tmuir
New Member
Hi,
I have many and varied hobbies, but the common thing in all of them is fixing 'old things'.
My job that pays the bills is a Data center Manager and prior to that it was the Telecommunications Industry.
As I said above I have many hobbies, tinkering with and riding my vintage BSA motorcycle, restoring toy live steam engines, watch and clock repair, restoring vintage bicycles and I've dabbled in and out of electronics for decades.
Currently I have a damaged disk in my neck that is stopping working on watches and my motorbike so over the last few months turned my attention back to all my childhood computers that were in my loft.
I restored my old ZX81 and changed it from Rf out to composite video out, brought my C64 back to life and even found a fault from manufacture that was missed all the times it was sent back for warranty repair (and was probably the reason it kept going back for repair) and I'm about to fix my C128 which I know has faulty memory once I get a new power supply for it.
I also just recently finished build the Retro Chip Tester Pro and when I dragged out my box of chips to give the machine a proper test I found all the chips and the diagnostic eprom from my computer I built back in 1989 which was from the book Z-80 Microcomputer Design Projects by William Barden Jr.
The computer itself is long gone as it was unreliable due to my average soldering and wirewrap skills I had when I was 16, but I'm thinking I would like to rebuild it, but this time using a good double sided PCB. This will mean I will need to learn how to use KiCad or something similar to make the PCB and then order it online as I'm not about to attempt to make a double sided PCB at home, but due to my damaged disk in my neck the time I can spend on a computer in one sitting is limited at the moment, so if someone is aware of anyone already creating the gerber files for the computer in this book and can point me to where to download it from I would be very happy.
I originally programmed the EPROMs using my C64 and the EPROM programmer I had and still have for it, but plan to use something a bit more modern for the other EPROMs I will need to program for this.
Tony
I have many and varied hobbies, but the common thing in all of them is fixing 'old things'.
My job that pays the bills is a Data center Manager and prior to that it was the Telecommunications Industry.
As I said above I have many hobbies, tinkering with and riding my vintage BSA motorcycle, restoring toy live steam engines, watch and clock repair, restoring vintage bicycles and I've dabbled in and out of electronics for decades.
Currently I have a damaged disk in my neck that is stopping working on watches and my motorbike so over the last few months turned my attention back to all my childhood computers that were in my loft.
I restored my old ZX81 and changed it from Rf out to composite video out, brought my C64 back to life and even found a fault from manufacture that was missed all the times it was sent back for warranty repair (and was probably the reason it kept going back for repair) and I'm about to fix my C128 which I know has faulty memory once I get a new power supply for it.
I also just recently finished build the Retro Chip Tester Pro and when I dragged out my box of chips to give the machine a proper test I found all the chips and the diagnostic eprom from my computer I built back in 1989 which was from the book Z-80 Microcomputer Design Projects by William Barden Jr.
The computer itself is long gone as it was unreliable due to my average soldering and wirewrap skills I had when I was 16, but I'm thinking I would like to rebuild it, but this time using a good double sided PCB. This will mean I will need to learn how to use KiCad or something similar to make the PCB and then order it online as I'm not about to attempt to make a double sided PCB at home, but due to my damaged disk in my neck the time I can spend on a computer in one sitting is limited at the moment, so if someone is aware of anyone already creating the gerber files for the computer in this book and can point me to where to download it from I would be very happy.
I originally programmed the EPROMs using my C64 and the EPROM programmer I had and still have for it, but plan to use something a bit more modern for the other EPROMs I will need to program for this.
Tony