exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

I've spent a bit of time this afternoon trying to get this thing to work as a serial console for the ST diag cart:


But boy has it been a fight! There is no serial software like Hypertrm installed and all the downloads I tried have just failed to run stating they are not for this version!

Stupid Windows CE, surely they could have just dropped Hypertrm in with it! Even my Amstrad NC100 works and it is way less complex than this Jornada.

Another quick project today, resurrected when I found it during unpacking!

This is the insides of my faithful 20+ year old Maplin soldering iron:


I knocked it off my workbench about 18 months ago, and decided I'd fix it one day, then never got round to it!!

So as I'd found it during unpacking, I thought I'd give it a go. The main problem was that the iron didn't heat up, despite it getting power.

This meant that there was either a problem with the logic board, or somewhere between the logic board and the iron.

Since the unit had fallen heavily to the floor, I decided to reflow the main power to the logic board, the power out from the logic board to the DIN socket on the side of the machine, and the DIN socket itself. It would be very easy for any of those to have been jarred when it fell to the floor, especially the DIN socket for the iron, as it's a very small sub assembly, and the iron was connected at the time of the fall.

So a quick power on test, and voila, the iron works again!! Nice it was such a quick easy fix.

Here we are all running again:


The temp control is all fully functioning too (Before it showed only power and no heating, the first 2 LEDs in the strip), so very happy to have revived the iron that taught me the majority of my soldering skills :)

:dualthumbup:

@rubber_jonnie That's not the same iron that inflicted those horrible injuries on you a couple of years back is it?

:hide: :poke:

I wonder how many times that soldering iron has been rebranded over the years :lol:

JezC wrote: 03 Jan 2022 20:30 @rubber_jonnie That's not the same iron that inflicted those horrible injuries on you a couple of years back is it?

:hide: :poke:

It's exactly the one 😁

exxos wrote: 03 Jan 2022 20:34 I wonder how many times that soldering iron has been rebranded over the years :lol:

Many many times :lol:

Looking forward to my Xmas purchases arriving this week:


Both have eluded me for a long time, and I just love the form factor of the 600XL, which will be getting Ultimate 1MB, VBXL and Pokeymax once I've upgraded it internally to 64MB. The short case will fit really nicely on my desk.

Woo hoo, the Jornada is now good for ST serial port diags.


Damn handy too as it's nice and small.

@rubber_jonnie What software did you use?