October 2012

I went ahead and replaced the shell on my most discoloured Dreamcast. The original case was smoke (and sun) discoloured, with the underside extremely yellowed. The solution? Not Retrobright. I simply moved the Dreamcast into a replacement translucent grey shell. Problem hidden! This particular Dreamcast is a VA1 revision, and... Continue reading

I’ll probably do these every 6-12 months depending on what has been achieved or if I shuffle things about or get more bookshelves… See if you can spot anything excellent in the photos. There are a few rarities in there. Space is becoming a bit of a problem. I’ve got... Continue reading

I hate NiCad batteries. I hate them so much. Here’s another old 486 motherboard suffering from a leaking rechargeable battery, and this time the corrosion has made its way towards the keyboard connector. Not exactly where I’d like to find it! This board came with an optical drive I’d purchased,... Continue reading

Today I just couldn’t help myself. I’ve pulled apart the PAL VA0 Dreamcast again to take a proper look at the internals, because I’m still rather curious about how this machine compares with the more common PAL VA1 models. I’ve got several VA1 boards to look at, but unfortunately I... Continue reading

A Dreamcast post? It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Here’s a Dreamcast I picked up from the UK some time ago and somehow never properly wrote about after it arrived. It has shown a few problems, including occasional random restarts. That said, I’ve had it running Bomberman Online for about... Continue reading

I’ve been doing a few upgrades to my IBM PS/2 Model 30 8086, and it’s becoming a rather nice little machine. I’ve been debating whether to keep it or replace it with the Model 30 286 I originally wanted, but this early PS/2 certainly has its charms. Let’s see how... Continue reading

Finally got the video together! Windows 95 is running on the Osborne 486, although getting everything installed has taken a little more fiddling than I originally expected. Between the Creative CD-200, the floppy drives and a few other surprises, the old machine certainly hasn’t made things boring. The Creative CD-ROM... Continue reading

Looks like I am not the only one who has a virus at the moment. The trusty old Osborne ended up with what appeared to be an MBR or boot-sector infection. The Sound Blaster 16 installation disks I had been using were also detected as infected. At the time I... Continue reading

The 5.25-inch floppy drive now living in my Osborne 486 came from that Wyse 286 desktop I had a look at earlier. The Wyse has since gone to somebody else who wanted it, and that’s fine by me. All I really needed was the floppy drive anyway, especially after some... Continue reading

Compared with everything else this Aiwa has thrown at me, this was almost a straightforward repair. The video above covers replacing the Sony KSS-210B optical pickup in the CSD-GM1 CD mechanism, although getting to the laser turned out to involve rather more screws than I’d originally anticipated. I had suspected... Continue reading

Here’s a quick look inside the Mega Drive and Mega-CD Game Unit that attaches underneath the Aiwa CSD-GM1. It’s a rather unusual little piece of hardware, and at first glance I wasn’t sure what I’d be able to do with it away from the rest of the stereo. Pretty useless... Continue reading

I’m coming down with a terrible cold, so I think it’s time to give the Aiwa Mega-CD repairs a rest for the weekend. If I keep working on these things while feeling this miserable, I’ll probably end up breaking something else! There are still quite a few problems to investigate,... Continue reading

The Aiwa Mega-CD CSD-GM1 is doing something rather interesting with its video output. Unfortunately, interesting isn’t necessarily a good thing! I’ve been getting these strange wavy lines across the picture while running it from my external power supply. Actually, they’re more like dotted lines, and they’re quite noticeable when you... Continue reading

The video above isn’t actually the one I originally intended to upload. YouTube messed up the upload, and while trying to recover it, I accidentally deleted the original. Gone! Never mind, enjoy some transformer rantings instead. At least I’ve got something to show for the weekend. I’ve pulled the transformer... Continue reading

