Category Archives: Equipment

Spectrum Composite Mod and Refurb

A short while ago, I became reaquainted with the world of the Sincclair Spectrum. Back in the original Spectrum Heyday, I had many bits and pieces (wish I’d have kept them!) one of which was a composite monitor. In fact, … Continue reading

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Spectrum Next Kickstarter Active!

After what seems a very long wait, the Spectrum Next Kickstarter campaign has started. This machine promises to be everything the retro-computing fan would need. A very well ‘speced’ machine (pardon the pun) with active development, a thriving community and … Continue reading

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ICSP to Breadboard Adaptor

Frustrated by having to poke jumper wires into the socket of my AVR ISP MkII every time I wanted to program a breadboarded AVR, I quickly built an adaptor from strip board. It consists of a 6-pin shrouded header plug … Continue reading

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minDUINO ‘Hello World’

This post assumes that your ATMEGA328 chip has a bootloader installed. Chips with the bootloader already installed can be obtained from many sources, including eBay. Details on how to install a bootloader manually will be detailed in a future post. … Continue reading

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Park Life

I have now had a lesson in patience. My PCBs arrived from OSH Park yesterday. They are of top quality. However, I should have checked over my design a few times before submission. On the face of it, they look … Continue reading

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A Walk in the Park

As a slight detour from my own PCB making exploits, let me tell you about a couple of PCBs I’m having made commercially. I am a big fan of the Z80 microprocessor made by ZiLog and have had an itch … Continue reading

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UV Exposure

The next step I had to take was to obtain or create a UV Exposure box. I had already had experience with one due to another interest but that model, while easily up to the task, was prohibitively expensive. I … Continue reading

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