Category: Uncategorised

One of my favourite things to do in this retro hobby is unboxing loads of retro “things”.

A slightly different road trip. This time at the Play Expo event in Blackpool. I spent a great day with lots of amazing people, playing lots of arcade games and pinball machines, and chatting with some of the people exhibiting. Including an early look at the upcoming Vectrex Mini. A fun day!

In this episode I work on repairing a Commodore 64 that refused to boot properly. After some troubleshooting the fault is tracked down to a bad BASIC ROM, and I show the steps I took to confirm and fix the issue. Along the way I test out my new oscilloscope, even if the capture didn’t quite go to plan this time.

In this episode I open up a new donation for the channel, including an Oric Atmos. I also take a quick look at some new cleaning tools recommended by Sven and talk about how they might help with future repairs.

Commodore 64 Repair – When It’s Not the CIA or the PLA… This C64 arrived with a blue screen and a few suspicious past repairs, including chopped ROM legs and a mismatched CIA chip. After a quick inspection and a few educated guesses, I started working through the usual suspects: CIA, ROMs, CPU, PLA… But even after swapping and testing most of the major ICs, the machine still wouldn’t boot correctly—until I tried one last thing. This repair takes a few twists and turns, and ends with a surprising culprit

I went to visit the Northwest Computer Museum where they were having a Tech Jumble Sale! It was a looooooong drive.

On a recent visit to the RMC/RetroCollective/Cave/Mill/Heber I met up with a bunch of people who were kind enough to hand over a bunch of stuff for me to take home. Was a fun day!

This is the third and final part of my extreme repair of an Amiga 600. Over the first two episodes I cleaned the case and keyboard, retrobrighted the plastics, and started repairing the damage on the motherboard. In this concluding part I finish the motherboard work, tackle the last of the issues, and reassemble everything to see if this Amiga 600 can finally be brought back to life. If you enjoy Commodore Amiga restorations, vintage computer repairs, and seeing stubborn old hardware saved from the scrap heap, you’ll enjoy this finale.

In this episode I’m tackling another batch of Commodore 64s in need of repair. Some power on but show strange graphics, some don’t start at all, and each one has its own unique fault to track down. Join me as I work through the triage process, testing, diagnosing, and seeing which of these classic 8-bit machines can be saved.

A stack of ZX Spectrums has landed on the bench, and it’s time for a bit of triage. Some of these machines are working, some are completely dead, and others fall somewhere in between. In this video I go through them one by one to see what’s salvageable, what needs repair, and what’s heading straight for the parts bin. If you enjoy ZX Spectrum repairs, testing vintage hardware, or just seeing what state old 8-bit computers turn up in, this should be a fun one.