The replacement PC7486SLC motherboard is in. It passes POST and, unlike the original 386 board, recognises the hard drives perfectly. That strongly points to a fault somewhere in the original motherboard’s storage subsystem or related circuitry rather than the drives themselves. The old board will still make a useful spare.... Continue reading

One of my Model 1 Sega Saturns has developed a rather annoying power supply problem. It becomes more noticeable after the console has been running for a while, so I left it operating for over an hour to get everything thoroughly warmed up. The built-in music player was more than... Continue reading

Picked this up on eBay from the UK and gave it a bit of a clean. It has become my favourite Mega Drive controller. Internally it is much the same as another Mega Drive controller I cleaned yesterday, although that one sadly had some tabs snapped off the D-pad. Amstrad’s... Continue reading

A quick look inside the Amstrad Mega PC with the system pulled apart. The Sega Mega Drive hardware sits on a dedicated ISA card inside the PC. This is the same machine that arrived in not-so-good condition with NiCad battery corrosion on the motherboard. I picked this one up from... Continue reading

Or, more specifically, math coprocessors for the Amstrad Mega PC and my 486SLC upgrade. The ULSI US83S87 Advanced Math Coprocessor is intended for 33 MHz SX/SLC systems. This one has a 9401 date code and comes in a 68-pin PLCC package. 387SX-compatible math coprocessors use the sort of external interface... Continue reading