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It's funny this was brought up. I just dug out my C64 from when I was a kid and it's been sitting on the dining room table because I couldn't find the power adapter just yet.

Test your adapter when you do... C64 adapters are a bit notorious now they're getting some age on them. They're +9VAC and +5VDC. If they let go, they kill the computer. There are a couple of options, build a newer/better PSU or get something like a C64 saver from Bwack on YouTube (just PM him), which goes inbetween and if they PSU goes pop, it prevents it from popping the computer.

There are a few old computers that are iffy when it comes to power. The BBC Micro is another. It has RIFA caps in them that are notorious for cracking over time. Almost all of them have and if you power it up before checking, like the C64, it toasts the machine.

Interesting build as always by Juansolo...did you use radio button type switching on the PS1A build?

That was something we were considering back in the day when we were thinking of doing an all in one board for Grind. It would have required some logic to work right (maintaining it as a TB circuit), but it would have been fun to work out. as it is, the right hand stomp turns the effect on and off and does so at slow speed. Adding the middle button ramps up to mid speed, adding the left button ramps up to fast. It's speeds roughly match that of a leslie speaker. Sounds really good.

Tapes were the most common medium in the UK during the 8-Bit era (which was huge here). Sinclair Spectrums, Commodore 64's and Amstrad CPCs being the most dominant machines and all were usually cassette as they were easy to copy... (Piracy was rife). There were odd people with Atari's and BBC Micros with floppies, but the cost of those machines here made them pretty rare at home. At school, everything was BBC. It wasn't until the 16-Bit computers came along that floppies became mainstream.

Nice job! Oh, interesting that you've moved on from pedals? Great to see this build. Hope you've been well 

Yeah we just got to the stage where it was no longer self funding and we'd built so many we'd kinda burned out. We repair and refurbish vintage computers and consoles now. It's something to do. For example, along with our own stuff, we've been working through a guy's huge collection of obscure vintage kit for over a year now (and I still don't think we're near the end of it!). Most of these machines are 40ish years old and were never designed to work with UK or modern gear. Mainly we end up modding them for power, and video/sound output. They're almost all Japanese or US RF which just doesn't work here. So taking his kit he's had for years and making it finally work is actually quite rewarding and we've become ninjas at wrangling analogue video signals. Plus you never know what you're getting next. Keeps it interesting.

Always nice to see one of these PCBs out in the wild Also nice to see you didn't put one of the jacks right on top of the LFO again

Yeah we learned from our mistakes on that one!

So glad I have a 12V AC adaptor lying around, it makes the power situation for this pedal so much easier.

This one runs from 9v due to the bipolar PSU we're using. Makes life much easier.

That is all the way full. Nice! Do you have a schematic kicking around by chance?

Board is an AlanP jobbie. It's not an easy build as the matching of the trannies is essential. Also you need a bipolar PSU and a Klon buffer on the input. I'll attach the docs.

I've also got the original build info somewhere, that's a layout of the original board though and we modded that a lot to work. I'm fairly certain most of the changes are already part of Alan's layout (Cleggy built the board so I'm unsure if he had to mess with it).

Ignore the bit on the right of the power supply, that was me trying to work out the pinouts of both packages. The inline one is MUCH easier to use.

We don't make pedals any more... But we're still trying to thin the stash a bit and one of our friends was wanting to buy the PS1A. Not a pedal we'd sell, but Cleggy remembered there was a board out there that we'd given another friend, got in touch to see if they were going to build it and if not if they'd be prepared to part with it. Planets align and we end up making our first pedal in many years.

So the parts mountain was a bit diminished. Buying parts for a single build isn't fun... Thankfully Cleggy still had a matched set of trannies kicking around, just in case. No epoxy meant no envirotex, and not worth buying any for a single build. So it's in a plain old Hammond, and they didn't have the bigger one in stock I wanted to put it in, so this is what we got... It's not my tidiest installation, but it is a little too snug for this effect truth be told. As usual Cleggy did all the board builds as that side of things tends to bore me, and I did the installtion as that's the bit I like.

Still the best phaser out there.

