The Blog

Roadside PC Rescue: Core 2 Quad Q8400 and Radeon HD 5770

Nix McRetro // 18th March 2013 // IBM PC

Roadside PC Rescue: Core 2 Quad Q8400 and Radeon HD 5770

There’s nothing more exciting than finding electronic rubbish on the side of the road. This morning, while leaving for work, I noticed a PC sitting out the front of my home. It had been raining overnight and the machine looked wet. More importantly, I could see two DVI ports occupying... Continue reading

Toaplan's Zero Wing Demo on the XRGB-mini Framemeister

Nix McRetro // 27th February 2013 // Gaming, Sega, YouTube

All your base are belong to us. That’s right. Zero Wing on the Mega Drive through the XRGB-mini Framemeister. I am pretty terrible at it, as the video above demonstrates. Somehow I made it to stage two, which I had previously been unable to do. Clearly the Framemeister has improved... Continue reading

Sega TeraDrive XTIDE EEPROM Upgrade: AT28C64B to AT28C256

Nix McRetro // 27th February 2013 // Hacks, Sega

Sega TeraDrive XTIDE EEPROM Upgrade: AT28C64B to AT28C256

Time for a little more room in the XTIDE BIOS department. Both of my cards currently use Atmel AT28C64B EEPROMs. The AT28C64B stores 64 Kbit as 8K x 8, which gives me 8 KiB of ROM space. I’m replacing them with AT28C256 devices, which provide 32 KiB. Why the upgrade?... Continue reading

Micomsoft XRGB-mini Framemeister Arrival

Nix McRetro // 18th February 2013 // Gaming, Hacks

Received my XRGB-mini Framemeister today and had no cable to connect it… So I had to hack up some other random cable I had and… it worked, switched a bunch of pins around and it gave me lovely RGB video. I could not believe how clear the video was. I’ll... Continue reading

Disk on Modules and the XTIDE BIOS on the Sega TeraDrive

Nix McRetro // 17th February 2013 // IBM PC, Repairs, Sega

Disk on Modules and the XTIDE BIOS on the Sega TeraDrive

So many types of disk on modules, so little time. Found this in the XTIDE Universal BIOS v2.0.0 manual while searching. Some CF cards and microdrives do not work properly with IBM 5150/5160 when using XTIDE rev 1 or rev 2. Some of the symptoms are improperly displayed drive name... Continue reading