This poor Japanese Z80 computer is literally screaming out for someone to come and fix it. With the some troubleshooting and a little luck, I got it back on the open seas and pumping out its fantastic chunky colour graphics once again. | Continue reading
I got a really good deal on a Fujitsu FM-8, the big, brown predecessor of the FM-7. Of course, it’s missing a few parts. Follow along with me as I get acquainted with an earlier version of Fujitsu’s dual-processor wonder computer. | Continue reading
While I adore my NEC PC-TV151, there is one monitor that NEC shipped to our shores that may be the ultimate CRT. This one was cheap, and this one is also very, very sick. Can I cure it so that I can enjoy CGA the way it was meant to be? | Continue reading
My Sanyo MBC-555 has been a good little computer, but it’s not especially useful. I haven’t been able to get software onto its strange disk format, and the software I do get can’t be run under DOS 1.25. If I want to test out a prototype serial card, I need to get Kermit onto the … | Continue reading
When you impulse-bid on a lot of five MSX1s, you don’t expect to find a new favourite system. As soon as this thing arrived, I fell in love with it at first sight. Panasonic knocked it out of the park with the design of this surprisingly heavy CF-2700. It looks like an executive … | Continue reading
Thanks to the incredible kindness of another Tandy nerd, I’ve gotten a replacement Light Blue chip, but will the Tandy 1000SX finally work properly? Let’s ask the four years that I spent trying to figure out what else was wrong with it. Recap In case you haven’t been obsessively … | Continue reading
In order to understand someone, it helps to learn how they think. To understand an obscure 1980s video game console, it helps to learn how it thinks. And how does it think? With cartridges. We’re gonna buy a cartridge for the LJN Video Art system, and build a dumper for it. In my … | Continue reading
The Nintendo NES has more than its fair share of Achilles’ heels, but the motherboard is not usually one of them. Even so, there’s an open-source replacement motherboard for the system. Blog superfriend Keegs constructed one, but it’s not quite working. Let’s figure out what’s go … | Continue reading
You really shouldn’t go poking around on eBay when you don’t have something you’re looking for. How many times has this happened to you? I saw this monitor, the shipping price was reasonable, and I made a low-ball offer. The seller immediately accepted that offer without hesitati … | Continue reading
My friend issued me a 90s Bose AWR1-1W Wave Radio clock radio to repair, with some sentimental value. For those who are unable to rock, we solder you. Why bother with this repair? Aside from the sentimental value, if the repair is simple enough, it prevents this piece of hardware … | Continue reading
Sure, I’ve cloned TI TMS99xx-based systems before. There’s the ColecoVision and the Sega SG-1000. But those were all Z80s, and it’s important to diversify my interests a little bit. Luckily, VTech released a little 6502-based system called the CreatiVision, and let the schematics … | Continue reading
With the NEC PC-9801RA2, I’ve fought bad power supplies, battery corrosion, case rust, weird NEC design decisions, and flaky floppy drives. The only thing that’s keeping me from enjoying my quirky Japanese space-simulation game, Artdink’s Tokio, is the lack of a mouse. How can “j … | Continue reading
Snail Maze. Either you know what it is, or your video game system didn’t come with a free video game hidden deep within its logic board. Or you bought a later Sega Master System, which didn’t have it. But what if we could bring Snail Maze to those later Master Systems? What if, i … | Continue reading
As I’ve gotten deeper into the world of 8-bit computers, one mass-market, North American computer has resisted my attempts to obtain it. That computer is the Mattel Aquarius, and it is at last within my grasp. Or at least it would be, if it would act a little nicer. It Is The Daw … | Continue reading
When you get a gift, the best thing to do is to put it on your pile of projects for several months, and then slowly assemble it over the course of a year. That gift, of course, is an Office Tetsu MC6809E-based single board computer. It was given to me by blog superfriend CDP, who … | Continue reading
My NEC PC-6601SR “Mr.PC” has been a nearly permanent resident of my desk ever since it was repaired. This beautiful red computer works okay with a regular old VGA LCD monitor. So why did I pay a fortune to import a CRT monitor from Japan? There are two reasons. For one, it is the … | Continue reading
