New Test Rig

After some experimenting with layouts / shipping and generally learning to use it, the Store is now live and ready to use. I’ve only put a few PCBs on there for the moment and until the next delivery there isn’t many of those available yet. More items will appear once I have finished sorting the…

One of the members of UKVAC (Aaron) put together a piece of test gear that allows you to visually check the signals on an IC whilst the board is running normally and I picked one up earlier this year as it can do a few things that the ABI Board master cannot. Having sourced a…

One of the PCBs I own had a dead SLAPSTIC, Atari’s custom protection chip used in several games of the time, which meant I just got a nice ROM error in test mode and a blank screen instead of the game. Some old 8 bit hacking and we have hopefully fixed the problem. Check out…

From November 1st this year, the shop will revert to UK only. This is because shipping to the USA and Europe is becoming increasingly difficult due to various taxes, tariffs and rules are being imposed that make it unworthwhile for a hobbyist.

Since Windows 10 becomes an unsupported OS next year, I re-enabled secure boot on Windows 10 (via the BIOS settings for my motherboard) so that Windows Update would let me perform the update to windows 11. Once that had all completed, I disabled it again and my machine now boots into Windows 11 and still…

One of the users discovered a minor problem with the Fluke pod converter PCB which causes problems mainly when used on Zaccaria pinball PCBs. It seems I missed one of the tracks off from the original article that connects the INTACK signal to GND. This has been fixed on the latest PCBs, but if you…