That is pretty funny. But just so you know, diabetics can still consume sugar, they just can't go wild with it (150Carbs a day is a regular goal), and it's better to space it out during the day.
@Mr Guru Thanks for all the work you've done on MAME. While I've never sent you sweets, I have donated cash for tons of boards that have crossed your workbench!
@Mr Guru Wow. That was quite an unexpected response. I've donated funds over the years via DU, the Dumping Project, and through Randy Hoffman, but I've never sent you anything directly.
@Mr Guru Apologies. I had only wanted to offer my thanks for the work you've done on MAME, and that still stands. I hadn't expected to be lectured about it though.
Thank you for giving that stuff to Adrian!!! I like the mail calls because you never know what he is going to find when he opens the boxes. That was a nice relaxing 30 min watching him go through your old tapes and fixing that power supply.
Definitely recommended - especially in a case where the fuse blew and there were no obviously shorted parts! My guess is the bad base connection to the chopper transistor may have been responsible, the drive circuit could have latched up and turned on much longer than it was supposed to.
Came here to say just this. A "dim bulb tester" is an essential workshop item if you work on switch mode supplies or power amplifiers. It gives you early warning that theres a problem, and prevents fireworks!
And my super dodgy test trick after thinking I have fixed a PSU, instead of wasting a fuse if it's not fixed, is to just use a little strand of solder in parallel with the blown fuse, held in the fuse holder. If there's still a fault.. solder is a very fast blowing fuse :-)
I have to say that ADB intro is perhaps the best retro intro ever. I never skip it. The graininess of the video, the music that's seems to have a little extra static/overgain, the clips, they all transport you to the 80's. Very good.
You know how every North American school had a copy of Oregon Trail? British schools had Granny's Garden. I remember playing it on my Primary's BBC Micros.
Adrian, you should definitely use incandescent bulb (about 60W) in SERIES with PSU input while powering up. In this case, if the PSU has any kind of short circuit at it's input, bulb will light up and prevent blowing up any parts (and fuses). Therefore, you could turn the main switch off and continue troubleshooting. But if the PSU is good, it will only cause short-term flash of light in the bulb (while capacitors are charging) and then the bulb will be as a resistor, so PSU will start anyway. And thank you for your great content!. I became a bit addictive.
You can code read older Ford vehicles 83-95(might be off with the years) with a paper clip and an analog meter. Beat the hell out of having to have all these fancy scan tools they got today. I’m an Adrian fan, old school all the way....
Adrian, think about creating a poster out of those scanned collection of disk sleeves. This would finance your channel for sure as I think the demand would be great!
Brings back memories. Am I the only one who never played games on the ZX-81 and later ZX-spectrum ? That weird games book made me think about the times I had spend 3 hours typing in a program (from a magazine or written by myself,) and then the computer crashed . Or pages of hex code and somewhere made a fault. Sadly I lost my spectrum and accessories (disappeared while moving houses) like a better keyboard and thermal printer. I now repair electronics for a living but back them I just started with electronics. I had no money for a computer but worked in weekends in a computer shop and the boss gave me a dead spectrum . I repaired it, but I can not remember how, it must be easy because I only had an analogue meter and a DIY signal tracer that was published in Elector magazine. (and I still have) Sometimes it I wished I still have one , but then thinking about the hassle with taperecorders ........... ;-) Finally someone who does not promote recapping. I repair only (high quality) electronics (measurement , calibration gear, and industrial stuff) and dead caps are really rare. Even for 20 years old gear.
My uncle had the Weird Computer Games book and the cover absolutely terrified me. Still brings back a shiver just looking at it now. Some good Spectrum games in amongst those! The Mr. Micro games were bundled together with the +2, and as such, were some of the first games I ever got to experience. Unfortunately.
Sabrewulf for the Spectrum... nice. Those Ultimate black boxes are very nice to collect (and a touch expensive!). That was a good box of stuff, though I was a little disappointed that it wasn't actually filled with old ram sticks instead.
