January 2016 – KernelCrash

Recreating the Colecovision

January 27, 2016

OK, the Funvision was fun to do on a breadboard, but I thought I’d have a go at a Colecovision. From my distorted view of the early 80s, it’s similar to the Funvision (same video and sound chips), but actually has a lot more chips than the Funvision. More importantly it has a lot more […]

9929 VDP component video output

January 16, 2016

| No Comments

| retrocomputing

So I seem to be a bit obsessed with trying to get nice component video out of my recreated Funvision. I thought I might be happy just getting black and white working, but component video output is an interesting puzzle. Poking around the net you can find an op-amp based colecovision component mod and an […]

Recreating the Funvision

January 6, 2016

| No Comments

| retrocomputing

It’s summer here, and I was trying to think up interesting projects I could do with my son over the xmas period, and one idea was to put together a Dick Smith Funvision on a breadboard. Before you get too excited, this project was more about the process of making a computer, rather than trying […]

Acorn Electron USB keyboard

January 5, 2016

| No Comments

| retrocomputing

For the past few months I’ve had two Acorn Electron’s. One is a fully working one I bought from the UK earlier in 2015. The other is my brother’s one which was broken. I thought I would attempt to fix it … but all I’ve confirmed is that it has a very dead ULA. Spare […]

Using an Arduino to read/write a static RAM

January 4, 2016

| No Comments

| arduino, retrocomputing

So I’ve been busy lately making some homebrew microprocessor systems. When you make a system from scratch you have to figure out how to get it to boot some code. There is no built in flash or ISP mode in these old school microprocessors, so you need to figure out how to get some code […]