Buying (usually spares/repair) vintage computers, consoles, CRTs and the like, then fixing them up. Cleggy and I have come up with video mods and stuff like that for old Ataris. Far less of a DIY scene there though, so even though we've documented it all, very few people have picked them up and used them. Still we get a load of stuff sent our way to do it for them.

For quite some time now we've been working through a guy's collection of super obscure old kit and making it work. Lots of bespoke mods required to get some of this stuff working with modern kit. Which has been fun.

We got to the point that we only got Alpha pots from them. Their quality of other componets was so variable, that the savings just weren't worth it any more, so we sourced everything else locally.

Ah good old terraced housing. Massively compromised. You get thin walls between you and your neighbours, that's fun, especially if they're randy/shouty/have kids/etc. Nowhere to park your car that doesn't risk your mirrors being taken off by passing cars. Also don't hope to have multiple or large cars.

They were originally council or working class housing here. For people without cars or when it came to the working class, it was from a time where they were within walking distance of the mine or wherever it was that you worked. Inner city terraces are a different thing. Again they're from a time when cars weren't as common so it's less of an issue. But they can be quite sizable/expensive affairs.

The thing is, that in modern Britain, no one works where they live anymore because the housing price boom made moving house when you changed job impossible. So everyone has at least one car. Especially if you're out of a city, they're mandatory as public transport outside cities in the UK is horrible/non-existant. So you need cars, plural, depending on how many people live there or where they work.

Jedi Fallen Order - It's sub-Uncharted/Tomb Raider in terms of it's traversal (it's trying REALLY hard to be Uncharted with Jedis), it's sub-God of War/Horizon Zero Dawn in terms of combat and it's sub-God of War/The Last of Us in terms of story, it's also a little janky in terms of polish. As a game it's actually decent, but never really gets beyond that*. However you get to be a ginger Jedi, and that's kinda awesome. An enjoyable, if forgettable experience. Very Marvel like in modern terms.

*There's one moment that's so freaking awesome that I don't want to spoil. But it's almost worth it for that alone. I just wish the rest of the game was as compelling as that sequence.

All I can find for the 1.1, I suspect this is all there was.

Huh, reminds me of Look Mum No Computer's recent project with one of those really old Atari consoles. He took it apart to tack on wires to get audio/video out.

It kinda is, but the 7800 is a tad more complicated/compromised that many of the old consoles.

I sometimes wonder how the video game landscape would look if the Jack Tramiel hadn't gotten involved and tied everything 7800 related up for 2 years. The console had a lot of potential to compete on even footing with the NES, hypothetically at least (other than it's crappy sound chip I suppose).

I suspect they wanted people to jam sound chips into the carts like the POKEY in Ballblazer and Commando, throwing the costs there rather than in the console (there's a LOT of corner cutting in the console which is why this project happened). I do love the 7800's arcade ports though. They just play so well. Coupled to an awesome homebrew scene currently, it's a belting machine.

Cleggy reckoned I should post this here also to show we're still around and soldering stuff, just not guitar pedals (though we occasionally still repair them for friends).

So this was our latest project, a video output board for an Atari 7800. All Atari's prior to the ST have dire video quality. Though you really didn't know back in the day because you were connecting them via RF to a period domestic television. Trying to connect these things now to modern kit becomes a problem as most TVs don't have analogue RF tuners in them any more. Also the quality of them has increased somewhat so they can show some of the deficiencies due to the corner cutting/penny pinching of the designs.

Which brings us to the Atari 7800, particularly the PAL one. This is a later (1987) console that's actually two consoles in one as it's got a Atari VCS (aka 2600) in there also. The problem is that the two machines share a common colourburst clock and there chroma output is blended. All of this causes horrible interference which is very apparent on the broadcast monitors we now run.

The journey is here on Atari Age if you want a read (it kicks off on page 2). As it is, here are some pictures.

By contrast, Billy Idol performed at the end of the evening and rocked it.

Just as long as he avoids stuff from his Cyperpunk album. That was... not great.

I really, really like that album... I think it's so very different to his usual stuff that people really didn't seem to gel with it.