For your safety, it is better to not convert the BBC PSU to 115V, while repairing leave it at 230V. The PSU can run at 115V just fine, it won't be able torun run at full capacity, but that is not really a problem. While I am in a 230V country, I actually use the 115V output on my isolation transformer to work on power supplies: The combination of the isolation transformer and the much lower voltages increases the safety by leaps and bounds. When the power supply is repaired, you can do the conversion to 115V. The wire that you solder converts the bridge rectifier into a bridge doubler.
Aside from eyeballing the board before testing components, a "smell test" can sometimes let you know where to begin looking. On some larger boards this has often saved me lots of time when visually all the parts looked fine but one section had the faint smell of fried parts.
I find it funny that Dial up is just a fancy version of the cassette programs except it's through a phoneline and you can interact with it. also similar in that they're repurposing an established format to do things, cassettes and phone lines
Regarding dangers from mains voltage, you could stand on a thick rubber mat/block, it would isolate you against the ground and thus if you only touch the mains voltage with one fingertip, protect you. BUT In the same time you would be completely isolated from the ground, meaning your static charge would build up and you have a much higher chance of causing ESD damage. It is something you usually do when pulling main fuses from buildings, which are located before the power meter or any other switches and fuses in the regular fuse box of the building. Obviously you can not shut off the power to the house in many cases as you would cut the power to the whole street/block. So you have to pull the main fuses from the fuse box with protective gear while they are live. And this includes a thick rubber mat.
Borders is a Scottish county, the local TV station is simply Border TV, so there's every chance that's where the biscuits come from. Never seen them myself, even though I live just over the border in England, we still get stuff like Tunnocks(the teakcakes are a regular purchase of mine), Tizer, Irn Bru and fresh haggis on shelves, so yeah.
Hi Adrian, I had a Timex/Sinclair 2068 and played Fighter Pilot a lot, really a lot. It was hard but so much fun. You could actually use two joysticks to fly. The left stick was for rudder and throttle and right for aileron/elevator/guns. It was a lot of fun by Dave Marshall of Digital Integration. He also made Tomahawk and I use to bug our local dealer a half-hour away waiting for Timex/Sinclair port - it was an AH-64 combat sim. Good stuff! Wish I still had that 2068 today!
14:11 - That game along with the similar sized packaged ones came as a software bundle - that's why they are so common! Hungry Horace was another, the Fred adventures I recall came bundled with the Amstrad CPC464 ...
Great mail call video! I loved seeing software and materials from across the pond. Also I love Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. I watched it so much growing up!
1:29 *pushes up glasses* Actually, that's the Union Flag. It's only a jack when flown at sea on the jackstaff at the bow of the ship (the Union Ensign is flown on the stern.) :)
There were so many of those programing books. I had that scary one, the alien one and the monster one. Wheelie was banned for a while due to the graphic nature of the death animation. LOL.
The games "Punchy", "Alien Destroyer", "Crazy Golf", and "Disco Dan" were indeed part of a software bundle, called Soft 888 - see *link below, which was included with the Sinclair ZX Spectrum +2 (Grey version) when that machine was first marketed by Amstrad. The +2 was the first Spectrum from Amstrad after the buy-out. *Soft 888 spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/17293/ZX-Spectrum/Soft_888 Note: I have not tried any of those games myself, but from what I've heard, they are rather mediocre at best.
I was literally eating one of those Borders chocolate ginger biscuits when that part of the video came on. Made me laugh. Also, I had that exact book of Weird Computer Games back in the mid 80s when I had my Acorn Electron.
Nice repair, but I would highly recommend the use of a series light-bulb / dim bulb tester when powering up a supply with a previously blown fuse, especially where you couldn't find an obviously shorted part. That bridge rectifier or chopper transistor etc could have had some high-voltage breakdown/leakage problem that simply didn't show up when tested at a couple of volts with a DMM.
just FYI, it's not the drive itself that cares about the presence/absence of the index hole, it's the controller hardware (obviously this distinction may be confused if the controller hardware is located inside the drive enclosure). index-less formats still use FM/MFM, but they use distinct index patterns in the track format to locate where the index signal would have been.
