- Видео 20
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Back Room Boy
Добавлен 16 сен 2022
Not the amusing Arthur Askey movie from 1942 in which the eponymous hero and BBC boffin saves the day but me, here, in my back room, talking interminable nonsense about, and attempting repairs of, old technology -- principally 1980s home and small business computers, but also radio, CRTs, calculators and the like.
Trust nothing you hear or see here, I'm a blunderer not a boffin. You have been warned...
Trust nothing you hear or see here, I'm a blunderer not a boffin. You have been warned...
Decoding HF wefax with an Atari 8-bit computer
Combining two sublime pleasures: decoding HF data modes and the Atari 8-bit computer and thereby increasing exponentially the joy of each! Be aware: watching fax over shortwave resolved on a low-res display from an 8-bit computer is addictive for some and desperately dull for others. You have been warned...
Просмотров: 150
Видео
Atari 1050 disk drive: quick fix
Просмотров 1832 месяца назад
A quick look at how to fix an unresponsive 1050 drive if you suspect a short on the 12V rail symptoms: power light on, drive mech dead. See also Jan Beta's excellent video at ruclips.net/video/6vm0gqnpHVI/видео.html
Atari SM124 monitor mods
Просмотров 9543 месяца назад
Enlarging the display and swapping out a critical capacitor in my Atari SM124 mono monitor
iMac G3 slot load: alive?
Просмотров 2185 месяцев назад
The PAV and neck boards are recapped... but will it boot? Includes a full list of electrolytic capacitors for the neck board.
iMac G3 slot load: dead!
Просмотров 5406 месяцев назад
Just sneaking in under the wire for #MARCHintosh, a dead G3 showing very low voltage on the logic board. Full strip including the PAV board, cap removal and testing and a full electrolytic capacitor list for the PAV (all 33 of 'em!)
Amstrad PPC640 & the Amstrad PC CRTs
Просмотров 6907 месяцев назад
Amazingly, the designers at Amstrad gave their PPC640 and PPC512 luggables the ability to be powered by and viewed on the earlier PC1512 and PC1640 CRT monitors
Repairing LCD monitors: Delta PSU/Inverter in an Acer AL1916W
Просмотров 3878 месяцев назад
Not really retro but useful nonetheless for anyone trying to keep old LCD VGA monitors working. This Acer screen and others like it from alternative manufacturers use variations of the the Delta PSU/inverter board and when the caps leak which they will the board and the monitor it's driving, stop working. Fortunately, repair is easy...
Atari ST hardware emulators part 2: SuperCharger
Просмотров 9129 месяцев назад
Episode two of two looking at Mac and PC hardware emulators for the Atari ST. In episode one, I looked at Mac emulator Aladin and in this episode I'm putting the PC emulator, SuperCharger, through its paces.
Atari ST hardware emulators: Aladin and SuperCharger (Mac & PC)
Просмотров 1,2 тыс.10 месяцев назад
Episode one of two taking a closer look at Mac and PC hardware emulators Aladin and SuperCharger for the Atari ST
Tandy 200 #2: keyboard repair, refurb and retrobright
Просмотров 24610 месяцев назад
The 'slow television' version of refurb'ing a Tandy 200. Part two of two. In this instalment I repair the keyboard, retrobright the plastics and put it all back together.
Tandy 200 booting to black lines on screen
Просмотров 607Год назад
Sneaking in under the wire at the tail-end of #SepTandy is this Tandy 200 portable computer which is refusing to boot and showing only black lines on screen. Easy fix or fundamentally broken?
Infocom Starcross SAUCER edition show & tell Atari 8-bit
Просмотров 232Год назад
A look at the celebrated Infocom Starcross saucer edition together with a partial play-through on the Atari 800 and 810 disk drive. Music: Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio
How to strip the Poqet PC (...and what you'll find inside!)
