exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

PhilC wrote: 16 Sep 2023 11:50

rubber_jonnie wrote: 16 Sep 2023 11:47 Just picked up an Issue 4s mainboard off eBay for spares, £20, it may help me with mine, which is also a 4s.

That sounds like a good idea, maybe transfer everything across once you’ve checked it.

Yes, depends very much on the 12V circuit now, as I have replaced the RAM with modded 4164's:


And when I feed 12v in from my bench PSU to D15, it actually boots:


Which is good because it looks like the rest of the machine works. I'll take it as a win for now, just need to wait for some alternative transistors to arrive for T4 so I can try and revive the 12v circuit.

If not I can certainly look at what I can do with the spare board.

rubber_jonnie wrote: 16 Sep 2023 11:44 Yes, £335 was the release price, but you're right, it did go up to £399 when they realised the costs were higher than planned. I think the Model A also went up from £235 to £299. You must have been gutted to see the 48K price drop just a week after you got a 16K machine. Did you upgrade it?

Yeah, about a year later after selling by ZX81 & RAM Pack to one of my Dad's work colleagues for £15. That paid for about half the cost of the Fox Electronics upgrade kit. (I later bought the ZX81 etc. back for £15 a couple of years later.)

rubber_jonnie wrote: 16 Sep 2023 10:33 It was an incredible time, I saw so many computers come and go in the 80's and 90's.

Yes, thus my previous quote.

So many computers and sometimes really great machines not from scrap, but from bargain parts.

My first ever computer was a ZX81...

:)

HigashiJun wrote: 16 Sep 2023 13:49

rubber_jonnie wrote: 16 Sep 2023 10:33 It was an incredible time, I saw so many computers come and go in the 80's and 90's.

My first ever computer was a ZX81...

:)

Mine too :) I did at one point acquire a Science of Cambridge MK14, but I sold it down the line. Wish I'd kept it, but needed the money at the time.

stephen_usher wrote: 16 Sep 2023 13:40
Yeah, about a year later after selling by ZX81 & RAM Pack to one of my Dad's work colleagues for £15. That paid for about half the cost of the Fox Electronics upgrade kit. (I later bought the ZX81 etc. back for £15 a couple of years later.)

Ahh, the circle of life :)

Just to add to the full Spectrum feeling, I've been tinkering with my Spectrum 128K +2 over the last week as well. It's reminded me of just how terrible the image quality is over a modulator, but I have a SCART cable inbound which should improve matters.

One thing I can deal with is the built in datasette or as Amstrad called it, datacorder.

It will load stuff ok, but trying to rewind or fast forward is dire. Very slow and sometimes stops altogether. Playback is occasionally wobbly too, so it's out on the bench for a clean:


I might need to do a belt change and lube, but I think it'll work just fine when I'm done.

Wow been like 25 years since I have seen guts like that!

I remember they used to have tape players for background music in pubs years ago where they would why the head up backwards so only "special tapes" would work. "Welcome to Quicksilver radio"... :lol:

That's very similar to the CPC464's tape deck, funnily enough.

exxos wrote: 18 Sep 2023 19:29 Wow been like 25 years since I have seen guts like that!

I remember they used to have tape players for background music in pubs years ago where they would why the head up backwards so only "special tapes" would work. "Welcome to Quicksilver radio"... :lol:

There were probably a lot of datacorders that were built in that looked like this when removed from their machines or housings. I've got a few that look similar to this when you pull them apart.

Interesting you mention background music machines, as I had one of these as my main cassette deck for ages:


It came from a bar, but was going to be junked and I saved and repaired it. When it finished playing a tape it pushed it out sideways and the tape above would drop in and play. You needed about 4 or 5 tapes for full operation, and as each tape was played and ejected it pushed the other tapes up the 'Ski Slope', but the real clever bit was that when they got to the top they would flip to the other side and slide down to the stack for playing. It was really quite amazing to watch and it would just keep playing the tapes for eternity unless you hit stop.

I also ended up with another earlier version that did exactly the same. I really don't recall what happened to them, but the audio quality was surprisingly good.

stephen_usher wrote: 18 Sep 2023 22:36 That's very similar to the CPC464's tape deck, funnily enough.

Yeah, given the 128 +2 was around the same era as the CPC 464 and also under Amstrad ownership, I'm not totally surprised, and I wouldn't be surprised if they were identical, at least mechanically.

I've seen Altai datacorders for the C64/VIC-20 that look identical and are mechanically the same as the Atari XC12, so clearly there was a lot of recycling going on back then to try and optimise the profit made by one mechanism :)

That's is one cool piece of machinery @rubber_jonnie