Well done pronouncing Kilmarnock. I had Sabre Wulf in the same packaging as well as Make-A-Chip / Scrabble (pretty sure it came in a bundle with a survival game where you started as a mouse or something and Chequered Flag too) Mercenary was excellent. Lots of memories in those games.
Adrian is quite adept in pronouncing stuff - It's not ofthen that I hear a native English speaker saying words like "Porsche" and "Ferrari" correctly together in one sentence without the slightest struggle. Only the "Mercedes" could use a little more training 😉
@@ThereIsOnly1ArcNinja :D He is, but as a native of Scotland which has many places that are pronounced differently than how they're spelled he did well. Even my stanav manages to mangle Kilmarnock (which is funny though)
Great video, thanks. The number of people I see in the amateur PC/console repair community who just assume cap replacement should always be the first step is distressing. If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, etc. etc.
Once again, thanks for the great content Adrian. Got a new e-waste reseller in my area "Geeks Candy Shop", I'll be checking there as often as I can for any vintage electronics.
Highway Encounter was a memorable game for me on the Commodore 64. All I remembered that the robots are going in a straight line in an isometric view. Took me years to find it just by that alone. But seriously, I only played it like once.
I swear that there were more copies of "Make-A-Chip" for the ZX Spectrum made than there were ZX Spectrums. 🤣🤣 BTW the Weird Computer Games book looks like it was originally published by Usborne Books. Usborne is still around and have a number of their classic '80s computer books on their website in PDF format for free download.
IME, with switching PSUs from around 85 to 2012, the secondary side ones fail the most often. I have never seen a bad primary side cap, but they live a hard life (high voltage and lots of ripple) so I always replace them anyway. I just don’t see the harm in pre-emptive cap refurbishment. Assuming you’re qualified to hold the soldering iron the right way around, of course. Maybe they weren’t failing. Maybe they wouldn’t. But if I’ve replaced them with low ESR Nichicons, they sure won’t now!
That was a nice selection of Spectrum games there. I have the isometric Batman too, but that’s for the MSX. Apparently it is ported from the Spectrum version. I may remember wrong but I think the separately sold version of Elite had the Lenslok protection.
That kind of thing seemed to happen all the time in code-copy books. I had a vic-20 and my parents were too cheap to buy cart games, so we got a book of games instead. I remember my 7 year old self banging my head against the screen trying to troubleshoot bad code in those books. I did learn BASIC for my trouble, so it wasn't all bad.
Yeup The Notes are Priced for various goods that you could purchase in on solar system in ELITE and then hopefully trade for a profit in a different system. They money could be used to buy missiles or more powerful lasers, docking computer or even Narcotics 0_0 I spent soo soo many hours playing Elite. I'm now playing Elite Dangerous also by David Brabum, one of my childhood heroes :)
First thing I check for is bad or cracked solder joints, some of them will drive you nuts because it will be intermittent when there’s heat dissipation going on.
Nice selection of stuff there! That Revenge of the Killer Tomatoes seems to have the same author (Kevin Bezant) as another game I had by Visions, Sheer Panic if I remember correctly. You had to load that in with Load "" Code as it seems it had no standard Load "" header. I suspect Killer Tomatoes might be the same.
You can use a Big light (tungsten o dichroic bulb => a 100 watt or more ) on serial with circuit to test . If the "thing" are on short circuit the light get on an the current is consumed, then it save you. ;)
Oh my goodness I had almost forgotten about the BBC, I used to use those at school to learn programming in BASIC (and, of course, to play Chuckie Egg!)
