Autopsy:

The photos of the inside can be found here.

from Wikipedia homepage:

The ZX81, released in a slightly modified form in the United States as the Timex Sinclair 1000, was a home computer produced by Sinclair Research and manufactured in Scotland by Timex Corporation. It was launched in the United Kingdom in March 1981 as the successor to Sinclair’s ZX80 and was designed to be a low-cost introduction to home computing for the general public. It was hugely successful and more than 1.5 million units were sold before it was eventually discontinued.

The ZX81 found commercial success in many other countries, notably the United States, where Timex manufactured and distributed it under licence and enjoyed a substantial but brief boom in sales. Timex later produced its own versions of the ZX81 for the US market – the Timex Sinclair 1000 and Timex Sinclair 1500. Unauthorised clones of the ZX81 were produced in a number of countries.

The ZX81 was designed to be small, simple, and above all cheap, using as few components as possible to keep the cost down. Video output was to a television set rather than a dedicated monitor. Programs and data were loaded and saved onto audio tape cassettes. It had only four silicon chips on board and a mere 1 kB of memory. The machine had no moving parts – not even a power switch – and used a touch-sensitive membrane keyboard for manual input.

The ZX81′s limitations prompted the emergence of a flourishing market in third-party peripherals to improve its capabilities. Such limitations, however, achieved Sinclair’s objective of keeping the cost of the machine as low as possible. Its distinctive design brought its designer, Rick Dickinson, a Design Council award.

The ZX81 could be bought by mail order in kit form or pre-assembled. In what was then a major innovation, it was the first cheap mass-market home computer that could be bought from high street stores, led by W.H. Smith and soon many other retailers. The ZX81 marked the first time that computing in Britain became an activity for the general public, rather than the preserve of businesspeople and electronics hobbyists. It inspired the creation of a huge community of enthusiasts, some of whom founded their own businesses producing software and hardware for the ZX81. Many went on to play a major role in the British computer industry in later years.

The ZX81′s commercial success made Sinclair Research one of Britain’s leading computer manufacturers and earned a fortune and an eventual knighthood for the company’s founder, Sir Clive Sinclair.

source: wikipedia

It ended yesterday (24 November) the musical competition (SID Tunez) High-score Power Ballad Competition 2012.

Below you can find the complete archive of all songs released for this competition in D64, PRG, SID format. For more information please visit The C64 Scene Database.

Download: High-score Power Ballad SID Competition 2012 (1058)

source: noname.c64.org

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italian.

Some new games (Cracked / Trained or Unrealeased) for Commodore 64 have been released from your favorites groups: Genesis Project, Mayday!, Really Proud Lamers and Laxity.

Download:

• Telengard v5.2 permadeath (969)
• Super Phoenix +TD [english] (984)
• The Cursed Key +2 (951)
• Alien Bash 2 +5F [pal/ntsc] (987)
• Sleepwalking Backwards &D (943)
• Get \'Em (16KB Cartridge Version) +5H [pal/ntsc] (1002)
• All Games in One Archive (2350)

source: csdb.dk

It was released a new firmware for the SD2Snes Flash Cartridge (Super Nintendo/Famicom) by Ikari. The upgrade instructions can be found here.

Changelog:

• Menu: Files are now sorted by their entire file name instead of the first 20 characters only.
• Menu: Ignore input from non-standard controllers (Super Scope, Mouse etc.)
• SPC player: fix soft fade-in (first note cut off) on S-APU consoles (1CHIP / some Jr.)
• More accurate BS-X memory map.
• Correctly map SRAM larger than 8192 bytes (HiROM) / 32768 bytes (LoROM), fixes Dezaemon, Ongaku Tsukuuru – Kanadeeru
• Minor memory access timing tweaks (should help with occasional glitches on some systems)

Download: SD2Snes Firmware v0.1.5 (1337)

source: sd2snes.de

A new cool music demo by Algorithm/Onslaught.

Download: 8bit Passion by Algorithm (1010)

source: noname.c64.org/csdb

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italian.

I was very lucky in this repair, the fault is a broken belt that is used for the operation of the Floppy “Quick Disk”.

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I post some screenshots and a video of the repairing of a NEC PC-Engine LT console.

Defect in the console:

Some capacitors have leaked acid on the pcb, i had to clean with the right product made especially for cleaning the pcb before proceeding with the replacement operation. The LCD screen is was disassembled to remove the dirt inside.

Some new games (Cracked / Trained or Unrealeased) for Commodore 64 have been released from your favorites groups: Antarctica, WST, Mayday!, Really Proud Lamers, TRIAD and Laxity.

