exxos blog - random goings on

[exxos]

I thought I would start my own little blog here. Not everything I do fits in the news section, or hardware section or anything. So things here are just general things which are going on in no particular order :)

I'll start off with this RAM fault on a STFM board. It was a 1MB machine, isolating the upper bank did not solve the problem. So the fault was in the lower bank somewhere.

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Rather than mess about, I put my pre-heater to work and removed all the chips.

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Then I stole the 4MB board From my test machine and soldered that in :)

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So now the machine is running YAART (1MB only) .

Why am I repairing the board you may ask ? Over the past few weeks I have been buying and doing swaps for various junk including some motherboards. This STFM style of board is my favourite style so I just did not want to scrap this board. Some boards I really cannot be bothered to repair them, so they will be robbed of parts for my store eventually.

I do not actually have a working assembled STFM anymore :( myself and my girlfriend were playing games on it a few years ago, but it had the video sync problem so it came back home was taken to bits, and was just left that way :( I have no idea what happened to the motherboard or anything. So likely I will do some random bits and bobs to this board over time so I can actually build myself a complete STFM.

Primarily this will likely be a games machine. So likely I will add IDE to it once all the work is finished :) I will likely add a high density floppy kit and build another power supply for it at some point. It needs other fixes like the floppy and DMA pullups adding etc as well. I will also add a TOS104 to it as well.

[PhilC]

Its always the same, you never get time to work on your own computer etc.....

[exxos]

Its always the same, you never get time to work on your own computer etc.....

Yep :( I have actually had a really nice case and keyboard put aside for ages as well :roll:

[exxos]

This is the second machine which I have mentioned before..

This one will be heading off my girlfriends when finished so she can test all 300 of the 1772 chips :twisted:

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I have fitted one of my latest high-density floppy kits and hacked in a ZIF socket to make it easy to swap chips. As it is now in the way of the floppy drive, I had to extend that cable.

Currently this machine is being used to test the SMT GLUE & MMU adapter boards. Also the new RTC board. I want to have a go at doing a 3-D printer case for this, but again time is always against me :(

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[terriblefire]

You actually use retro computers? I seem to have got out of the habit.

[exxos]

You actually use retro computers? I seem to have got out of the habit.

Not lately no, just to swamped with hardware stuff lately :( We completed Castlemaster last time the machine was working (maybe 4 years ago) , only took 25 years :twisted: We almost got off level 2 of magic pockets as well... Still trying to get off level 1 on xenon..

I was playing with my 2600 recently, until I took it to bits to add Svideo mod, and got side-tracked.. need to finish that off aswell yet :roll:

[exxos]

Got me a reel of 44 & 68 SMT sockets 8-)

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[PhilC]

Got me a reel of 44 & 68 SMT sockets 8-)


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Mongrel board perhaps?

[exxos]

Mongrel board perhaps?

Nope, DUALTOS boards mostly for the 44pin... 68pin maybe for future IDE boards.

[exxos]

Bottom section test of the RTC case.. in theory the PCB should fit snug into the area.. unlikely.. but looks good either way :lol:

#MASTEROFBOXES

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