What's new Pussycat too?

Hi Tim and Vulc, yes the Music construction set should and does work on an XL, EA's protection is NOTORIOUS for being picky about drive speed, if you have any mod in it will almost certainly stop loading..

And yes, I'm the proud fathe err er / owner of an Ultimate1MB, it arrived safe and sound yesterday and I plan to install it later..

Watched FJC's install video and had a chat with him (and very helpful he was) as he did it slightly different to the standard install.

Wish my cheapo desolder air sucker tool had arrived, hate using the pump gun, sadly like my hot air gun its somewhere between China and me as it has been for some time. The notion is that somewhere over the ocean are my two items just sat between the clouds refusing to budge any faster than a snail after a laxative..

My luck seems dire, a lead from Mr Robot turned up today, the blooming head had been ripped off in transit. A bit of damaged to the padded envelope but not as much as you would expect for a beheaded lead..Weird....

Still, it just gives me something more to take up my time with, better than sitting here doing nothing at all..Always trying to turn a negative into a positive....

Failing mostly

Have fun...

 

Tim
That's great news re getting Google to show up the site well done for your hard work.
This may not help but I've had to rely on Pam my better half a lot recently, maybe worth teaching your good lady to solder would help out.. got to be worth a shot at ? Mind you both my Daughters said NOPE ....

 

Paul
Wish you luck with your install, just remember for the XE computers its almost worth snipping all the legs off the MMU & ROM, that way you can take a great deal of care with the individual pins. The Chips are lost but the boards are a nightmare for lifting traces when you have limited de soldering equipment to hand.. (P.S Let me know if I can help out, your not that far away from me )
(Shame I got my Incognito only last week, could have shared the cost of the Postage)

 

Matt Any news on your Distributor ? You know you want your truck running.

 

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.

 

I must say the Music Construction set sounds great, love to hear the results now you finally worked out how to get it running.
It maybe that the boot loader checks if other drives are online, to stop say a Happy or Bitmaster copying it or simply the SIO is over loaded
P.S Have not over the years such copy protection been defeated ?, Seems Odd that with modern Disassemblers and Emulators that the boot disk cannot be reverse engineered, and the Program patched. At least for older programs where the copyrite is no longer valid.
I remember that the O.S Controller card had an alternative O.S that could trace the data that was loaded from track and sector, I guess similar to that the 1050 Happy 7 supported.

 

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.

 

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...

 

Glad its doing something good, over here its business as usual, totally unpredictable, hottest day on record one day the blooming cold the next.

Not so fun when you have arthritis

 

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?

 

Hi Klyde
I've spotted this site before, however as to quality etc, I've no idea; and prices maybe better elsewhere,
https://www.sellmyretro.com/store/zx-spectrum-retro-shop
Good luck with your new computer !

 

Yes thank you, I know this website, the membranes are sold £20.00 there, I'll dig a little deeper and if there is nothing else, I'll go for it.

 

The War Game Construction Set arrived today. I shifted some things around to make room on a display shelf. The condition of it was described as "acceptable." and I'd say it's at least that, really it's in excellent condition. These days games in this condition generally sell for three or four times as much, complete like this, so I think I did well for $20 total.
I haven't tried the disks yet, but if they are bad I'll just write the ATR's to one of my new floppies and move the labels over.

 

Maybe worth re writing the originals if they don't work, could always have gotten to close to a magnet.. saves moving the Labels as well.

 

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.

 

I may have to get one of those one day. But I'm not really familiar with what they do, except that it freezes programs where you can restart at that point later, I believe, but that's about all I know. I need to read up on it more and see if it's something I'd use much.

 

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..

 

That sounds and interesting addon, I hope you post a nice write up or Blog on it 's use and features, always better from someone rather that those selling the device.
Have fun whilst you find out all that it can do

 

Hi, Klyde, it's been an age since I got up to speed with "What's New Pussycat" and I'd temporarily forgotten about your Speccy - how have you got on with a replacement keyboard membrane? Do you want me to order you one?
Let me know how you are doing and I hope you and Isabelle have had a decent vacation and the weather has improved... that photo you sent of the scene out of your Elancourt window made me suddenly think you had dropped in on us here in HULL(!)

 

Proper chucking it down...