Another tip shop find – this time a PACOM 3170 video “thing”. I realised after I made the video that the identification overlay that I think this produces would require a video source to generate that, and the video cards don’t have that, and it’s unlikely the microprocessor is bit-banging the video. BUT, I missed the obvious – there’s provision for a daughtercard on each video card, with pins labelled “VSYNC, HSYNC, ID VIDEO” amongst others on one side, and the other side has serial in/out, ID0-3 pins (device select?...

In this video I clean and re-assemble the Vectorio keyboard that I took apart quite some time ago. In doing so I noticed another area where this machine differs from the genuine Apple ][+, so I explore that a little before giving the keyboard a test. AND IT DIDN’T WORK PROPERLY! But it wasn’t a huge issue, and the fix was pretty straightforward if not slightly fiddly.

A while back now I picked up an Apple II clone on eBay – listed as “unknown condition – parts only”, or words to that effect. Back then I popped it open, checked the power supply for obvious issues, checked the output voltages, and was able to successfully power up the machine. BUT, the machine was a bit of a mess – the case is very yellowed for one, and it needed a good overall clean....

In this video we’ll have a look at the cassette system of the Spectravideo 328. How it connects to the system, a look inside the SV-903, and a quick look at some cassette based software. Note: I didn’t mention it in the video, but there are virtual tape solutions available for the SVI-328 – links below. Details of the Spectravideo tape format SVI-CAS owners manual link: The manual has recent pricing for the unit & SVI cable....

This set of Logitech X540 speakers were plugged into our bedroom TV to make it sound half decent. Most people seem to use those sleek sound bars, but I had this set of speakers sitting idle and for nearly 10 years they’ve done the job just fine. Until the other night when I turned them on and… Nothing. Nada. Zilch. So in this video I break them open to see what the problem is, and whether I have the parts required to fix them lying around....

In this video I unboxed a Spectravideo SV-328, an 8-bit computer from Spectravideo that was introduced to the world in 1983. I’ve never owned, or even used, one of these machines so this was interesting. I picked this lot up from the local tip shop – yup, someone was literally throwing this out! In part 1 of this series, I take a look at it, plug it in, and check if it works....

I said I’d likely do a video of the second G413 repair, and I did exactly that. This second one had an identical fault, just on a different key (the ‘E’ key), and the fix was exactly the same. So despite the comments I read when I was Googling around that it’s the keyswitches themselves that are the problem, this hasn’t been my experience. That’s not to say that people haven’t had issues with the keyswitches – just that I haven’t....

OK, I admit it, I’m currently using Microsoft Edge as my preferred browser – on both Windows and Linux. Mostly because of the ability to put the browser tabs down the left side of the window, which is particularly useful on wide-screen monitors where there’s no shortage of horizontal real-estate. Chrome has extensions that can sort of do it, but it’s not as clean as the built-in Edge implementation – and Edge is really just Chromium under the hood anyway…...

A quick look at the Sheen 100 video sport system from the late 1970’s, including some technical documentation and a brief session playing some of the games with my 15 year old daughter, who had some quite hilarious reactions to it all!

I’ve been using a couple of Logitech G413 keyboards for a while now – one on my work PC, and one on my “use most of the time” home PC’s. At least I was, until they both developed faults. The keyboard on my work PC developed a faulty ENTER key – sometimes it’d be fine and other times I’d get two keypresses instead of the one. That was particularly annoying when answering a prompt where the default was not what I wanted, causing me to have to do “something” again....