post some PSU build pics & internals of the Master-41 soon.

BennehBoy wrote: 09 Feb 2022 11:30 I wrote too soon. Postie just rocked up and I have a letter from ParcelForce (my tracking number shows nothing on their system) asking me for 28 pounds VAT + 12 quid handling. I already paid the VAT on the purchase via ebay, so no idea why I'm being double bubbled.

Glad you got it in the end. I got double charged recently, can't remember the exacts , probably in my blog somewhere, but it was something to do with the order value was near the limit for paying vat up front or not. I think the limit was £134 , IIRC the value without vat was about £120 so I prepaid it. But then parcel force charged again but the total value was £120 + 20% = £144 which was over the £134 limit so they charged me vat. :cussing:

I didn't bother to dispute it, just to many companies I'm dealing with all the time, its just more cost effective for me not to bother spending the time on it all. Lesson learned that don't order goods over £100 total, and if you do, make sure its £150+ to avoid the double vat charges.

Ahhh... Scarabeus..

I used to love playing that. Thats my sort of era of games.

Looking forwards to seeing what this 128 looks like (I have my fingers crossed for you that its not too much of a drama getting it from the postal services).

Anyhow, if you need any help, give me a shout. I MAY have the odd bit of spare 128 gear knocking around.

That sounds like very positive news, you know we'll expect pictures on arrival don't you?

:girldance:

exxos wrote: 09 Feb 2022 11:42 I didn't bother to dispute it, just to many companies I'm dealing with all the time, its just more cost effective for me not to bother spending the time on it all. Lesson learned that don't order goods over £100 total, and if you do, make sure its £150+ to avoid the double vat charges.

Yeah I can see it being a waste of time - bloody annoying though.

mrbombermillzy wrote: 09 Feb 2022 12:25 Ahhh... Scarabeus..

I used to love playing that. Thats my sort of era of games.

Looking forwards to seeing what this 128 looks like (I have my fingers crossed for you that its not too much of a drama getting it from the postal services).

Anyhow, if you need any help, give me a shout. I MAY have the odd bit of spare 128 gear knocking around.

Yeah great little game, I actually like the loader for it, the rocket dropping the player off :D

rubber_jonnie wrote: 09 Feb 2022 12:53 That sounds like very positive news, you know we'll expect pictures on arrival don't you?

You know it :lol:

I've had a tinker with the clone 1541 and unfortunately it's DOA. I've hooked it up to an ATX PSU as it just needs +5V & +12V, the led lights up and stays lit, there's not motor activity. Scoping out the CPU there's no clock, data, address activity, so I think I'll have to spend some time scoping things out to see what's gone wrong. Hoping someone hasn't bodged a power hookup and blown some chips (although I can't see any evidence of things burning).

The logical place to start looking was near the clock circuitry...

Think I've found the issue:


Looks like that wire has snapped, I can see what looked to be the remnant end still soldered on one of the pins. It will explain the piece of dried out sellotape I found in that area.

Anyhow, one for later, lunch time over.

Is that a crystal/oscillator hanging off the edge of the PCB? Looks a bit ropey!!