@@fnjesusfreak : There's some strange people about!! Such a friendly, intelligent guy as Adrian, who shares his knowledge and hints 'n tips so readily, and in a very understandable way, should not even have a 'thumbs down' button on his channel...!! :-)
It's most likely people who religiously recap anything that hasn't climbed the next tree on the count of three - Nothing hurts more than your god being deCAPitated - pardon the pun. 😏
It's quite common to see capacitors in SMPS's close to hot components, it's done deliberately in some designs, far from moral but it's what you may class as "Built in obsolescence" especially with products built in the last 20 years or so. These particular capacitors are usually right in the edge of their rating or underrated. Either with their temperature range, quality or voltage rating. Think of it as a timer. This probably isn't the case with the Astec PSU in the BBC Micro, but this does happen in the electronics manufacturing industry sadly.
Oh, you've missed a bit of a treat if you've not heard of Mercenary. It's a first-person 3d flight simulator and adventure game set on an alien world with a couple of warring factions and you crash land in the middle of it. I played it a lot on the C64 and it had a well-regarded sequel called Damocles on the 16-bit systems like the amiga. It's really impressive given the hardware it's running on - though no idea what it's like on the spectrum - probably not terrible given the faster clock speed and the limited colour palette it used. You might have played the coder's more fast-paced game, Encounter on the C64 - also first person 3D, but optimised for speed.
It seems like everyone knows about Elite, but no one heard of Mercenary. It's an amazing game with wireframe 3D graphics in the style of Elite but more adventure like
Adrian, do you have a variac and an ammeter? When a fuse is blowing and you suspect something could be potentially shorted... An easy way to tell if something is still shorted (without blowing more fuses) is to put it on the variac and watch the current draw on your ammeter as you turn the knob and bring up the voltage. You should be able to tell if current draw is normal or not.
![[LIVE] : ONE ลุมพินี 82 วันนี้!! คู่เอก | ยอดไอคิว vs อับดัลลาห์](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/hSsyTl_9bqs/mqdefault.jpg)
Adrian: hey - I am diabetic. The whole world: here - have some sugar.
That is pretty funny. But just so you know, diabetics can still consume sugar, they just can't go wild with it (150Carbs a day is a regular goal), and it's better to space it out during the day.
@Mr Guru Thanks for all the work you've done on MAME. While I've never sent you sweets, I have donated cash for tons of boards that have crossed your workbench!
@Mr Guru Wow. That was quite an unexpected response. I've donated funds over the years via DU, the Dumping Project, and through Randy Hoffman, but I've never sent you anything directly.
@Mr Guru Apologies. I had only wanted to offer my thanks for the work you've done on MAME, and that still stands. I hadn't expected to be lectured about it though.
The connector is for the BBC joystick port, to go with the joystick. The wiring can be found on google. all the best.
Great donation, Stefan!
Hi from another Ayrshire viewer
Thank you for giving that stuff to Adrian!!! I like the mail calls because you never know what he is going to find when he opens the boxes. That was a nice relaxing 30 min watching him go through your old tapes and fixing that power supply.
The notes are prices of goods on various planets in Elite.
what he said ;-)
Oh, the nostalgia. I wrote in smaller text so I could fit more goods/stations, and the page always ended up a complete mess.
They are! I still write down prices for the current version: Elite: Dangerous
Oh yeah, fond emories of shipping food from Lave to Reesdike for far too long 👼🏽
Adrian we'll forgive you for not recognizing Elite game notes. THIS TIME!! :)
The series lightbulb trick is a must for powering up an unknown supply without fear of fireworks and destruction.
Definitely recommended - especially in a case where the fuse blew and there were no obviously shorted parts!
My guess is the bad base connection to the chopper transistor may have been responsible, the drive circuit could have latched up and turned on much longer than it was supposed to.
Came here to say just this. A "dim bulb tester" is an essential workshop item if you work on switch mode supplies or power amplifiers. It gives you early warning that theres a problem, and prevents fireworks!
And my super dodgy test trick after thinking I have fixed a PSU, instead of wasting a fuse if it's not fixed, is to just use a little strand of solder in parallel with the blown fuse, held in the fuse holder. If there's still a fault.. solder is a very fast blowing fuse :-)
@@SimonQuigley i think i'll stick with the bulb ;) molten solder belongs on my soldering iron :)
@@jaycee1980 it's not even that exciting. It just melts a tiny bit in the middle, separating the 2 halves.
