Posted on April 20, 2018
Retr0brite gone wrong
So after some success in poor sunlight and UV lamps, today went very wrong. We had some unusually warm weather in the UK yesterday and today and I thought I would take advantage of the Suns UV and Retr0Brite one of my ST cases…. I got carried away with work and forgot to check on it at Lunchtime and reapply Hydrogen Peroxide. And unfortunately, my top half of the case is badly scarred. I’m now resorting to spraying the case to fix the problem… I never wanted to do this as reading on the interest I hear Retr0Brite is the best option and paint eventually wears off and might flake… I think I found a good match in colour though…
Here is the mess and I will post a picture of the spray later..
Actually, the spray result doesn’t look so bad. Need to tidy up that badge a little but hey hoy..
Posted on April 18, 2018
My experience with Retr0Brighting
I have several Atari 8 bit and Atari ST models all with some level of yellowing plastic cases.. So I decided to give the retr0Brite process a whirl… The idea is to use Salon Strength Hydrogen Peroxide to beach the plastic to a earlier color.. The problem I have where I live is a lack of sun… so I went for the UV light option… where people on youtube had reported improvement of colour in hours… it took me weeks.. But I did get the results I wanted…
When there was a glimpse of sunshine I did turn off the UV but we got hardly any..
But the results are worth it as seen next >
The only problem I had with my Atari 130xe is that the process also stripped the red colour from the logo badge.. still looks nice though…
Posted on April 18, 2018
Its always worth recapping!
A few months back I purchased a ZX81 .. I could never get it working through the RF Modulator except once when I hooked it up to an old video… I noticed that it would only work when the 16K ram pack was not plugged in..
First thing First…. that video… I found a nice article showing to create a simple mod to bypass RF for composite video found >HERE< … the difference for me was I ripped out the inside of the RF module and inserted the composite mod which consisted of 2 components and a couple of wires… that’s it.. job done, I now can hook this ZX81 to a modern TV…
Now that pesky 16K ram pack… I ended up buying another one which was no better, even though the add said fully working… I noticed that the expansion port on the ZX81 was corroded… I tinned the connectors and did some continuity checks but still no joy..
On the off chance I decided to change the capacitors and bingo that worked with the original unit… but not with the second one that was advertised as “working” … I know now my ZX81 + ram pack works.. so those naughty people selling on eBay were telling porkies…
Posted on April 18, 2018
Sharp MZ700 MZF files back to WAV
My first home computer was a Sharp MZ700 and I recently acquired one again. When I got it home I realised apart from the S-Basic tape that came with the purchase I had nothing else to load on it.. and plus… ITS TAPE ONLY… it got me thinking that I have a tape emulator built on a Arduino Nano for the ZX81 I have and thought there must be a way to get more apps on this MZ. I knew that there is a backup of most of the old tapes in the interest in MZF format.. I also found a command-line tool to convert MZF files back to WAV >HERE< and it gave me an idea… what if I developed a tool with a GUI that contained most of the MZF files, allowed you to convert them to WAV but play them from the same tool through your PC audio using a mono audio cable into the MZ700… And that is exactly what I did.. Watch this video to see it in action, its pretty cool >
If you want to try the tool you can find it >here<
The story doesn’t end here… I have a new idea to build this concept into the MZ itself… watch this space…