Most liked posts in thread: What's new Pussycat too?

Just a quick post to say thank you to @nysavant for the great lot he sent me months ago. I could not find the time to test it all, but today finally I reserved a couple of hours to take a look at the marvellous ZX Spectrum +2, the DivMMC board and the great surprises that Allen was so kind to include in the package.

Wow, Speccy Nation and an exclusive controller!

Not exactly my last purchase of retrostuff, but surely one of the best!
Thanks again @nysavant!

 

Tron for me is a work of art and its that quite literally as all the cels were hand coloured, I was not as in to the second film and the initial talk of a 3rd film thankfully turned to nothing. In the second one what was awkward for me was the attempt to jazz up the tech side which detracted from the originals unique look. The deaged Flynn was too soon to try that sort of thing, even today's attempts are easy to spot (the eye's) and its been tried and has various results ie The Irishman that looks wrong, X2 with patrick Stuart and Sir Ian Mckellen where Patrick Stuart just looked BAD. The aged Steve Rogers in Endgame which was part makeup and part CGI looked good though. Also the use of Carrie Fisher and Peter Cushing in the Star Wars films looked pretty good although some scenes were just cut parts from other films but the deaged Carrie Fisher and Guy Henry changed in to Peter Cushing actually worked for the most part.

Also Michael Sheen's Zuse was so over the top he seemed to be in the wrong film but Bridges and Boxleitner did good work. Tron itself gets a regular view here and the 25th Anniversary DVD is still a brilliant look behind the scenes. Another film that I and Matt love is The Last Starfighter, obviously by today's standard the CGI is poor but then it was simply amazing and the work to get it done is simply astronomical, render farms were in their infancy. Sure it has a very typical of the time feel but once it leaves Earth the film just blooms.

And I so wish they had left the Last Star Fighter game as what it was meant to be, it works that way but asa Star Raiders game, nah....Shame its a fun little game but 100% Last Starfighter. At least we got a REAL update to Star Raiders on the Atari 8 bit..

 

I've found the problem, I forgot to say I also had an xc12 cassette player plugged into the splitter. Connected all the drives through the splitter and the disk loaded with no problems. Connected the cassette player and started having problems again. I'll see if connecting a 5V supply to the splitter cures the problem, but until I get a 5V adaptor I'll just have to disconnect the cassette player.

Graham, I downloaded a supposedly cracked version from AtariAge, and it didn't work for me, and that was loaded through RespeQt and from a floppy disk I'd written. That's why I bought another copy to be able to use the programme.

Just listening to the files on the disk playing, great sounds.

Stay safe all.

 

So Christmas has come a little early in the Black household, as I decided to buy myself a couple of presents.

I decided to get a UAV to fit into the 800XL, and I also decided to buy a nice new shiny Oscilloscope (need to check out all the nice settings in the 1050 disc drive).



Stay safe everyone, and have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

 

Yes, re the kids, its rife, my kebab bloke was telling me that his kid has been back home and many of the kids are the same, all covid carrying little buggers...

So much for the under 40s will not get the virus Boris!

I wish they would make it clear how long, I've got their text and emails that say 10 days unless you are a carehome worker and then 2 weeks from a person on the phone. Also confusion about if its from test time or the start of symptoms, official stuff says start of symptoms but verbally I hear different. I'm playing safe with 14 but as per usual the official stuff is buggered..

And guess what landed on my hand this morn from the postie...A Sophia 2, as you know I cancelled mine and it stayed cancelled. Wrote to Jacek saying I'll be happy to return it as I've got someone else's one and he said no, its a gift from a dev and him.

Bowled me over...And a thing of beauty it is...Yours must hit monday although I've seen posties still out delivering at 7pm around here in the last 2 days.

Went to the door all bleary eyed this morn, wasn't expecting anything, was still tired so went back to bed and then later picked it up and had not spotted the Polish origin, just made me wonder and for some reason I said to myself, Sophia 2 in a joke way so was stunned when it actually was one but immediately decided it was a big mistake....Such a nice surprise...

 

My FujiNet arrived today and I had a quick test and it really is a great piece of kit. If you can get one then I recommend it.

