In March 2020 my self-employed work stopped overnight, so I decided to put out more regular videos and launched a Patreon. This channel update runs through what was on the bench at the time: an Atari Lynx series building up to a new screen, a ZX Spectrum 48K board missing half its parts, an Amiga 500 Plus with battery damage, and a charity giveaway.
Atari Lynx: building up to a new screen
The Lynx videos were all leading up to installing BennVenn replacement screens. Dean Swain of the Retro Asylum podcast ordered two and said if I fitted one for him, I could keep the other for my own install video. One of my Lynxes was not well, with lots of missing horizontal lines on the screen. I had noticed that if you leave a Lynx like that on for about half an hour, the lines start to disappear, which sounds very analogue, so the next video was an experiment to see whether a recap fixes it. After that came the screen install with a before and after comparison.
A ZX Spectrum 48K issue 4A rebuild for charity
Next up was a Spectrum 48K issue 4A board missing a significant number of components: no modulator, no regulator, a RAM chip and a keyboard connector gone. The plan was to resuscitate it with modern parts: a switch mode regulator (so no heatsink needed), standard RAM, and a donated Vega ULA 82 replacement. ZX Renew donated screws, plus a new case and rubber key mat, and someone else donated a mechanical keyboard kit with microswitches for a clicky keyboard.
The finished machine was going to be auctioned for charity in a live stream, possibly with Neil from Retro Man Cave, and The Future Was 8-bit sent a DivMMC Future SD card interface to go with it (along with some lime jelly, an edge connector cleaning eraser and Atari and Master System composite mods for future videos).
Amiga 500 Plus and other projects
I also had an Amiga 500 Plus whose battery had leaked and turned the inside green. I had been buying sockets to desolder, clean and rebuild it, but Bob’s Bits gifted me a remade A500 Plus board, so the plan became moving all the original components across to the new board. The old one would be cleaned up and donated if it was not a write-off.
In the pipeline as well: a favourite tools video requested by a Patreon backer, cleaning scuffed handheld bezels, BBC Micro bits and a couple of CD-i machines. What have you been up to? Let me know in the YouTube comments.
Related
How the Lynx story played out: will recapping an Atari Lynx fix missing lines?, Lynx II carts will not load and the BennVenn Lynx II screen install. The giveaway interface was reviewed in the DivMMC Future review.
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