Author: Croccy22

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Apple IIc – The first Apple in my collection

With the exception of an original Apple iPad and an iPod Nano back in the day, I’ve never owned another Apple device. On the mobile side, I’ve always had Android devices from their first release, and from the computing side, I’ve always been in the PC camp.

But back in the time of the 8-bit computers, I don’t think I was even aware of Apple. Living in the UK, I was brought up with names such as Sinclair, Commodore, Acorn and Amstrad. But on the other side of the pond, Apples seemed to account for a vast number of people’s first home computers.

Well, I figured it was about time I found out what all the fuss was about and recently came across an Apple IIc up for sale. It had the Wdrive SD card floppy emulator with it, and I’ve also built up an RGBtoHDMI board for it and purchased a joystick port adapter to allow me to use PC gamepads with the computer.

I am currently running a Hard Drive image on the Wdrive named Total Replay, which has a large selection of the best Apple II games installed with a nice GUI to control it all. It even has a nice “attract” mode which scrolls through some of the games if you leave it sitting there doing nothing.

Going to spend some time now looking around the system and seeing how it all works. Getting used to such oddities as the Delete key not actually being a delete key and instead just printing a weird square character. Apparently, this is a real thing!

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Super Slim PS2 (Hardware Mod)

After seeing a YouTube video about a modder that had made a super slim version of the already slim Playstation 2, I couldn’t resist building one myself!

This mod takes a 79xxx Series PS2 Slim (Which had a smaller main PCB than other models), then trims it down a bit more and removes the optical drive. Instead of loading from CD/DVD, it uses an internally wired MX4SIO adapter to load games from Micro SD Card.

The modder named Wesk, has also designed a really nice 3D printed case design to house the project. Keeping the design in line with the PS2 slim model, this really looks like something Sony themselves could have produced.

As you can see, compared to the original fat PS2, this new console has gone on quite a diet!

If you want to build your very own super slim PS2 then you can check out a good YouTube video here.

The only issue I came across with this project, is the PS2 version I picked up didn’t have the lid detect switch in the same place. So I had to hot glue my own switch into place. Apart from that everything else worked fine and it wasn’t a difficult project to complete.

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Bedroom re-decorated

The bedroom needed a new carpet so I decided to go for a re-design. Originally I was going to build another custom unit, but after measuring IKEAs Kallax units, it turned out that for once, they were exactly the right size for what I required.

So one trip to IKEA later and a lot of work and cables, here is the finished product!

Everything is connected to Alexa-enabled smart plugs so it’s all voice-controlled rather than having to mess with switches. Also, there is a new 10-way automatic scart switch box to switch all the inputs without having to swap any AV leads over.

I’ll see about doing a review of the scart switcher soon, but just as a heads up, it’s brilliant and works flawlessly!

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Nokia N-Gage #sidetalking

The only thing I really remember about these devices when they came out, was everyone taking the **** out of them for having to hold them sideways to use them as a phone.

Well besides that issue, the device itself could actually run some pretty good games for the time. Games like Tomb Raider got their own port for the system, and apart from the weird portrait screen, it was pretty playable.

One other big complaint people had about them was having to take the case off and remove the battery to change the game card. This however is no longer an issue since cracked games are easily available now and you can just fill up a 1GB MMC card with all the games you want and just leave it in the system.

I look forward to seeing what other games the system has to offer, already found a pretty good version of Rayman 3 which I have never come across on any other system as this is a 2D platformer like the original Rayman.

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Nintendo Virtual Boy

The Virtual Boy has always intrigued me, a bit like a VR headset, it’s one of those devices that people cannot show you what it is like in a video or a screenshot. You just have to experience it for yourself.

I had previously heard a lot of people complaining of headaches and eye strain etc, but a lot of people suffer from those sorts of things with modern VR headsets too and I’ve never had any issues with them. So I finally decided to take the plunge and add one of these devices to my collection along with a flash cart so I can experience the entire library.

I must say I am actually quite impressed, I mean it’s not actually VR in any way, it’s more along the lines of a 3D Gameboy, but the effect is really good and the games I have played so far have also been very enjoyable.