Download:

• Tank (Uptime) +2D +Pic 101% (984)
• Star Trek (2003) +5H [pal/ntsc] (988)
• Paku Paku Preview +3 [pal/ntsc] (964)
• Telengard V5.1 (986)
• Dunzhin +D (984)
• Kosmodrom +1EHD 101% [pal] (1078)
• Pingvaders from space Preview 0.1 + (948)
• International 5-A-Side Football [polish] (1010)
• All Games in One Archive (2536)

source: csdb.dk

The HxC Floppy Drive Emulator is a software and hardware system created by jfdn aka Jeff.

The aim of this project is to replace the floppy disk drive by an electronic device emulating the floppy disk drive (list of supported Computer/Hardware).

There are two differents emulators:

• A USB version which allows to connect the floppy disk drive interface of the computer to a PC via a USB cable.
• A SDCARD version which allows to emulate floppy disks which images are stored in a SDCARD.

Firmware SD HxCFloppyEmulator v1.7.2.0:

• Microchip PIC18F4620 Rev. B5 Silicon MSSP Module Errata applied (correct possible SDCard Init issues).
• SDCard layer reviewed / corrected / enhanced : Better SDCard compatibility / Error handling.

Release notes for the HxCFloppyEmulator software v2.0.6.0:

• PRE-RELEASE – IN DEVELOPMENT: HxCFloppyEmulator software v2.0.6.0 (Windows & Mac OS X support !)

Download:

• HxCFloppyEmulator v2.0.6.0 *BETA* (1076)
• HxC Floppy Emulator Firmware v1.7.2.0 (1084)

source: hxc2001.free.fr

Autopsy:

from Wikipedia homepage:

The Odyssey 2100 was released in 1978 and uses the same case design as the 2001. Using the National Semiconductor MM-57186N chip, the 2100 plays 6 games with multiple varitions: Wipe-Out (Breakout style, 7 variants), Flipper (7 variants), Tennis (2 variants), Handball (2 variants), Ice Hockey (2 variants), Football (3 variants).

The Magnavox Odyssey was a general brand name of the company’s complete line of home video game consoles released from 1972 through 1978. The line includes the original Magnavox Odyssey console, both Magnavox and Philips versions of the Odyssey series of dedicated video game consoles, and the Magnavox Odyssey² cartridge-based video game console released in 1978.

source: wikipedia

Commodore 64 in a good working state to use for spare parts.

Autopsy:

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from MyOldComputers.com:

The year was 1978. Atari was at the top of the video gamming world with its 2600 VCS game console. Atari management looked around and saw a new and potentially lucrative market just beginning to take shape. This market was the Home Computer Market. They saw a market with relatively few major competitors and Atari was in a great position to market a computer of their own. They, after all, were a trusted household name, everyone owned an Atari or knew someone who did!

So December of 1978 Atari introduced the 400 and 800 series computers. The actual computers were not delivered until late 1979 due to production problems. The 400 was a scaled down version of the Atari 800. Introduced as an entry level computer based on the same MOSTEK 6502A processor running at 1.70 MHz with 16K of user RAM built in. It had a membrane style keyboard (not very touch type friendly) with 62 touch sensitive keys and 4 special keys to the right of the keyboard.

It stood out amongst the other computer offerings of the day with its graphics and sound capabilities. It was capable of producing 128 colors on the screen using the CTIA video processor and up to 256 colors with the upgraded GTIA video processor chip used on later versions of the computer. The 400 was first amongst the early computers to be able to display 4 programmable screen objects simultaneously called ‘Player-missiles’ (also known as ‘Sprites’ on Commodore computers). This was at a time when the most computers produced only monochrome displays or very primitive 8 color screens. The graphics were handled by a custom chip called the “ANTIC” (CTIA/GTIA). This chip was designed to work as a sort of co-processor to take the work load away from the main processor to display graphics and color on the screen.

The team that developed the custom chips inside the 400 and 800 was headed by Jay Miner who later, after leaving Atari, headed the teams who developed the custom chips that surrounded the Motorola MC68000 processor that powered arguably the most advanced computer of its time, The Amiga 1000!

source: myoldcomputers.com

Autopsy:

This is a gift from my brother for my birthday.

from Wikipedia:

Congo Bongo (J: Tip Top (ティップタップ Tippu Tappu?)) is an isometric platform arcade game released by Sega in 1983. Strong evidence from analysis of the game’s ROM claim that Ikegami Tsushinki also did development work on Congo Bongo.

The game has come to be seen as Sega’s answer to the highly successful Donkey Kong game that was released two years prior. The player takes the role of a red-nosed safari hunter who tries to catch an ape named “Bongo”. The hunter seeks Bongo to exact revenge for an apparent practical joke in which Bongo set fire to the hunter’s tent, giving him a literal “hotfoot”. Game was named by Pete Gorrie who was the CFO at that time.

source: wikipedia