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

My Oscilloscope arrived today. The same exact model I had 15 years ago. Though one or two of the interchangeable modules were different. This one is dual beam, with 2 differential amplifiers and one Time Base amplifier.It's in good cosmetic condition, after a good cleaning. I believe this is a Goodwill or Salvation Army charity/thrift store discard. I worked at a Goodwill store with donation drop-off center while I was attending tech school in the early 2000's and they would not sell any electronic donations, beyond TV's because the the Goodwill regional President had heard that electronics contain PCB's and she knew PCB's were toxic! LOL! And this Oscilloscope has it's power cable cut off as they had us do to all electronics before tossing them. I explained the situation to my manager and a regional guy when he dropped by once, to try and stem the tide of vintage electronics going to the landfill for no good reason, but I was a nobody, so...

There were also some loose wires hanging out the top when it arrived, so I removed the side cover to investigate and there is one board missing from it's spot on that side. It looks like someone was bypassing a bad board that was removed with something external as the loose wires were connected to a wire harness from the PSU board. I'll have to investigate. In the meantime I'll repair the power cord and power her on and see what works and what doesn't.

Here it is on my workbench, amidst a Sophia 2 and PBI cable install. My little workbench is getting crowded!

 

MD Baker VS Graham.......Bench warsssssssss

This time it's personal.......



Nice setup there Matt, despite my background I would not have a clue with most of that kit..You have fun now...

 

I had another table that sat next to my DIY workbench (from scrap wood) but I had to let it go so I could fit my audio/video electronics console, with my stereo system, etc., in the room. Things will fall into place and find places once I get paneling up in my room and add in some more shelving.

 

FANtastic, Matt.

I can thoroughly recommend em - hours of superb strategy game play there with informative, historically accurate scenarios, manuals, maps and those "what if...?" variants too to try.

Brilliant.

You will not go wrong with these.

 

This is my reason for buying original games; for display. I don't even know if I'll become a fan of these type of games. I never bothered back in the day, because I didn't have the interest or attention span for such titles. My interest has changed and we shall see if my attention span has too...I think it has...but I haven't sat down and really got started on any of them yet (out of the couple I already own of this type).

 

Nice...
Christmas (2021) come early, Matt!
GET INVOLVED!

 

On the first day of Christmas my true self gave gave to me, one Oscilloscope with frequencies to see. On the second day of Christmas my true self gave to me, one 3D printer for projects to keep me busy. On the third day of Christmas my true self gave to me one Field of Fire and a Fujinet with extra goodies...to be continued...

 

Nice round-up there, Matt, of some excellent software titles.

Hand on heart, over the years, Crusade in Europe and Decision in the Desert have given me hours, days, weeks.... yeah, months of pleasure. I used to play these fab simulations for nights on end when in my batchelor flat between 86-93 and these were always my default strategy games to return to.

In fact, I'd often ditch my ST and Amiga and fire these up instead, Matt - they can be that absorbing if you've an interest in recent history/wargaming and enjoy reading about the actual campaigns and then like to check them out as regards playing a computer simulated opponent OR getting another human to play the axis/allies - it's very interesting.

Great artwork, media and accompanying printed materials so glad you've given the boxes and packaging your personal restoration touch and they're now virtually as good as the day they left the Microprose developers!

Great exhibits in your mega mancave, mate.

 

Great and complete info, thank you, Matt! Also thanks to Richie for his kind reply.
So the AVG Cart is the top, but no network/connectivity services?

 

I was surprised too, to be honest, but not complaining.

 

Anything with ORIC on it has got to be class, Daz....

 

Sadly one of the previous owners had butchered the vias for the voltage regulator so it’s not a pretty repair. What you could do is change the LM7905 again for a Traco power TSN 1 2450

https://www.mouser.co.uk/ProductDetail/495-TSN1-2450/

That would eliminate the need for a heat sink inside the Atmos, you will need to increase the 1uf Capacitor to around 10uf to delay the startup as the TSN is slower to start compared to the LM7905.
I have done my Atmos and it was trial and error finding the right value for the capacitor - your mileage may vary.

 

If @Graham can figure out how to align the head on that model of 3” drive it should be salvageable. I’m pretty sure that is what is wrong with it as the logic board is fine and the 3” drive works up to the point where it looks for track zero on a 3” disk.

 

@Graham regards the Oric PSU it is known that the PSU unloaded outputs 11v-15v but when under load drops to around 9v so I would say your PSU is an “average” Oric power supply, if it’s an official Tangerine one. It’s one of the reasons the Oric heatsink gets so hot toot sweet.
The replacement of the Voltage Regulator on the Oric for a modern type means a couple of things related to above the most obvious is the heatsink being no longer needed, and the complete lack of heat from the VR. It also runs more efficiently as well.

I should mention that you can get a horizontal mounted model of the new VR ( TSN-1-2450A )this is the one I use.

 

Many thanks, Richie.

I know you put a fair bit of time in there doing all you could to sort the 3" drive reading and then ran up against the head alignment issue.

Hope those pointers help you, Graham.

