As mentioned in a previous post, when I converted my Jumping board to Rainbow Islands I noticed that all the text in game was black. Going back through some pictures I took when I first got the board I see its present there too. So where do I start? I … Continue reading →

So I saw this Taito board on eBay. The seller says its broken and unknown but was most likely a Super Chase and supplied a System 16/24 adapter with it, which in its self is very nicely made and they can cost quite a bit. Only thing is, Super Chase … Continue reading →

Motherboard clearly had a dodgy ON/OFF switch. Removed it and replaced it with one from a C64. On power up I had a blank screen. Did a few quick checks with the scope and all data/address lines were pulsing properly. Checked the voltages with a multimeter, the 5v was present … Continue reading →

Got a Virtual Boy the other day with the Flash Boy Plus cartridge. The unit worked fine with the Red Alarm game that was already on the cart but when I changed the game to Bound High I was greeted with a solid red screen. The music played and I … Continue reading →

Got Stiggys other VIC20 the other day, it wont load anything via the serial port and just reports back “DEVICE NOT PRESENT”. According to Ray Carlsen this can be caused by a dodgy 7406 IC and he wasn’t wrong. I checked all the states of this chip with a logic … Continue reading →

Got this Rainbow Islands bootleg yesterday. The game worked when I tested but was told about a dodgy ribbon connector before buying it so decided to take a look. Not sure what happened after that but the board refused to boot. After finding a few stuck address lines I decided … Continue reading →

Its been a good week for repairs this week. Got Jimbob’s Amiga 4000 here which would constantly reset with any RAM in bank 0 and would not detect any RAM at all with bank 0 empty. The board has had some repair work done before but its been done to … Continue reading →

At the RCM weekend I met up with SirMorris and a guy called Andy Rae and was introduced to the crazy world of the ZX81. Andy was demonstrating his ULA chip replacement which has the ability to double clock the old 81 and the results were really impressive. After a … Continue reading →

Got Stiggys C128 here that showed the same problem as I encountered with mine. The system was in monitor mode all the time and printed DSAVE over and over. Fault fixed by replacing the CIA at location U1

After the recent RCM open weekend I returned home with a boot full of broken stuff, one of which was Panthers Apple IIe which displays garbage on screen at startup. Originally thought it might be a power supply issue but all voltages checked out fine. Next step, check the ROM’s. … Continue reading →