Просмотров 2 тыс.Год назад
Removing the motherboard from the Poqet PC to try to rectify the common 'booting to black lines' fault and looking at a DIY option for a serial adapter so you can transfer software to the machine
Nettop PC archaeology: VIA ARTiGO A2000
Просмотров 114Год назад
Digging into the prehistory of miniature PCs with a look at the VIA ARTiGO A2000 nettop computer, including installing a useable Linux to the bootable compact flash and getting the machine online
Exploring Atari 8-bit CP/M with Fujinet and Indus GT
Просмотров 2,9 тыс.Год назад
Digging a little deeper into two methods of booting CP/M 2.2 on the Atari 8-bit computers: Fujinet and Indus GT. Trying out a number of terminal emulators including Ice-T, BobTerm and VT850 with CP/M, as well as 80 column devices such as the DT80 cartridge and Atari's own XEP80. And as a fitting finale, running WordStar and MTPlus Pascal and a few old favourite CP/M transients. WARNING: dull st...
Atari XF551 drive: fixing no power and boot errors
Просмотров 491Год назад
Atari XF551 drive: fixing no power and boot errors
iMac G4 HDMI conversion - use it as a monitor!
Просмотров 8 тыс.Год назад
iMac G4 HDMI conversion - use it as a monitor!
I also got the same slot loading imac in orange but the ssd doesn’t recognise when i put in the 10.4 install disk i tried formatting it and partioning it to 120gb but it doesn’t help does someone got an idea maybe it’s the old idea cable
Really loved seeing this video. Thanks. It brought back some good memories. I have a Poqet PC paperweight and Poqet PC sweatshirt. Oh, and I also have an original Poqet PC too. After seeing this video, I popped a couple of batteries in, hit reset and up it came, first attempt!!
Fantastic! It's lovely to see them come up again after a long time. Thank you for watching and glad you enjoyed it :)
If I'd come across this in 1986, it would have ticked every obsessive box; I'd have sat at my Atari for hour upon hour grabbing those images! It has just the right amount each of technology, electronics, programming, even meteorology, to fuel my fascination, and is delivered at just the right rate to build anticipation on what might be received! I'm surprised these signals are still available. Thanks for the video.
Every point you make is exactly how I feel about it too. Many thanks for watching :)
It was fun seeing you run WriteNow. I worked on later versions at T|Maker for a couple of years, starting around 1988. It was a big deal when we decided to require machines with Mac Plus ROMs so that we could use hierarchical menus. Also, adding color app/document icons meant significantly increasing the size of the application, which was almost entirely written in 68K assembly that had been painstakingly optimized for size and speed. One of the engineers jokingly complained that he had just spent days removing a few hundred bytes, only to have it swamped by the addition of color icons. It was my understanding that NeXT was also shipping it on NeXTSTEP at the same time. I worked a bit with John D. Anderson, mentioned in the About Box you showed, who was at NeXT.
Does Aladin need Floppy hardware to open Mac Floppy disks like Spectrer GCR, or can it open load / save Mac stuff to disk on its own?
Unfortunately, there's no way to read Mac disks directly with Aladin
mine literally exploded because when i got it it smelled burny
Well, now you need to update this to include the 1090XL CPM card being reproduced by Brian Reifsnyder on AtariAge.
Very nice 👍
Yes the classic is quirky today but back in the day it's was just a yuppie computer that no one could afford
What a neat little PC
Absolutely! A shame they are so thin on the ground. Thanks for watching :)
I had one Indus GT and the included software was pretty good. loved the drive ..
Absolutely! Me too. The Indus is a great drive, I love mine!
Hey, Great video, I have one of these monitors and the picture is stupidly small. Can I send it to you for you to work your magic? I don't like working on CRT's they scare the hell out of me! lol
Thank you for your kind comments but I would be very reluctant to work on someone else's precious monitor for fear of damaging it. Follow along with the video, be sure to discharge the tube (search RUclips for lots of videos showing how) and you'll be fine. Good luck and thanks for watching :)
Just show any local electronic or tv repair shop the clip of video and they will do it you
I wonder if there is any way to get FujiNet on the MiSTer FPGA Atari 8-bit core working?
Well the longer I live the more often I'm amazed by just what can be done, so yes, possibly. So long as you could route the required (emulated) SIO signals to the FujiNet device, I really don't see why not :)
Practice self-care and self-love to overcome negative energy. Nurture your mind, body, and soul with activities that bring you joy and peace
I only recently got an sm124. I had no idea about the huge borders until then. But the 1:1 ratio makes sense. Still, the 640x400 just looks so good in black and white on the ST!