 

Latest computer to land here at Farrell HQ is this MSX machine a Toshiba HX-22 which is the later model after the HX-10. This one comes with a built-in RS232C interface, SCART RGB and a second cartridge slot.

 

I hear Richie is going in to hospital to have an operation to remove the soldering iron from his hand

Now I can see the pics from Alex, I can see some nice bits...Good on yer Richie, and thank you for the same kind offer, but I'd make no use of them so better that folk who can, get them.

And for those on AA, you can grab the game I've been secretly beta testing, Bruce Lee ROF. It's still in a beta state but FULLY playable and it will be finished but Ute decided to release it to the public. Sadly I'd not been able to beta test it much as life here is as mad as ever. Great game as well, I managed to persuade the original C64 coder to release the source code and the coder (DMX) even helped with the Atari dev'ing of the game thanks to some coaxing from me

The joy of living in multiple machine camps.

Do enjoy it, it's the original Bruce Lee code but repurposed for new game mechanics. Be warned, it's hard

 

Sure! There you go. @Klyde was so gentle to find TWO VTech Laser 500 for me and here are some pictures. One of them lacks the F keycap, but mon ami parisien, he'll find a way to print a 3D replacement as the original keyboard is very rare and parts are quite impossible to find.

 

I've re-done my XL Command Center album. New pictures showing off my brushed metal back-splash trim, full RGB LED lighting and new nick-knacks and gadgets and some re-arranging to accommodate it all. My glass case has had things on display changed, mostly rarely used controllers and hardware now. The only thing left to do is to add some corner trim along the ceiling and walls.

https://atari-owner.com/club/media/albums/m-d-bakers-xl-command-center.5/

 

Yep, Tron and 3D fan here, myself. I even like to 3D stuff where they put a couple of dots under each picture and you cross your eyes til the dots match up and you get a stereoscopic image from both black and white pictures,like they used to do a hundred and something years ago. But yeah I'm constantly looking at anaglyph 3D on YouTube and other places. Trying to do Rasterconvert 3D art to the Atari. I had one or two images come out decent so far. But I've been doing 3D art on my own using high-res mode ntsc artifacting since the 80s, as my 130xe artifacted in cyan and magenta colors,so it was/is perfect for doing 3D art.

As to Tron, I have been a huge fan since it first came out. I also like Tron legacy I thought it was an excellent remake myself. I needed to happen sooner and have a third one by now to show something in between the Tron World Graphics back then and what they had in Legacy is a bit of a job there but otherwise I liked it.

 

I really enjoyed both Tron and Tron legacy, but didn't know a series existed. Tim, probably not enough viewing figures to keep it Tron: Uprising going, too many good series went that way.

Talking of software, does anyone have a copy of 1050 detective? I have the user manual in .doc format which I downloaded and corrected some of the spelling, but can't find the .ATR for it.

I only normally download user manual if there is software to go with it, so not sure what has happened.

 

Further to the Music Construction Set saga, I decided to to do some investigation on the first stock drive, and disconnected it from the other 3 drives, and Lotharek's SIO splitter so it was connected to only the computer.

The CPS diagnostic disk was run and all the tests that could be carried out, passed.

I was going to start looking at the head position by moving it either side of where it was set until it failed to read a disk and then take the centre position as the mean setting. However, before I did that I decided to try the MCS disk which I received from Germany again, and it loaded. I next tried my original MCS disk which has not loaded for some time, and that loaded too.

Now I'm really stumped as to why it loads with just one drive connected to the 800XL while it doesn't load when 4 drives are connected (Daisy chained) to the SIO splitter and then on to the 800XL. By the way, power for the splitter is provided through the 10502PC SIO2PC Rev2 from my laptop.

I'm going to put the system back one item at a time and see when the disk fails to load, and hopefully work out what the problem is.

 

A death in the family......And it was horrible.....

I installed the U1MB, all working, was well pleased as it was my biggest electronics work in a long time and gawd to I hate desoldering..

