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Ok, so the information in this post is pretty niche. I’m only aware of 4 of these computers in existence and currently none of them have the original remote control.

Mostly, this isn’t an issue because you can control the majority of the TV functions by the buttons on the screen. But ever since I’ve owned this computer, I’ve never found a way to switch to the scart input.

Over the last couple of years I’ve poked and prodded around to try and find out how the system works, through dissambling the DLL files I discovered that the computer and TV talk to each other using the I2C protocol. I also found that the 10pin connector that plugs into the riser board contains the SCL and SDA lines needed for the I2C protocol.

Today, I was having another play around and decided to hook up some wires and start sniffing the I2C bus to see if I could work anything out. The only issue is I forgot which pins they were! So I probed around and quite quickly found the SDA line, but wasn’t 100% sure which pin was SCL as none of them looked like what I expected and it had to be there.

I decided to hook up some dupont cables and just connect the known SDA wire and the ground wire, and then I would use the 3rd wire to go through each pin and work out which wire was SCL.

To do this, I would connect a wire, boot into windows and use one of the known “hot keys”, CTRL+ALT+T. This hot key tells the TV to switch to TV input, then you can use CTRL+ALT+P to switch back to PC.

This can also be achieved by pressing the two volume buttons together at the same time on the front of the unit.

This is where things happened that were VERY unexpected. Just using my 3 wires, I found the 3 pins where the hot key worked, so I must have located the SCL line. Great! But when I pressed CTRL+ALT+T a second time, the TV switched to the scart input!

What the hell! I pressed it again and it switched the AV2 which is the phono ports for composite input. Each time I pressed the key combination it cycled through the 3 inputs.

I really thought I’d gone mad. Surely all this time it wasn’t as simple as pressing the hot key multiple times? Somebody must have tried this! (Including me!)

I removed my jumper cables and plugged the original connector back in and booted up the PC. Pressed CTRL+ALT+T and it switched to the TV as expected, I then pressed it a second time and…….

Nothing! It just stayed on the TV channel. Something odd was going on.

I reverted back to my 3 dupont wires and once again I could switch inputs. So I then started connecting the remaining wires one at a time and testing the hot key. As soon as I reconnected the black wire, I was no longer able to switch inputs.

Without the black wire connected, the CTRL+ALT+P hot key to switch back to PC input no longer works, but you can still switch back to the PC by pressing the two volume buttons.

This was a very random discovery, and I’d love to take full credit for it, but it was pretty much blind luck that I stumbled onto this.

I do still want to investigate this further, as I am sure there is a shared memory address somewhere that if I configure a certain way it will send I2C codes to the TV. And now I can switch the inputs I want to capture the I2C commands and see if they are any different with the black wire connected vs not connected. But that can wait for another day now.

For the time being, I’ll just sit here and play a bit of Super Mario on my NES, hooked up to the PCTV via scart cable 😀

I know I’ve been a bit quiet for a few months but I have been working on a big project in the background (More info soon).

To keep me busy though, I decided I needed something new to have a tinker with, so I purchased a non working Apple Macintosh Classic II off Ebay.

The seller did a great job of packaging it up and it arrived with no damage whatsoever. I tried powering it up and got vertical lines on the CRT just as the eBay listing showed.

Interestingly, on my 3rd or 4th power on, I heard the startup sound and the machine booted straight up. The hard disk was working fine and so was the floppy drive!

Not exactly the repair challenge I was hoping for, but I can’t complain.

I have since re-capped the logic board, although to be fair it was in near-perfect condition, no corrosion, and even the battery had no leakage.

Even after the re-cap though, it suffers from an issue where when powered on, it will stay on a black screen, and after 10-20 seconds it will then spring into life. I’ve noticed this start time has decreased in the warm weather.

I am expecting it to be the capacitors on the Analog board that need replacing. I don’t have all the correct values here currently though, so will sort that another day.

I am also just about to acquire a SCSI Zip drive, so once I get that I can use my PC with Zip drive to transfer some software across and have a proper play.

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!

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

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!