I have to say that ADB intro is perhaps the best retro intro ever. I never skip it. The graininess of the video, the music that's seems to have a little extra static/overgain, the clips, they all transport you to the 80's. Very good.
Oof. Apparently (and rightly so), TH-cam remove hearts from edited comments. Maybe Adrian will see this and reapply.
You know how every North American school had a copy of Oregon Trail? British schools had Granny's Garden. I remember playing it on my Primary's BBC Micros.
Anyone else want an entire play of the tapes these look great haha
Ahh John Menzies - that's a blast from the past!
Adrian, you should definitely use incandescent bulb (about 60W) in SERIES with PSU input while powering up. In this case, if the PSU has any kind of short circuit at it's input, bulb will light up and prevent blowing up any parts (and fuses). Therefore, you could turn the main switch off and continue troubleshooting. But if the PSU is good, it will only cause short-term flash of light in the bulb (while capacitors are charging) and then the bulb will be as a resistor, so PSU will start anyway.
And thank you for your great content!. I became a bit addictive.
This is a technique I also used when repairing TV's back in the early '90s. It's a poor mans alternative to a variac.
As best I've heard, "Granny's Garden" is said to be a real classic game on the BBC for the classroom.
Jet set Willy was amazing. Spent many happy hours playing it.
28:50 A paperclip and 115 Volts... where have I seen this before? ^^
Mac Daniel I spotted that too 😂
Difference is, Adrian knows what he’s doing 😉
You can code read older Ford vehicles 83-95(might be off with the years) with a paper clip and an analog meter. Beat the hell out of having to have all these fancy scan tools they got today. I’m an Adrian fan, old school all the way....
When I first heard Adrian saying he used a paperclip... I thought for a moment that he was mocking the 8-Bit guy.... 😁
29:33 subtle message for the 8-bit guy 😁👍
@@ronwilgenbusch1961 OBD1 GM's Too! (minus the meter)
Adrian, think about creating a poster out of those scanned collection of disk sleeves. This would finance your channel for sure as I think the demand would be great!
That segment on the power supply is really good- thanks
I'm a UK ex-pat. Tunnock's Caramel Wafers are my Kryptonite. You can get them from Cost Plus World Market.
Thanks for the tip. Another ex-pat here too.
They're lovely!
"I've never had a resistor fail closed" Man, if I had that luck, I never would have said it out loud. I could almost hear a flag trip. lol
Brings back memories.
Am I the only one who never played games on the ZX-81 and later ZX-spectrum ? That weird games book made me think about the times I had spend 3 hours typing in a program (from a magazine or written by myself,) and then the computer crashed . Or pages of hex code and somewhere made a fault.
Sadly I lost my spectrum and accessories (disappeared while moving houses) like a better keyboard and thermal printer. I now repair electronics for a living but back them I just started with electronics. I had no money for a computer but worked in weekends in a computer shop and the boss gave me a dead spectrum . I repaired it, but I can not remember how, it must be easy because I only had an analogue meter and a DIY signal tracer that was published in Elector magazine. (and I still have)
Sometimes it I wished I still have one , but then thinking about the hassle with taperecorders ........... ;-)
Finally someone who does not promote recapping. I repair only (high quality) electronics (measurement , calibration gear, and industrial stuff) and dead caps are really rare. Even for 20 years old gear.
My uncle had the Weird Computer Games book and the cover absolutely terrified me. Still brings back a shiver just looking at it now.
Some good Spectrum games in amongst those! The Mr. Micro games were bundled together with the +2, and as such, were some of the first games I ever got to experience. Unfortunately.
Great diagnosis and fix of the broken power supply!
That weird computer games book brought back a flood of memories, I definitely remember typing out and playing the witches game!
As an Australian living in Canada (Ottawa :-) ) I appreciate your correct pronunciation of "tomato" :-)
Watching Adrian swoon over goodies and candy never fails to bring me joy :D
Noooo!!! Don't format the floppies before checking them on a BBC micro!