Many thanks, fellas - bit busy at mo this end as Bev has her pot off now (discharged from hossie on Thursday) so spending even more time now guiding her around as she tries to get (gingerly) back on her feet but needs escorting in case of a fall/collision as she's next needing weeks of physio.

 

Glad she has the cast off, I hope she gets past the fear of another fall asap...

 

Many thanks, Paul.

Although the healing and mending has gone ever so well (she has a 6inch plate inside with 2 fek off long screws she was proud to tell me about), it aches like buggery for her and I've caught her bad leg twice already stupidly thinking she's back to normal now... clearly isn't from the verbals I got for being so clumsy!!!

The air was BLUE, folks!

LOL.

 

I TOTALLY get that, Paul. Understood, mate.

When we've had to travel inbetween the house, the car and the hospital, Bev's insisted on me being behind her just in case her crutches slip in the wet mud or ice (goes from one extreme to another in 'Ull), and she topples backwards as this is her greatest fear.

I just need to be more wary of catching her leg/foot thinking she's all mended now.

She aint - it was a very nasty set of fractures and the docs have said she has done brilliant to heal as well as she has done as they were on the verge of putting a steel cage around the shattered leg, it was that bad initially.

Sorry to hear of your ongoing pain and as you know and appreciate, Cindy's showing her care and concern and when they get it a little wrong, we do tend to bawl out at the one's we love the most due to the painful shock (then instantly regret it!)

Take great care, fella and hope to have an online catch-up soon with you guys.

 

@Paul "Mclaneinc" Irvine I think we all make the occational mistake and end up hurting our parteners whilst trying to help., It's sometimes difficult to be helpfull without getting in the way .. and hey blue air ... better than covid air ..

 

The Brewing Academy FujiNet devices are using the slightly older ESP32-WROVER-B module I think the IE variation is the more modern replacement part. The v1.0 version I have seems to work just fine but it will be interesting to see what you come up with as far as PCB design goes.
I have ordered some Quad-OS PCB’s if you want a couple.

 

@Vyper68 I've a fair number of bit's I'll be sending off to you I've been waiting for some edge connectors to come in to make up a cable. Will be MX mother board, and ribbon to connect it, and a few plug in boards and odds and sod's
mainly for those boards. not sure how much use they will be to you, But I know the 464 has made it back to you. Did you ever get an M4 board off of Duke ?

In regard the Fujinet, there are many ESP32 boards available but most don't have the larger capacity modules attached. at the moment they are making use of the 8MB + 8MB modules but future software may need more room. hence specifying the 16MB version
Comparing the schmatics for the boards about the size of a long Arduino Nano, they are very very similar, with additions for a few extra buttons and LEDs and an mSD card socket. There is a slight variance on some capacitor values on the boards, but looks like the Fujinet 1.0 uses the basic schematic, the 1.3 adds two fets and two '07' buffers to disconnect all the SIO lines. issues with back feeding power under some circumstances.
I'll use a module, change the ESP to a higher spec version, and build a small board to connect to sio with the extra buttons leds, and buffers required.
Any suggestion would be welcome. I did seriously think of buying in the individual components to build from scratch, but I think the cp2102's will beat me soldering wise, although I could try with the hot air gun and solder paste.
the CP2102 is out of stock on digikey at the moment even the 20 pin 3mm square ones and the larger 5mm square The 6 & 7mm square all out of production.
Be nice to do something joint between us what do you think ?

 

The ones I've seen so far all use the cp2102 chips so the same driver required, however it's for programming the device and most software will work as long as it see's com port in which case any old device will work as long as a device driver matches on the PC you use.
Agh trying to do this on my phone and chat window keeps opening and blocking
What I can see. I'll add more when home.

 

@Graham I would need to read up a bit more on the hardware side but I don’t think you need to stick with a CP2102. I think as long as the firmware update software can detect a COM port you could use a different USB to Serial device. The software stipulated the CP2102 drivers because that’s what is on the PCB.
I do have an M4 for my 6128 which is a groovy little device, I just need a 512kb RAM upgrade to run SymbOS and use the telnet software.

 

Thanks for that Matt, so there is a need for the USB port due to external power being required, I think I can do that with any USB to UART chip , maybe 'Ones' I can still see to solder

Hmm I dropped out of what would be high school whilst taking what are called A Levels. Really sad as the school I attended used to be a grammar school and had attracted some very good teachers, two whom were teaching me both left mid A Level's strangly both had the same surname although not connected at all. DR Wright Chemistry & Dr Wright Physics . On top of that I was taking both pure & applied Math, and our teacher was going through a terriable divorce and hit the bottle, I just couldn't get on with there replacements. Never mind I suspect it's held me back in the begining but I can't complain.
I'm going off to hunt for some more information on using Fuji-Net, for the links as I've not gone through them all as yet

 

I was a high-school drop out too, but when I decided I wanted to go to college I finished my high-school degree at the same tech school I went back to for electronics after traditional college. I actually scored very high on my college entrance exam after 4 years out of high-school and I went in cold-turkey with no studying and took the exam! I think I was high on marijuana at the time too.