Absolutely! It's a much-underated screen that is actually pretty reliable too other than the cap swap, and that's a simple task. Thank you for watching :)
are you going to make part two where you get it how you want it setup?
TBH there's not a lot more to say about it but I'll try to do a quick update once I've sourced some proper alignment tools to replace the kebab skewers! Thanks for watching.
@@backroomboy4420 would be very nice! <3
Is it possible to replace the existing monitor with a newer one? Like one for a laptop?
Great video, very useful info. It is worth mentioning the SM124 has that small screen size due to the screen being set up to have a specific DPI (dots per inch) amount (which iirc was 72dpi, the same as a Mac Plus/ 512k etc). This was useful for DTP work as it was directly translatable allowing accurate depictions on screen and in print. I think GDOS also expects this. Nowadays the extra screen real estate is more useful I would think :)
Yes, thank you, that is a very good point and as you say, nowadays, we're probably happier with a bigger display than a 1:1 screen and print ratio! Thank you for watching and for your kind comments :)
Really enjoyed that, well done! Need to dig out my SM124.
Thank you and thank you for watching! The SM124 is a great monitor :)
Nice video, thanks! I'm going to try it out with my fujinet.
You're welcome! Thank you for watching :)
can you clarify more on the power side, what is the reference to the resistor and how is that hooked up?? Also why is there a resistor in the HDMI plug?
The resistor between pins 18 and 19 is for screen detect and the one on the green +5V line switches on the panel backlight (IIRC -- it's some time since I did this project).
@@backroomboy4420 Thanks so hooking the green line to 5v requires a 1K ohm resistor between the green wire and +5v yes?
Oh... hell yes !!!! :) perfectly gorgeous... I'm looking at picking up 2 ole snowballs. One I wanna leave stock except usual upgrades the other I want to stuff a pc inside.. even a nuc but use the original monitor and this is just what I needed. THank you sooooo much! Be safe!
You are very welcome! Have fun and thank you for watching :)
How many capacitors were bad? Did you test them after removing? Looks like it is another case of recappacide or do what the internet says (change the caps) and you would be fine, then it turns out to be something completely different
Thank you for assessment and insight. I tested every one from both the neck and pav boards. Other than the 400V cap on the PAV, not one tested as good (though apart from one, all tested good on the DCB). As I said in the video, some were marginal but for the price of a cap, and given the pain this machine is to strip and rebuild, it's certainly easier simply to recap while it's apart. And now, forgive me while I go back to the internet for further instructions... :)
@@backroomboy4420 Interesting. I usually test them with an ESR meter. Bad ones would have higher than normal ESR. Anyways I prefer to first make it work, then do a recap. Dealing with old tube radios, this usually saves my ass if something really major is at fault, before I spend 4-6 hours recapping it. Like having defective transformer or some coil... Most of the times bad capacitors will not prevent it from working, it will just make it work badly
Well that was a shame but it was very useful to me to see the neck board being rebuilt. Hope to see further updates on this G3. Thanks BRB!😀
You're welcome and thank you for watching. I already have the machine stripped again, I'm working my way through the various voltages on the PAV and neck boards and I have 'Blue2' ring tester on order. Update on the channel soon :)
I'll see you next time in the... Back office 🤣
🤣🤣
So I went ahead and replaced all capacitors on board except the big one which seems to be in a good condition. I found some corroded resistors which I checked and cleaned and replaced a broken one. I believe the board I worked on is the next revision. There is no C922 capacitor and found C937 is 33uf 50v rated. Since I have already ordered 35v ones I just put that one in. Did not explode 😉 So far so good . Green iMac G3 450 is back on duty !
That is fantastic news, well done! Such a joy to be rewarded for all your hard work with a machine that is back to good health :)
Would have loved this back in the day as I was using Xerox CP/M machines in high school.