Was on a positive kick so fixed mr Robots beheaded cable, still happy and decided to tidy up my wardrobe which is actually where I store my tools etc. Suddenly there's huge smash, one of my tool boxes has fell off the wardrobe and straight on to the upgrades 800XL, smashed the crap out of it but the only good fortune, it missed the U1MB. The XL pcb is totally cracked, all I can do is use it for spares IC wise. SO today I removed the Ult1MB and did the whole job again on my other XL, totally flew through it unlike the first one where I also suffer from shaky hands but with my confidence restored I found the second machine easy as pie....Longest part, getting the IC's off and removing the sockets from the old machine as clever me only got one of each socket.

So U1MB in and going nicely, done all my tasks so now I'm bored...Already played with U1MB via Altirra for ages..

Checked up on my 3 China based sales items, despite saying they are in the air the actual track site and not AliExpress tells me they have just gone through on to the craft only today, so much for being up in the air. The other item coming via Speedpak that was ordered 2 weeks after the Aliexpress stuff is actually now in the UK and just gone through customs.

Bloody Aliexpress...

 

Like I said on a precious post, I am after ZX Spectrum stuff these days. And I found this cheap loose (£21.00 - $26.50) ZX 48k+ on eBay.co.uk



A huge Thank You to Andy who helped me with the postage to France!
And a huge Thank You to Cercamon who notified me about the power barrel with reverse polarity, otherwise I could have fried it!

It came without the "X" key, but I could easily find a spare one.
It is a 1984 issue 6A version, with a reset button on the right side.

I gave it a good clean and installed a composite mod. It turns on, but it suffers from the same disease than every ZX from the era: the keyboard membrane fell into pieces when I tear it down to clean the keys.

Do you know where I can find a new 48k+ / 128k+ membrane for a good price? The ones I saw on eBay are sold for about 20 quid, this is what I paid for the computer! If it is the usual price then I will buy one, but maybe one of you have somewhere to point me out?

 

So, I've just received my Turbo Freezer from Santosp at Atari Age. It's really well made (translucent red case) with two adaptor boards, one for the 800xl and the other for the xe series. The adaptor boards sit on standoffs so they don't put any strain on the pbi - nice touch.

I'm in the process of printing out the user manual, so when that is complete it will be a "sit down and read through session". Then playtime folks.

 

Its does a lot more than that, I think it had battery backed up ram so you could make slots and have the game / item in the slot for use when you wanted it..

 

No problem with the games Richie, as always my pleasure to pass on some stuff..I'd rather see it used than sell it..

 

LOL....OOPS

Didn't really look at it but thought "no need to thank me again Richie"

That's made me chuckle, first one of the day

 

Finally got a copy of Encounter! on disk for the Atari

 

My Atarimax Happy 1050 and APE Warp+ 32-in-1 OS upgrades arrived in the post today. I ordered the 1200XL kit version of the OS since it's the same price, but it comes with a free BASIC eprom along with the sockets, so I've some extras. I'm just waiting on the Pokeymax to arrive, supposedly anytime between today and the 10th, though I haven't checked tracking progress in a few days.

Apparently Atarimax has started sending along a free gift. I also got a 6-pack of 'Reboot' trading cards. I guess some kids show, but it must have come after I was a kid.

 

So I decided to buy this basket case off eBay, and now I know there is definitely a streak of masochism in my make up.


Talk about 'rescuing the perishing', I must be mad.

First task when I finally wake up from this nightmare, is to remove this mad attempt at welding!!!!!!!!! So much for a Happy 810 mod. LOL

 

Hi all,

received a stock 1050 drive I won on eBay, no motor spin.

Yes, no 12 volts, so went straight for C70, the 47uF 16 volt capacitor (short cct), changed for a 47uF 25volt capacitor and back in business. 7812 regulator also changed, just to be sure.

Cleaned the rails as they were filthy, a smear of PTFE grease and the drive is now nice and quiet.

Ran the CPS 1050 diagnostic disk and all is well with the world.

I will use this over the next few weeks just to make sure there are no further problems, and then it will probably be looking for a new home. I just need to put a new plug on the power supply 9V ac lead so everything is good to go.

Stay safe everyone.

Regards

Andy