Posted on December 30, 2023
Reviving an Acorn Teletext Adapter
Back in February 2020, I bought an “untested” Acorn Teletext Adapter for the BBC Micro with the intention of getting it working and feeding in archived and also modern teletext from a Raspberry Pi. Finally over 3 years later, I got around to doing just that!
Read MorePosted on September 10, 2023
VNC on Digital UNIX 4.0E
One of the operating systems I have setup on my DECpc AXP 150 (aka Jensen) is Digital UNIX 4.0E (which I believe is the last Digital branded release). I found a version of VNC for OSF/1 (the original name of Digital, later Tru64 UNIX) version 3.2. I decided to see how easy it would be to get working.
Read MorePosted on August 29, 2023
Altair 8800b Turnkey Part 2 – Software and the FDC+
Finally I’m returning to the Altair 8800b Turnkey that I restored!
The main problems I had to solve with the machine after my initial work with the capacitors and power supply were how to load software, and what to do about the missing key that functions as the power switch.
Read MorePosted on July 31, 2023
AXP64 Windows
Something interesting about Windows on the Alpha is that it was always a 32bit OS in the public releases, despite the Alpha being a fully fledged 64bit chip. On the 23rd of August 1999, Compaq announced they were discontinuing their participation in the development of Windows NT for the DEC Alpha (AXP) platform. Microsoft announced shortly afterwards that they would also discontinue support for the platform and the nearly complete Alpha port of 32bit Windows 2000 never materialised. A final release candidate build did make it out into the wild, but until recently, no 64bit Alpha build had been discovered outside of Microsoft.
Read MorePosted on July 30, 2023
VMS and NT upgrades on the Jensen
Over the last few days, I’ve had my DECpc AXP 150 or Jensen as it is commonly known out. This was mainly to upgrade the versions of VMS and NT I had running on it. Unfortunately some things didn’t work as well as I’d hoped at first.
Read MorePosted on July 21, 2023
Cambridge Z88 RAM and ROM upgrade
I got my Cambridge Z88 from eBay in July 2020. I never had a serial cable for it or any extra software, so it didn’t see a great deal of use. I had planned to investigate what I could get running on it, but never actually did much. Until now…
Read MorePosted on July 18, 2023
Apple Newton MessagePad MP110 restoration
I won my Apple Newton MessagePad MP110 on eBay towards the end of June 2018. I don’t remember much from the description other than it was listed as working when connected to the mains. When I received it, it had an official Apple rechargeable battery fitted. Unfortunately this had leaked its guts all over the battery compartment 😅.
Read MorePosted on July 9, 2023
Finally, a new post!
I’ve decided it’s finally time I do a bit more with this blog/website. I have been working on a ridiculous amount of projects recently and have decided that for my own benefit and for anyone interested, that I should document as much about what I’ve done/been doing as possible. Earlier today I updated the DECpc AXP 150 (JENSEN) page as I now have a very well specced functional machine and also added some new machines to the relevant lists.
Here is a list of topics that will hopefully be covered here on the blog shortly:
I’m hoping listing them here will provide me with a reminder and motivation to actually write the posts!
- Macintosh Centris 610 recapping and upgrades in order to run A/UX
- BBC Micro/Acorn machines and Acorn Econet networking (PiEconetBridge)
- Using a modern Teletext service (involving BBC Micro Teletext “cheesewedge” adapter)
- DEC Alpha (OpenVMS and Windows Whistler AXP64 build)
- Cambridge Z88 RAM and ROM upgrade
- ZX Spectrum 128 Toastrack MIDI experiments and vDrive ZX images
- Apple Newton MessagePad MP110 restoration
- A look at the Altair FDC+ and software I had running on the Altair 8800b Turnkey computer (finally the promised part 2!)
- A general look at many of the machines in the collection while I reacquaint myself with their setups and update/add pages for them on the site
- A few other things I won’t mention just yet as don’t want to over promise since they haven’t been started yet 😉
Stay tuned…
Posted on December 27, 2019
Restoring an Altair 8800b Turnkey computer part 1 – Power supply and capacitors
In March of 2018, I was fortunate enough to receive an Altair 8800b Turnkey computer. The history of this particular machine is unknown other than it was shipped over here to the UK from the US years ago and no one knows when it was last used. The machine came just on its own without the key to turn it on or any kind of floppy drive to boot from. This presented me with a few challenges before I could get the machine fired up. Read More
Posted on September 14, 2018
Revisiting Windows 1.0 on the Rainbow
Since getting the Rainbow to output in colour and on a proper modern display, I decided to try out Windows 1.0 properly.