Stuff and Things.

[rubber_jonnie]

I have an Amstrad Alt-386 laptop and whoever deigned the PCB only had right angled instruments to hand, it's really quite ugly.

ahh sounds like the Falcon then. It was really a rush job on the autorouter on that one. Everything is right angled when it could could have easy wins of 45 deg. Not much pride in PCB work anymore is there.

I strongly suspect autorouting has got a lot better and the big boys have got very expensive stuff that'll do up to a trillion layer boards with the tiniest components without any angles at all...

[rubber_jonnie]

All back together, cleaned up and tested good with a quick game of missile command :)

IMG20260421135639.jpg

[rubber_jonnie]

Well my TSSOP adapters arrived yesterday, so I should be able to get the GALs programmed for the CDP1861 replacement programmed now.

IMG20260423103012.jpg

The boards are actually double sided, so one side is TSOP the other TSSOP, and you can build either way, so I built one of each for flexibility.

Just waiting for the remaining parts, a 4014 and a 4040 to arrive and then I cab build the CDP1861 replacement :)

[rubber_jonnie]

This just arrived, a freebie from a user over at UK Vintage Radio forum:

IMG20260423105909.jpg

It's a CDP1802 machine that also includes a printer that seems to be thermal.

The mainboard is marked as follows:

IMG20260423111024.jpg

And the printer PCB is marked as follows:

IMG20260423111015.jpg

So the company is clearly called Gay and we have an FTM-1 and a Printina S-SR.

I'll do some digging and see what I can find out about it.

[HigashiJun]

Better to stay away...

Guess you will find weird pictures instead...

[rubber_jonnie]

Better to stay away...

Guess you will find weird pictures instead...

I'm already disturbed by some of the search results....


:dizzy:

[stephen_usher]

It's obviously jolly and gay. What a happy board.

[rubber_jonnie]

It's obviously jolly and gay. What a happy board.

Indeed it is....

I just realised that I cut off the date on the inspection sticker, the date is: 5/83

So come May it was last inspected 43 years ago...

I should pull the ROMs and read them, see if there is a clue at all as to what it is. Every last IC on it was made by RCA.

[rubber_jonnie]

Well, my Epson HX-20 keeps looking at me and saying "What aren't you repairing me?"

So in order to help with that I bought another...

Screenshot 2026-04-26 at 18.49.14.png

This one has the expansion unit mine is missing, hopefully it'll give me all the info I need to get my other working again, more to come with that as and when I get to it :)

[rubber_jonnie]

Just got this for £12, too hard to resist :)

Screenshot 2026-05-07 at 13.16.26.png

Should be fun :)