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12th Egham Raspberry Jam
On Sunday 16th October I travelled down Egham to attend the 12th Egham Raspberry Jam, it's my first time I have attended this particular jam. It was held at the Gartner UK HQ offices, which was easy...
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Teleporting Ducks
The excellent Python MU editor makes it so easy to get BBC micro:bits talking to each other using simple radio data communication. No magic required, just physics.After attending a brilliant talk /...
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Micro Operation
Take one classic Operation game and connect a BBC micro:bit to it, what could be more fun. Having seen a similar project I thought I would have a go myself, so I had a quick browse on eBay and found...
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Electronic Christmas Decoration
And now for something completely different…While perusing the Christmas tat in Poundland /Poundworld recently, I found some cheap battery powered Christmas lights and thought I could hack these. I...
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CamJam December 2016
On Saturday 3rd December I travelled up to Cambridge to attend another excellent CamJam. I had a good look around the market place as well as some of the show and tell items.Trevor Olsson had brought...
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Micro Simon
I recently stumbled across some excellent micro:bit resources on this website, I liked the look of the micro Python Simon game project so I built the project to try it out. Micro Python Simon game...
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13th Egham Raspberry Jam
On Sunday 22nd January I travelled down Egham to attend the 13th Egham Raspberry Jam, it's my second time I have attended this particular jam. It was held at the Gartner UK HQ offices, which was easy...
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A Marvelous Micro:bit Afternoon
On Thursday 16th Feb I went along to the National Museum of Computing to show some of my micro:bit projects at their Bytes Festival. I was sharing a table with the amazing David Whale and Nevil Hunt...
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A blast from the 8-bit past
I recently re-discovered my vintage VIC20 computer which was first released in 1981. It had been hiding in the loft of plenty for some years so I got it down and decided to give it a whirl to see if...
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Telequipment D65
Some time ago I acquired an old 1976 vintage Telequipment D65 - 15MHz, all solid state dual-trace scope. Unfortunately it had a couple of faults which is why it was being thrown away.The scope...
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Retro LED Displays
I recently brought some of these rather nice Texas Instruments TIL311 hexadecimal displays from eBay, they are really small but beautiful. This got me thinking, could I connect one of these displays...
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Commodore 1541 Disk Drive Repair
I recently acquired a classic Commodore 1541 disk drive. It was in good condition, powered on and came with the original transit card (sometimes called a ”head vibration protector”). When it arrived...
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14th Egham Raspberry Jam
On Sunday 30th April I travelled down Egham to attend the 14th Egham Raspberry Jam, it's my third time I have attended this particular jam. It was held at the Gartner UK HQ offices, which was easy to...
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Southend Raspberry Jam 11
Today I travelled down to Southend on Sea to attend my first Southend Raspberry Jam, unfortunately this involved leaving home at some unreasonable hour on a Saturday. The Jam was held at the The Hive...
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Further 8-bit Adventures
I recently was experimenting with the user port on my VIC 20 while trying not to blow it up. The VIC20 has various Input/output ports one of which is the user port (really, just the exposed edge of...
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6502 Badge
I recently built a rather nice 6502 Anniversary Computer Badge which was designed to celebrate the 40th Birthday of the Apple II, Commodore PET, and Atari VCS.Get your own here 6502 40th Anniversary...
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VIC 20 Future proofing
I have recently been future proofing my VIC 20 and carrying out some modifications. I have replaced all 8 electrolytic capacitors as these tend to dry up and fitted heatsinks to the Video Interface...
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Deltronics CONTROL IT buffer box
I recently purchased a Deltronics CONTROL IT buffer box from the online tat bazaar eBay, with a view to connecting it to my Commodore VIC 20. The Control IT buffer box is a general purpose interface...
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Building a awesome VIC20 controlled tank
Updated 05/04/18I have recently been thinking about building a Commodore VIC20 controlled robot. Some inspiration came from the classic 1980s Usborne How to Make Computer-Controlled Robots book [3]...
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BBC Micro Model B Repair and Restoration Project
I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for the BBC Micro, having been introduced to the machine at school back in the late 80’s. I decided to try and find myself an original Beeb, so off to eBay to look...
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Crow-O-Matic
While pursuing the Halloween tat in Poundland recently, I saw an empty bird cage. This gave me an idea, could I reuse the two creepy Halloween crow’s I brought and modified last year.I came up with...
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Nixie Thermometer
The Nixie tube is a cold cathode display for displaying numerals using glow discharge. The glass tube contains a wire-mesh anode and multiple cathodes, shaped like numerals or other symbols. Applying...
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Computer Controlled Robots
Well I seemed to have a built another Commodore VIC20 controlled robot. Some inspiration came from the classic 1980s Usborne How to Make Computer-Controlled Robots book.You Will Need:1 x CamJam Edukit...
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6502 Computer Adventures: Part 1
Inspired by the brilliant Ben Eater videos about building a 6502 computer, I’d thought I would have a go. I have a bit of a soft spot for the 6502, having learned 6502 assembler on the Emma II 6502...
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6502 Computer Adventures: Part 2
Previously I connected up the 6502, now it was time to get the CPU to actually do something so I connected some LEDs to a couple of the address bus (pins 9- 13). I powered both circuits using a couple...
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