Seconded. Hopefully Adrian will get a BBC Micro floppy drive donated to him at some stage.
@@OzRetrocomp I have a few BBC Micro floppy disk drives. I would happily donate them!
Sabrewulf for the Spectrum... nice. Those Ultimate black boxes are very nice to collect (and a touch expensive!).
That was a good box of stuff, though I was a little disappointed that it wasn't actually filled with old ram sticks instead.
LOL!!! Noooo not more RAM!
For your safety, it is better to not convert the BBC PSU to 115V, while repairing leave it at 230V. The PSU can run at 115V just fine, it won't be able torun run at full capacity, but that is not really a problem. While I am in a 230V country, I actually use the 115V output on my isolation transformer to work on power supplies: The combination of the isolation transformer and the much lower voltages increases the safety by leaps and bounds. When the power supply is repaired, you can do the conversion to 115V.
The wire that you solder converts the bridge rectifier into a bridge doubler.
Granny's Garden probably the first computer game I ever played at Primary school!! This got me into Computers.
Aside from eyeballing the board before testing components, a "smell test" can sometimes let you know where to begin looking. On some larger boards this has often saved me lots of time when visually all the parts looked fine but one section had the faint smell of fried parts.
@3:00 First the tea cakes, then the wafers.... that's a pretty good care package! Yum!
Those Dysan disks bring back a lot of memories.
I believe you can get those teacakes at Cost Plus World Market, in case you have a hankering for more!
great idea on scanning the floppy sleeves. I started scanning cassette tape J-cards
love the way spectrum tapes had for the +3 written on them.... wonder how many kids cried as they tried to squeeze the tape into the disk drive :D
I find it funny that Dial up is just a fancy version of the cassette programs except it's through a phoneline and you can interact with it.
also similar in that they're repurposing an established format to do things, cassettes and phone lines
Nice explanation of the PS workings
Regarding dangers from mains voltage, you could stand on a thick rubber mat/block, it would isolate you against the ground and thus if you only touch the mains voltage with one fingertip, protect you.
BUT
In the same time you would be completely isolated from the ground, meaning your static charge would build up and you have a much higher chance of causing ESD damage.
It is something you usually do when pulling main fuses from buildings, which are located before the power meter or any other switches and fuses in the regular fuse box of the building. Obviously you can not shut off the power to the house in many cases as you would cut the power to the whole street/block. So you have to pull the main fuses from the fuse box with protective gear while they are live. And this includes a thick rubber mat.
I remember playing "Fred" a lot at my friend's house. It was great to see this!
Borders is a Scottish county, the local TV station is simply Border TV, so there's every chance that's where the biscuits come from. Never seen them myself, even though I live just over the border in England, we still get stuff like Tunnocks(the teakcakes are a regular purchase of mine), Tizer, Irn Bru and fresh haggis on shelves, so yeah.
oi oi, dunlop is a wee village outside kilmarnock, , im in stewarton another town around kilmarnock....love your videos
My aunt and uncle used to run Burnhouse caravans in the 80s..I was amazed to see it was still open when I was up there a couple of years ago 😂
I used to live in Dunlop thirty years ago, my sister still lives there, strange to hear it mentioned on one of my favourite TH-cam channel!.
Dunlop is a village about 7 miles from Kilmarnock.
See Ashens video about that book(let) 'Weird Computer Games' inc... the games running.
Hi Adrian, I had a Timex/Sinclair 2068 and played Fighter Pilot a lot, really a lot. It was hard but so much fun. You could actually use two joysticks to fly. The left stick was for rudder and throttle and right for aileron/elevator/guns. It was a lot of fun by Dave Marshall of Digital Integration. He also made Tomahawk and I use to bug our local dealer a half-hour away waiting for Timex/Sinclair port - it was an AH-64 combat sim. Good stuff! Wish I still had that 2068 today!
Great tips on the PS testing!