One of my white whales finally came up for a price that I could justify. Let’s see just how wounded it is, and then welcome it home with a little bit of help from some smart friends. The Bandai Pippin, in case you’re unfamiliar, was an attempt to produce a game console and/or se … | Continue reading
Hitachi made a bunch of computers, none of which seemed to have that much penetration in the Western market. Perhaps their most popular series was the Basic Master. This very late model of BASIC Master has floated into my life. What is the Basic Master? The easy explanation is t … | Continue reading
You can always tell when it’s the holidays. The days are getting shorter, I’m always going out to shovel snow off the sidewalk, and I have a hankering to build a Famicom cartridge. Or, more specifically, a blog friend asked me to put one together, so I’m using my Tengen Tetris pi … | Continue reading
Like the Sharp X1turbo, the Mr.PC is also not very usable without a keyboard. It’s yet another way in which NEC copied Sharp. Background New readers to the blog (hi!) might be unfamiliar with the saga of the PC-6601SR. It’s NEC’s final model of PC-6001 8-bit home computer, releas … | Continue reading
I always wanted to try out a Tomy Tutor, and so I assumed that the Pyuuta was an identical computer. After all, it looks the same! This was one of those machines that I bought without knowing the details. All I knew is that Mandarake wanted an absolute fortune for any boxed Pyuut … | Continue reading
I love Columns. I love its creepy music, I love its chunky gameplay, and I love the way that it invariably hands me my own ass within a few minutes of playing. I also love using it to test suspicious Genesis consoles. Is it possible that one could acquire the power of Columns in … | Continue reading
For version 3 of the Soggy-1000 SG-1000 clone, I wanted to make it more useful as a general-purpose computer. Building a new keyboard is going to cost a fortune in parts, so it’s fiscally prudent to find more reasons to use said keyboard. There are only so many SG-1000 games out … | Continue reading
In the previous part of my adventure with the 386-based NEC PC-9801RA2, we covered the existence of Artdink’s game Tokio, talked briefly about clone PC-98s, bought two computers, and built a replacement power supply PCB for one of them. That was a lot of work! So now we finally g … | Continue reading
Despite not being able to understand more than preschool-level written Japanese, I decided to get in on the “importing games from Japan” craze. Of course, I jumped in at the deep end and decided to pick up an Artdink-made city simulator with lots of cultural and regional in-jokes … | Continue reading
No self-respecting Coleco owner’s collection is complete without the machine that was their ultimate undoing: the Coleco Adam. Adam’s a game console. Adam’s a computer. Adam’s a bizarre hash of over-engineering and under-manufacturing. It’s all of those things, and more, which wo … | Continue reading
If you’ve been following the Soggy-1000, my clone of the Sega SG-1000, then you know what it needs most of all is a keyboard. The original Sega SK-1100 keyboard is hard to find, but I still managed to luck out and get one at auction. Let’s plug it in and find out if it still work … | Continue reading
Yes, it is finally time to sit down with the mini5HA again. My goal was to figure out how to make a working program for CP/M using its built-in assembler, and I wasn’t going to give up until I had at least a “hello world.” Once I got comfortable with using the mini5HA in the pre … | Continue reading
The NEC Bungo mini5 PWP-5SX Japanese word processor that I’ve been working on this month came with an instructional VHS tape explaining how to use its near-infinite multitude of features. Here’s how I captured that tape. The Equipment This… is a VCR. I never thought I’d be showin … | Continue reading
Tetris is a classic time-waster, both in and outside of the office. What good is any computing device if it can’t play this game? Tokyo System House certainly thought so, and ported it to the NEC mini5 line of CP/M-based word processors. Let’s preserve it for future generations a … | Continue reading
In order to get a copy of Tetris for the NEC mini5 series of word processors, I had to buy it along with a whole word processor set from the previous owner. This LCD-based mini5SX is sleek, attractive, surprisingly heavy, and broken. Very, very broken. Let’s see if we can fix up … | Continue reading
Used Japanese word processors have been a tempting siren for me for years, but I’ve avoided them so far due to the huge shipping weight and my general illiteracy in the language. What if those word processors could run CP/M and had a CRT? Ah, now that’s a different story. Japan’s … | Continue reading