You and me both! MS COBOL and MT Pascal would've really made my day easier writing programs for my undergraduate course. Thanks for watching :)
Hello, many thanks for the very informative video. I have slot load G3 450Mhz model and recently it started to load image on the screen very slowly. When warmed up it continued to work normal. The last few days it get worsened. It attempts boot in a continuous loop and sometimes manages to load OS with screen briefly on and then off. I'm checking PAV and see on C947 16v47uf cap base brownish oily stain. Is it possible that a tiny cap can make all this problems? or maybe the Flyback transformer could be the main cause? I'm considering if I'll go to all of PAV overhaul time/cost process. Cheers😀
You're welcome and thank you for watching. Its difficult to be certain without a schematic, but your problem sounds very like a capacitor issue and I'd be surprised if it wasn't more than one which needs to be replaced. The majority of those on my PAV board were neither bulging nor leaking but almost all registered at best a marginal ESR. Good luck!
For me, reinserting the ribbon cable back into the display without mangling it was an undertaking to say the least. I was looking to see if there was a blown fuse, but I see there aren't any. I've got an always-on (when plugged in) screen full of black lines. Guess it's time to do the battery.
Sounds like it could be the way to go... good luck!
Your Nelson figure has been cracking up. lol Great Video btw!! Love these fruity AIOs!
Lol and thank you. Nelson keeps me grounded. Just when I think I know what I'm doing I look up to find him pointing at me and saying "Ha-ha!". Thanks for watching :)
I had the same on a 1040 STf. epic memories. I had an 20 MB HDD tied to it in ACSI.
Epic indeed! Great machine, great times! Thanks for watching :)
I had one from new. The screen was awful and it was slow and heavy. But it was cool at the time.
Ah, you were 'that bloke', the one person who bought the machine new, lol! Yes, despite it's failings, and they are legion, it definitely has a quirky, cool charm too. Thanks for watching :)
What's it doing with 14 pins just for monitor DC-in? I was sure it was gonna be monitor signal AND power in one port.
I know, weird right? The 14-pin connector has -5v, -12v, +5v and +12v (of which, the PPC uses +12v, -5V and -12V) as well as a number of ground pins and separates these from the video signals which might otherwise be subject to intereference.
This was the first computer I bought new. Why? I was young and didn't have a lot of money and this offered a pretty good value. Full-sized keyboard. The two 720K floppies. A screen. Software bundle. Case. And the 2400 bps modem. And 640k ram. For me to buy all this functionality in the day in an IBM or compatible, I'd have to spend a lot more. I'd have to buy a monitor, spend to upgrade to 640k ram, upgrade to a 2400 bps modem and buy software. So for me, it was a good value. I still have it. I bought a second one that I have played with. I removed the clock chip and put in a RTC. I build an expansion board for the back and can run/boot from a Compact Flash card. And I have screen to run color CGA by replacing the mono LCD SuperTwist.
Exactly! Despite it's unusual appearance the machine was actually capable and good value. I'm very tempted to do a screen upgrade :)
@@backroomboy4420 Well, I have the screen to do it but I have not installed because of the expense of the CGA TTL-to-VGA convertor. I can't afford to dedicate one to one computer. Unless I am wrong, the convertors are running about US$100. We (vintage computer enthusiasts) need to get the cost of these convertors down.
@@Fezzler61Agreed. There are a number of solutions but none is especially cheap and when you decide to buy one you find they're unavailable because of a shortage of one or more components.
16:13 It's interesting to see how the game fills the first page of graphics and then switches to the other. We can clearly estimate around 1.5fps in the flight sim.
That is a really interesting insight and IIRC, SubLogic claimed 2fps at the time. Thanks for watchng :)
"It miraculously fixed itself". You jammy sod! 😊
I know, right? If only they'd all fix themselves! Seems it's pretty common for these Poqets to come back to life after a day or two with new batteries in place :)
Great video, thank you! I'm getting it to show my HDMI connected display, but it's very shaky and colours are wrong; Two questions, the 1k resistor is shown on your video between 18 & 19, whereas on the pinout, I see the resistor mentioned to be going to the inverter cable; Are there 2 resistors or did i misunderstand the pin-out for the HDMI?
