bolha.us is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
We're a Brazilian IT Community. We love IT/DevOps/Cloud, but we also love to talk about life, the universe, and more. | Nós somos uma comunidade de TI Brasileira, gostamos de Dev/DevOps/Cloud e mais!

Server stats:

249
active users

#zx8401

0 posts0 participants0 posts today

Good news from the #CZSpectrumPlus that I am trying to get back to life:

having replaced the proprietary #ZX8401 chip with a modern FPGA based replacement, the system now comes up again - wooohooo !! 🥳

I've also replaced the old keyboard membrane which had brittled to oblivion with a new one, however only a fraction of the keys are working. Maybe I need to replace the keyboard "big" ribbon cable connector as well (I already replaced the "small" one).

But things are going into the right dircetion ...

EDIT: I've replaced the "big" / "wide" keyboard connector with a new one and now all keys are working. More footage later, gotta go now to get cat food.

#RetroComputing
#Sinclair
#ZXSpectrum
#Clone
#Argentina
#Czewerny

Today, I picked up my loose ends with regards to the #Czerweny #CZSpectrumPlus, the #rare #ZXSpectrumPlus clone from mid-1980s #Argentina.

Since I was unable to remove the ICs myself (did they use "nuclear solder" back in the day?! Those ICs sat tight in their holes) I asked a friend who had a friend who was up to the job and very professionally removed these at his workshop.

So today I soldered sockets in place and prepared a #Diagnostic #ROM in order to find out what the problem is. Looks bad.

I have already replaced all "lower" RAM chips with new ones, leaving the "upper" RAM as they were.

However, given that *all* memory seems to be faulty, I now expect the #ZX8401 to be the problem. So now I need to get either one of those modern drop-in replacements or start hunting a real one ...

On the up side, video is working and the beeper is beeping. At least.

#ZXSpectrum
#Repair