Category: Computer System

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 battery is dead, it looked good. Then after a bit of research, I found you could switch the inputs by pushing the two volume buttons at the same time. Everything sprang into life and it all works!

These devices seem pretty rare these days, I can only find a few brief mentions of them on the internet. The device is from 1995 and was sold exclusively in Toys ‘r’ us. It’s basically a 486 DX2-66 based PC with a TV/Monitor built in and a TV Tuner on board.

The only issue I have is it didn’t come with a remote control, so currently, I am unable to switch the video input to the Scart or composite inputs on the back. On initial investigation, these seem to be controlled via a DOS executable on the PC combined with a Windows DLL file that sends commands internally via the I2C protocol. Maybe one day soon I’ll dig a little deeper and see if I can call some of the DLL routines without relying on the remote control to trigger them.

This is going to be a fun one to mess around with!

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 3a which was the same computer but with a larger screen or a series 5 which was bigger in size, had a better keyboard and was more powerful.

I chose both of them 🙂 So say hello the Series 3a and Series 5!

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 sold as spares or repairs so decided to grab that and fit the original key to this machine. So now it’s fully functional and looks in great condition. I’ve added the spares or repairs machine to my repair pile to fix up one day in the future 🙂

The plus series of the 464 had the advantage of having a cartridge slot on the side for loading the cartridge-based games including the games that play on the GX4000 console. I actually prefer the styling on the plus machines too.

I’ve moved the M4 board over to this machine now so I can load games from SD card or over WiFi, which is a lot more convenient than waiting for the tapes to load 🙂

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 C cell batteries in about an hour!

It has it’s own built-in green screen LCD but also has an external CGA monitor output on the back for that high-end gaming experience 🙂

The computer doesn’t have a hard drive but does have two Double Density floppy drives on the side. This is pretty useful since most of the time you will want the DOS boot disk in the primary drive. I have already swapped out drive A: with a Gotek drive to make booting the machine and loading old software a bit easier than constantly transferring stuff onto floppy disks.

I was actually planning on replacing the green screen LCD with a 9inch colour panel, but after using it for a bit I really feel it would spoil the charm of this machine, and the screen is in perfect working order. So instead, as a side project, I am currently building a mini 8 inch CGA External monitor to sit alongside it (Keep an eye on my blog for updates).

I will do a full write up of my experience using this machine once I’ve had a bit more chance to play around with it. I’ve already connected a WiFi modem up to it and trawled around some BBSs 🙂

I have wanted one of these in my collection for ages but at around £200-250 for an unboxed one, I had decided to wait to see if a better offer came along. Typically two then came at once so I had to buy both of them!

The first of which arrived today. This one was the first purchase and I took a bit of a chance on this one. It was from an online shop that deals with retro computers/consoles. They advertised it as not working and said it may require a new ULA. I actually have a poor condition grey +2 sat in a cupboard somewhere so a new ULA wasn’t going to be an issue. So for £120 including next day delivery, I went for it as I thought it would be fun troubleshooting the issue and hopefully bringing it back to life.

Not only is it in great condition. But I plugged it in and it works perfectly! No issues that I can see whatsoever. I have no idea how they came to the conclusion that it was broken. The only thing I can think of is that maybe the RF output doesn’t work? I will have to test this as I am currently (and always will) using an RGB Cable.

So I think I ended up with a pretty good deal on this one. Hopefully, the second unit should be here in a couple of days and that one was fully working but needed a new keyboard membrane.

I have replaced the membrane in this one also as it is almost certainly going to die in the near future, they all do!

I have recently taken delivery of two more Atari machines. The first was a Facebook marketplace sale where the guy only had the computer itself with no accessories and therefore priced it accordingly at £65. The machine in question is an Atari 1040STe. These normally sell on eBay for 100+ and it saves me having to worry about upgrading my 520STFM to get some of the more resource-hungry applications to run.

I gave it a good clean when it turned up and have replaced the floppy drive with a Gotek to make loading of software easier.

The second computer is something I hadn’t even come across before. It was launched around the same time as the ST and continued Atari’s 8 bit line of computers. This is the Atari 65XE and as you can see from the photo below it got it’s styling from it’s bigger brother. I have purchased an “S-Drive” for this computer which is a really smart looking SD Card solution for the XE. Will be interesting to check out this machines software library to see ow it compares to other 8 bit machines of the era.

I have been looking at these for a while now and this one came up for a decent price on one of the various Facebook groups I follow so I couldn’t resist. It’s all in perfect working order but the case is a bit yellowed. So this gives me an excuse to have another Retrobrighting session and this time I’m going to fully document it and make a guide for the website for anyone wishing to do the same.

Stuck out the back you can just about see the Elk128SD interface which gives the Electron 128k of RAM, a joystick port and an SD card slot for loading all the games from.

So another new computer added to the collection. This one is a bit weird! After the Commodore 64, Commodore decided their next computer would be worse in pretty much every way. Although it was cheaper and more focused as a business computer with a built-in word processor, spreadsheet, database and graphing functionality. Not surprising that it was a bit of a failure.

Still, it has a bunch of games available as it is essentially a C16. And I do actually like the overall design. Kind of reminds me of an MSX.

As you can see in the photo I’ve connected up an SD2IEC to load the software from SD-Card.

I actually have two of these currently as one was bought for cheap as untested which didn’t work. The second was from eBay and was advertised as fully working. The fully working one didn’t however display the built-in applications so I suspected a faulty ROM. I managed to get a discount on the price I paid and swapped the “3 plus 1” ROM chips over from the other unit which sorted that issue.

Whilst I had it apart I also swapped the CPU over and found that both CPUs are working fine which is a relief as they are pretty rare. So on the faulty unit, I’m going to swap out the TED chip next as I expect that is the reason why it’s not working. Hopefully, I can get it back to full working order in the near future.