The device is also completely different from anything else released back then, so it looks great on display and always draws attention to itself. No regrets at all about finally adding this to my collection, especially the fact it was my birthday present.

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A new DIY case for the Jaguar Skunkboard

A while ago I put together a small project to flash the Atari Jaguar Skunkboard flash cart from a Raspberry Pi (More details here). The Skunkboard can only hold 1 or 2 games at a time so it was nice to not have to keep removing it and plugging it into my PC to flash it.

Since I built that, I have kept thinking about making it more compact and building everything into a single cartridge. Well, I finally got around to it, and here is the end result:

The cartridge has a DC power jack on the top which is powered from a USB cable. This provides the power to the Raspberry Pi as I didn’t want to risk drawing too much current from the Jaguar itself. The rotary encoder on the side of the unit is used to scroll through the game list and select which game you want and what bank to flash the game to.

I think it turned out pretty well. If you wish to build your own then subscribe to my mailing list from the homepage as I will be uploading the build guide and required files in the new year.

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Commodore PC10-ii

I was given this old PC the other day along with a bunch of other bits and pieces that I am still going through. But this was definitely the most interesting item so I wanted to take a look at it as soon as possible.

After measuring the voltages coming from the power supply it was clearly dead, all voltages shoeing around 1.7Volts. A full re-cap had the potential of bringing it back to life, but these old power supplies were not that great. The huge fan on it also failed and rattled around as it tried to spin.

My decision was to buy a small ATX power supply and retrofit it to the unit. After slicing the connectors onto the modern ATX PSU, I measured all the voltages again and then powered it up.

And it is now booting! This one was actually fitted with an ancient Western Digital Hard Drive which has also died, it spins up and tries to read, but it doesn’t sound healthy and wouldn’t boot. The floppy drives, however, do work, and among the other stuff I picked up, was a set of 5 1/4 inch floppies including a Microsoft DOS Boot floppy.

The most interesting thing about this unit is someone has fitted an Orchid Tiny Turbo 286 processor board to it. I’ve not been able to fully test that yet as I need to build up an AT-XT Keyboard adapter. But the PC does boot with the switch in both positions so I think it’s fine.

The next steps are to fit a modern Hard Drive solution like an XT-IDE board, give it some sound with a modern Adlib Sound card replacement and then design and 3D print a bracket to hold the new PSU in place and mount the power input and power switch on the back of the unit. Should be a fun project!

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Amstrad NC200

Having had the NC100 whilst I was at school and having one again in my collection now, I have still always wanted its bigger brother the NC200. The bigger screen, built-in backlight, and a 3.5″ floppy drive made it a far more advanced device.

I’ve been keeping an eye out for a while now for a decent priced one, and finally picked one up for a price I was happy with.

Since this has a built-in serial port and terminal emulator, My next thing to do is to get this connected up to some old skool BBSs.

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The Retro Hour Podcast Kickstarter has launched!

If you like retro stuff as much as me, then hopefully you have already checked out The Retro Hour Podcast.

The guys behind the podcast have now launched a Kickstarter campaign for their new book “The History of Video Gaming, From Those Who Made It Happen”. These guys have interviewed the most famous people in the industry over the years, so this book is sure to be a good read!

So go and back the project now! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/retrohour/the-retro-hour-book

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Parappa the Rapper merchandise

Although I mainly collect old computers and consoles, I do also have a selection of other retro merchandise and toys. I think in the near future I’m going to have to add a new section to my archive to include some of this stuff.

My latest pickup was this strange and seemingly quite rare Parappa the Rapper toy. It’s a moving toy depicting a picnic scene with Parapper and Sunny. When you press the button there is some Japanese dialogue and then it busts out into a cute tune and their heads bob around to the music.

The Boom Box in the scene contains a removable keyring containing a cartridge that holds the music and speech data. I assume they planned on releasing additional keyrings or something, but I think only 3 different models were ever released and I don’t know if any additional cartridges were ever made.

One thing is for certain though, it has a very high cuteness factor!