I’ve picked up a rather substantial Wyse 2112-40 286 computer from eBay, and it’s certainly an interesting machine. Imagine a tower case that’s been pushed over onto its side and you get some idea of the size. It’s enormous! Inside we’ve got a 12.5 MHz 80286, eight expansion slots and... Continue reading

I’m going to be late for work because of this Aiwa Mega-CD. But never mind, we’ve got more important things to investigate! The CSD-GM1 without the spectacular cracks running through its mainboard has now decided to stop powering on, and the transformer arrangement isn’t looking particularly healthy either. It’s sitting... Continue reading

Back to the Aiwa Mega-CD CSD-GM1! This poor machine has suffered some pretty spectacular damage to its mainboard, with cracks running through the PCB and taking quite a few copper traces with them. Time to see whether we can put it back together again! I’ve already repaired three damaged traces... Continue reading

Something isn’t quite right with the sound coming out of the Aiwa Mega-CD CSD-GM1. In fact, it sounds terrible! Thin, tinny and with practically no bass whatsoever. Where has all the amplification gone?! I’m doing a little comparison between the audio from the Aiwa units while running Mega Drive cartridges,... Continue reading

More progress with the Aiwa Mega-CD CSD-GM1! Although I’m beginning to think these machines are having a competition to see which one can give me the most trouble. I’ve managed to repair enough of the damaged mainboard to restore power, which is a fairly substantial improvement over the completely dead... Continue reading

Progress was her middle name. Success was her first. Not too sure what her last name was at this point. Still unwritten perhaps! As you can see from the video, repairs on the Aiwa Mega-CD CSD-GM1 are progressing in the usual fashion. I fix one problem, and another three appear... Continue reading

Here’s the Aiwa Mega-CD CSD-GM1 that I’ll be attempting to repair over the coming weeks, months, or whenever I manage to find the time. I’ve actually ended up with two of these machines as a package deal. One is reasonably functional, but the other looks as though somebody has stepped... Continue reading

This is what it was all about. With the Creative CD-ROM finally working, I’ve now got a functional Osborne Australia 486DX2-66 in the household. This one is particularly special because it’s the sort of computer I had as a child, and I’ve been trying to put together a setup that... Continue reading

We did it! After a couple of days of messing around with drivers, I’ve finally managed to get my Creative Labs CD-200 double-speed CD-ROM drive working under DOS. Something that ought to have been relatively straightforward turned into a surprisingly stubborn little project, mostly because finding useful information about this... Continue reading

So little information seems to exist about this particular Creative Labs CD-200 that I figured I’d better document the struggle. At this point I had a desktop absolutely covered in driver files and still hadn’t found the magic combination. The first video shows where the investigation had reached. This machine... Continue reading

Time to replace the floppy drive in my IBM PS/2 Model 30 8086. The original 720K drive hadn’t been behaving particularly well, so I’d ordered what looked like a suitable replacement from eBay. The drive itself was only around $10, but the shipping came to about $60. Ouch! Still, the... Continue reading

Here’s something a little different: a Sharp PC-4521 from the PC-4500 portable-computer family. This one isn’t mine. I just managed to have a poke around inside it while the owner was absent! The PC-4521 was the hard-drive-equipped version of the series. It uses a NEC V40 processor running at 7.16... Continue reading

I picked up this Amstrad PPC640D from eBay and thought I’d give everyone a quick look inside while I’ve got it apart. It’s a rather nice machine for its age, and considering how long it’s been around, it’s holding up remarkably well. The camera isn’t particularly interested in focusing on... Continue reading

Aiwa Mega-CD CSD-GM1 I picked up two Aiwa CSD-GM1 units for quite a pretty penny. I don’t mind though. Restoration and preservation of all things old is the goal. The machine pictured above is the worse of the two. It had no power at all, so naturally I pulled it... Continue reading

The video above is an overview of getting my LC 475 back into a usable software state after the clean system installation. It’s partly a demonstration and partly documentation for my future self so I can remember which files and tools I used. Hopefully it will be useful to someone... Continue reading