Recently I built up a little Raspberry Pi 4B to use while I travel. I use it for: Travel router: Built in wifi for my laptop and phone to connect to; An external USB WiFi dongle for connection to Hotel WiFi; A USB ethernet to connect to Hotel internet if wired is available; The built in ethernet for connecting to network equipment I’m working with; A 4 port USB serial adapter to provide serial console access into equipment; This lets me use my laptop with Hotel internet without exposing my laptop directly to it :-) It also lets me talk to network equipment, either via ethernet or serial over WiFi....

This time we’re constructing the PiDP 11.

This one is a bit different. My Dad dropped this by and asked if I could work out what it was. Being new year time, I was still in bed and missed talking to him so I had no background information to work with.

In this video I’m preparing the Raspberry Pi for the PiDP11 project. I’m doing this up-front so I can use it to test the hardware build during construction.

In this video I take a look at the Acorn Electron, and more specifically the ULA. It’s the heart of the system and creates one major difference from the BBC machines the Electron is derived from. A few references: Stardot - https://stardot.org.uk ULA schematic thread - Electron ULA Schematics - stardot.org.uk FPGA ULA project - Electron FPGA - stardot.org.uk

Some new equipment has arrived for the workshop, primarily to let me make better video content. First up is some truss clamps (pictured with some custom machined light spigots) that will allow me to attach lights to the new truss tube I’m about to suspend from the ceiling. I’m also hoping to hang a camera from this too - just need to come up with some sort of flexible arm I can mount it so I can rapidly position it as required....

In a previous video I repaired a Logitech G413 keyboard. After that video went live a viewer asked about the weight of the keyboard and suggested a video on the weight removal process. So, here it is :-)

This time around I’m building a Colour Maximite computer kit, originally bought from Altronics and dating back to 2012. I bought it on eBay for no other reason than I thought it’d be fun to build :-) The design originated with Geoff Graham and published in the Silicon Chip magazine in September/October 2012. Geoff’s own documentation on the project is at https://geoffg.net/OriginalColourMaximite.html

This time around I’m replacing the innards of this old Commodore 64 power supply. I’m not entire sure if this is one of the “PSU’s of death” that are so common, but let’s rejig it just in case. It’s derived from a reference design I found online, but in the end I was missing one crucial piece - see how many of you pick the obvious mistake before I do :-)

In this video I revisit the Spectravideo SVI-328’s 80 column card, after the false start we had last time (where we ended up fixing the Super Expander instead). I also look at whether we can teach the old dog a new trick (new for the SVI, not new for the 6845 CRTC) :-)