Thank you! Blimey, it's a long time since I did this but wracking my brain to try to remember... there's a 1K resistor between pins 18 (edid +5v, purple wire) and 19 (hot plug detect) on the HDMI plug/socket and a 1K resistor on the inverter's green 5v wire which sets screen brightness (IIRC). Picture instability is more likely to be a poor connection on your HDMI breakout (if that's what you used). Try it and let us know what happens here in the comments. Good luck!
I got the same model (1916W), bought in 2005 and was still running until December last year. I was able to turn it on, but it started to buzz and switched off backlight right away. Disassembled it, the psu looks a bit different on my display - with cables from top and left side. Anyway two smaller caps were bulged and big one (400V 120uF) was leaking from bottom side. Replaced them, works again.
Well done! Great monitors but the caps always leak. Thank you for watching and commenting
So true. The same happened to me. I only had to replace a fat cap to bring to life
A nice simple repair, perfect! :)
Sincerely enjoyed this video - nicely done. I've been on the hunt for one of these for a few years and finally, got lucky enough to snag one off of ebay. Its a new old stock example, so thats the good news. The bad news is, it's not working. I do hear a faint high pitched sound when I turn it on, and the screen does flash when I remove the power. I'm wondering if what you experienced is related to the cmos battery being old and exhausted, and possibly with power on the board for a while it somehow affects it? Or would no power feed into the cmos battery? Its a desperate wish, i don't want to disassemble it. Will leave it with batteries for a couple of days and think positive thoughts :) Thanks again for the video. Have subscribed.
Nice find! The high-pitched whine and screen flash suggests it *is* working and your strategy of leaving good batteries in it for a few days will bring results I think -- mine never wants to play unless it's been powered for a while. Don't worry too much if you have to open it, the welds break easily and it all goes back together invisibly if you're careful. Thank you so much for your kind comments and for your sub :)
Impressive that the DMA port can be used for this.
Absolutely! For the time, it was really innovative
what were the business use cases for this product?
Well... for those who, at the time, might have had a PC XT or compatible on the desktop, the Poqet put the same computing power with a small but truly useable keyboard into a package that was actually pocketable. It would operate for a significant time on two easily available AA batteries and run all your favourite applications. That was the marketing but TBF, it's pretty accurate!
you are good
Thank you for your kind comment and thank you for watching :)
how can the Atari st read mac discs (old apple mac 400k and 800k) floppies? its the hardware emulator which allows? this? true? thanks...........
Unfortunately, the ST cannot read Mac disks. You had to have access to a friendly Mac (owner) to transfer software to the hybrid Aladin format that the emulator could read. However, the Spectre GCR emulator mentioned by @alhartman66 elsewhere in the comments, could read/write Mac disks directly.
this is absolutely amazing !! a mac inside an Atari st home micro??!! it really is super cool!!
Agreed :)
Did they license the Mac ROMs? Apple was fiercely against licensing the Mac for cloning.
As far as I know, they simply bought a batch of genuine 64K Mac ROMs off the shelf at the point at which Apple was upgrading to 128K ROMs.
There was a version of the Spectre 128 called The Spectre GCR which could read and write to a Macintosh diskette using the Atari drive. There was also a box for the Magic Sac and the Spectre 128 called the Transporter One that allowed an ST to read and wrie to Mac disks. This made the Gadgets by Small products superior to the Aladin in my estimation.
I owned a Spectre GCR which worked well, and had a review Spectre 128 on long-term test. I adored the Gadgets-by-Small ethos and enthusiasm and the GCR was an excellent product but Aladin was a better and more robust 'emulation', less likely to crash. It certainly suffered by comparison however because of the 64K ROMs. (I swapped the Spectre GCR for an Atari Portfolio and interfaces when I had my own Mac Plus... wish I still had it!)
Thank you for a very detailed and interesting review! Can't wait to see a PC emu in action.
You're very welcome. Thank you for watching!
What do I do if I lost the original power supply and just have the monitor
Just use an old ATX PSU that can be bought cheaply from eBay, all the voltages you need are available and detailed in the pinouts supplied in the video
This channel is CRIMINALLY undersubscribed to, you make great content bro, keep it up and the algorithm will notice and get you more exposure eventually 💯
Wow! Thank you so much for such a kind comment :)