My PC-incompatible Sanyo MBC-555 is now working, although it still looks like it fell out of a garbage disposal. Beyond its nasty exterior appearance, the video output isn’t particularly good either. There’s red garbage all over the screen. I decided to tackle this problem first, … | Continue reading
A small update on the X68000 PRO that was saved from an inglorious death over the course of the last three articles. It’s gotten a video configuration that works properly. I know, that’s way cooler than painting the case, right? Dude(tte,) You’re Tricking a PLL Last time we worke … | Continue reading
As we’ve covered before during the clone saga, the Sega SG-1000 was an unfortunate casualty of the Nintendo juggernaut. But surely the redesigned SG-1000 II would do better, right? No. I bought this SG-1000 II as part of a combo package on Yahoo! Auctions. It came with an SK-1100 … | Continue reading
Even though I seem to have terrible luck with x86-based computers, that doesn’t mean I have to take it lying down. I can go out there and cause even worse things to happen to me. Like, for instance, buying a broken super-budget PC-incompatible from 1982. Sanyo made a bunch of int … | Continue reading
A few years ago, I got the “Magic Smoke” Macintosh SE. It was a pretty rusty machine, but otherwise looked okay inside. However, when I plugged it in after a (very) cursory inspection, it made ugly noises, failed to start, and then spat out a little bit of magic smoke – hence the … | Continue reading
Playing arcade games at home. That’s the dream, isn’t it? Maybe get a little Columns action on the desk you usually use to do taxes? Perhaps you can even make a little test bench, get a bit of board fixing going? Yeah, that’d be really cool. Too bad nothing like that exists, and … | Continue reading
Once I got the Soggy-1000 playing SG-1000 cartridges, the next thing to do was to extend it. In this phase of the project, we’ll take that leap from “interesting” to “slightly ridiculous,” by adding the feature I’m most excited about – at least until I get excited about a differe … | Continue reading
The SG-1000, being Sega’s first home console, has appreciated quite a bit over the years. Its price is now faintly ridiculous, especially when you consider its successor, the relatively inexpensive Mark III. Luckily for us, this console is made out of off-the-shelf components, vi … | Continue reading
Back when I did the recap, power supply recap, and trace repairs on the Bad ADB Mac LC, there was something missing. Even after all that work, I was only left with a measly 16 colours at 640x480 resolution. That’s not enough colours at all, but luckily it’s pretty easy to fix. Ex … | Continue reading
If you need a SCSI hard drive for your old computer, there are a lot of great options becoming available for a solid-state substitute. A great one of those options is the BlueSCSI, and I’m not just saying that because I won a free one. It’s because I won a free kit, so I got to p … | Continue reading
With a new power supply and the entire insect population of Honshu removed from its case, the swamp-bogged X68000 PRO can finally start up, but can it boot floppy disks? In this exciting conclusion to the series, we’ll jump through a frankly ridiculous number of hoops – many of t … | Continue reading
There are a lot of people buying fancy upscalers these days. And who can blame them? Old videogames are great, but new monitors are lazy and inept. What, the signal is too slow for you? Clearly all these great old arcade boards, computers, and game consoles are just not a big eno … | Continue reading
Now that I had a reasonably clean X68000 PRO to work from, I set about restoring power. Rather than doing things the cheap way and strapping up my Meanwell four-voltage test supply, I decided to go whole hog and lay out a brand-new power supply PCB. | Continue reading
Have you ever wondered how it’s feasible for AliExpress sellers to produce knock-off Sega Genesis cartridges for under five bucks? I sure was, so I bought one and then tore it apart for your edification. You can thank me later. | Continue reading
What happens when you bid on a Sharp X68000 PRO without looking too closely at the photos? For one thing, you win the auction. What also happens is that the computer spends a while in your garage, waiting for all of its little tenants to be vacuumed out. | Continue reading
Hirofumi Iwasaki’s book on PC-8801FH/MH repair says that the head loading solenoid is so loud that you should be careful using the computer in an apartment at night, lest the neighbours complain. I am not hearing that, or any other noises from the floppy drives. Let’s investigate … | Continue reading