Another one for the collection. The Psion Series 3 personal digital assistant. This little device containes all the basic functionality you would expect from a PDA of that era. It also had it’s own built in programming language. I have got a serial cable on it’s way for this so will try and get it online when that turns up, because why not? 🙂
I have seen a few YouTube videos about this little device. It is an adapter board that plugs into the original Denise chip socket on the Amiga 500 and then has a raspberry pi zero connected into it. This then allows the Digital RGB signal directly from the Amiga to be output via the HDMI of the pi giving a pixel perfect digital output.
The actual RGBtoHDMI project was originally designed for the BBC Micro but has since been adapted to work with many other retro systems. The Amiga version requires an adapter board designed by C0pperdragon and can be found here.
The adapter boards are available for purchase but the waiting list is apparently quite long so I decided to get the bare PCBs ordered from JLPCB and ordered the components from various places and then built my own over the weekend. Suprisingly it worked first time!
The only issue with using it on an Amiga is that it doesn’t output the audio, so you either need to connect the audio up to an amp via phono cables or get a device to inject the phono audio into the HDMI signal. I have ordered one of these from China so will test it when it gets here to see how well that works.
I am of the age that at school we had these beauties in our classrooms. I remember designing many circuit boards on one of these in our Design and Technology classes. Well finally I now have on in my collection.
I have already replaced the power supply capacitors which were ready to explode (This is common on all BBC Micros).
Another mod I have also done is fitted the user port with an MMC interface which allows me to load BBC software direct from an SD Card.
Still plenty of more mods to come. Next will be the raspberry pi co-processor upgrade.
First things first. I’m off to play Elite, happy flying commanders o7
After many months of waiting and monitoring eBay. I finally managed to acquire a serial interface for my Atari Portfolio 🙂
So now along with plugging it into cash machines to take out as much money as I want, and breaking into the secure areas of Cyberdyne Systems, I can also connect up to my WiFi network and browse the BBS’s
Incidently my WiFi network is named “SKYNET” so it’s pretty cool when I connect the Portfolio up to the ESP 8266 based MoDem to see the phrase “Connected to SKYNET” showing on the screen. It’s the simple things that make me smile.
Been messing around with the MSX recently so thought it was a good time to do a small write up.
Despite sitting right in front of my main computer screen I just realised I didn’t add this to my archive.
So here it is, the Raspberry Pi 400 Home Computer 🙂
Click here to read my thoughts:
I have been pretty lazy with the site for a couple of months so decided to spend some time doing a couple of updates today since it’s bloody cold outside.
So I was lucky enough to get one of these pre-ordered on Amazon a few minutes after the listing went live.
The console itself is great and personally I really like the looks of it. To me Sony have always done something new with the design of their consoles hwere as over manufacturers just seem to draw a rectangle on a piece of paper and call it job done. I think the only playstation design that dissapointed me slightly was the PS4, they went a bit too sensible for me on that one even though it was still a great console.
So currently I am playing through Dirt 5 which has been fun even though I have stumbled across quite a few weird bugs which hopefully they will fix. Do game companies not even play test their games anymore?
Hopefully in the near future some great games will come out for this console. To me the launch line up was lacking a fair bit. I am sure some of the games are good, they are just not for me.
When I first saw this advertised I knew I just needed to have it for some reason! So I pre-ordered it on the spot and then completely forgot about it. Come November and as a nice suprise it arrived in the post. Was like having an early birthday present for me as I really had forgot I ordered it.
Now maybe I will actually find some time and try and complete Mario finally. I don’t think I have ever got past the first couple of levels before 🙂
I haven’t messed around with MIDI since my late Sam Coupe years and early 286 PC years where I used to connect a Yamaha PSS-780 keyboard up to the computer and “attempt” to get it to play some music. Usually I just ended up shoving pre-made MIDI files through it back then!
But recently I was watching a YouTube episode from RMC The Cave (loads of good videos to watch!) and he did a review of the Yamaha CX5M which is an MSX based computer with a built in Yamaha FM synthesiser.
Well, i have looked at many MSX computers recently with the aim of picking one up, and after seeing this I just knew this was the one. Not only can I experiment with an MSX but I can also go back and have a play with MIDI again 🙂
So, here she is! My very own CX5M with the YK-10 Keyboard
So whats next for this one?
Well the one small issue with it is this system has the SFG-01 addon board which doesn’t support MIDI input. They released a later SFG-05 module that had better software and more features.
Luckily you can do a mod to upgrade it. So I have a freshly burned EPROM sat here waiting to go in it over the weekend!
I have also ordered a SD mapper and 512K expansion so I can play around with some of the MSX software that is available.
Really looking forward to this and will update the site with my thoughts once I have had a play 🙂