Blog Index

Back in my old school, we had a mixture of Acorn BBCs, RM Nimbus PCs, Amstrad PCW Word Processors and even an Amiga. But down in our Design and Technology department, there was also another curious device sitting in the corner that seemed to have no purpose other than to play a 3D spaceship game […]

I was offered this device untested for a price I couldn’t refuse. From a photo, I could see the TV part would power on but nothing else was displayed. Having picked up the computer, I got it home and started testing, first I plugged the PC part into another monitor and apart from the CMOS […]

After pre-ordering back in July last year and then patiently waiting (which I’m not very good at). My steamdeck has finally arrived. So the first thing I did was tested the performance to the absolute max and played Monkey Island on it 🤣 Funnily enough the deck managed to play this at full frame rate […]

With HUGE thanks to Joao (Website: http://www.enide.net/webcms/index.php?page=ppc512-640-isa-expansion) I recently received a PCB to build up an ISA Card expansion board for the Amstrad PPC512. This allows you to plug up to three 8bit ISA cards into the PPC512. I built up the board with just one ISA slot to start with (There was only one […]

I’ve had quite a lot of people interested in my mini CGA monitor build so have put together a build guide to show what components I used. I have also uploaded the 3D printable files so anyone with access to a 3D printer can build their own. I do still need to complete the wiring […]

I was originally going to replace the green screen LCD on my PPC512 with a modern LCD colour screen. But there was nothing physically wrong with the built in monitor apart from the horrible motion blur. It seemed a shame to butcher a fully working device. So instead I opened up my CAD program and […]

Along with my collection of computers and consoles, I also collect various other bits of old technology. I recently picked up this “new” portable LCD TV for a bargain price. Obviously, these devices only pick up analogue signals which are no longer transmitted in the UK. But with the help of my HackRF (Software Defined […]

So whilst decorating, the Psion Series 3 decided it wasn’t getting enough attention and jumped off a shelf onto the new laminate flooring. Sad to say, resusitation was not succesfull after breaking several body parts. So I decided to take a look around for a replacement and came up with two options. Either a Series […]

This is another computer I’ve actually had for a little while now, but when I purchased it, it had a missing key. I was planning on 3D printing a replacement, which I got as far as designing the model and printing the prototype using my resin printer. But then I came across a unit being […]

I’ve had this machine for about a week now and am still enjoying tinkering with it. This luggable computer was the first IBM compatible portable PC made by Amstrad. It comes with it’s own backpack to carry it in, and if you want to use it on the go it will quite happily eat 10x […]

So after a few attempts on eBay to pick one of these up (When will people learn that you can’t just wrap a CRT in a single layer of bubble wrap and ship it in a single cardboard box 🙁 ), I finally have a working Sony Trinitron 14″ Flatscreen TV to replace my old […]

I am fully aware that this is in no way a retro console! But it is a part of my collection and saves me having to update my website again in 20-30 years’ time 🙂 This was actually a win in a raffle, so only cost me £12 which I’m fairly sure is a good […]