14:11 - That game along with the similar sized packaged ones came as a software bundle - that's why they are so common! Hungry Horace was another, the Fred adventures I recall came bundled with the Amstrad CPC464 ...
I wondered if they were Tunnock's he was referring to in his letter 😁 Haven't had those in over 20 years now. Making me want to order some!
Wheelie is the best game out of that collection, very playable and challenging.
Mercenary is an epic game. You have missed out if you’ve never stolen the Palyar commander’s brother in laws ship 😉
absolutely! ;)
True
Jumped after the great intro music into the PS repair! 😊
Nice. My best electric Zap ever was on an Atari Lynx when I accidentally touched the high volt fluorescent light circuit. Ouch.
Tunnocks stuff is sold in England as well - the caramel wafer bar is fantastic.
Mercenary is an amazing game! It was mind-blowing in 1985. You also prompted me to bid on a Spectrum copy of Jet Set Willy!
Awesome video. Loved the mix of loot and fix.
it took me a while to get into your channel but now I watch every one. thanks for the effort you put into them
Great mail call video! I loved seeing software and materials from across the pond. Also I love Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. I watched it so much growing up!
You had Oregon Trail. We had Granny’s Garden. Both classics!
1:29 *pushes up glasses* Actually, that's the Union Flag. It's only a jack when flown at sea on the jackstaff at the bow of the ship (the Union Ensign is flown on the stern.) :)
There were so many of those programing books. I had that scary one, the alien one and the monster one. Wheelie was banned for a while due to the graphic nature of the death animation. LOL.
The games "Punchy", "Alien Destroyer", "Crazy Golf", and "Disco Dan" were indeed part of a software bundle, called Soft 888 - see *link below, which was included with the Sinclair ZX Spectrum +2 (Grey version) when that machine was first marketed by Amstrad. The +2 was the first Spectrum from Amstrad after the buy-out.
*Soft 888 spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/17293/ZX-Spectrum/Soft_888
Note: I have not tried any of those games myself, but from what I've heard, they are rather mediocre at best.
I was literally eating one of those Borders chocolate ginger biscuits when that part of the video came on. Made me laugh. Also, I had that exact book of Weird Computer Games back in the mid 80s when I had my Acorn Electron.
Nice repair, but I would highly recommend the use of a series light-bulb / dim bulb tester when powering up a supply with a previously blown fuse, especially where you couldn't find an obviously shorted part.
That bridge rectifier or chopper transistor etc could have had some high-voltage breakdown/leakage problem that simply didn't show up when tested at a couple of volts with a DMM.
Grannys Garden was my childhood! I was the only kid in my school (of about 40 pupils) who knew how to finish it. You gotta take the jam!
30 minutes... 60 minutes.... I'm just happy that you do what you do! Gives me something to look forward to. :-)
Tunnocks tea cake with a cup of tea, lovely.
just FYI, it's not the drive itself that cares about the presence/absence of the index hole, it's the controller hardware (obviously this distinction may be confused if the controller hardware is located inside the drive enclosure). index-less formats still use FM/MFM, but they use distinct index patterns in the track format to locate where the index signal would have been.
Well GCR schemes like the Apple II and Commodore don't even have a sensor in the drive -- so no way to even know about the hole. :-)
Tunnocks made my wedding cake! :)
Ahaha Adrian demonstrates the _correct_ way to install a paperclip in a PSU 😂😂😂
Loved the video, thanks Adrian
Smile1 is probably a reference to a UK mathematics course for high school in North London.
Sarf Landan too. I remember the Smile system very well.
Well done pronouncing Kilmarnock. I had Sabre Wulf in the same packaging as well as Make-A-Chip / Scrabble (pretty sure it came in a bundle with a survival game where you started as a mouse or something and Chequered Flag too) Mercenary was excellent. Lots of memories in those games.
Adrian is quite adept in pronouncing stuff - It's not ofthen that I hear a native English speaker saying words like "Porsche" and "Ferrari" correctly together in one sentence without the slightest struggle. Only the "Mercedes" could use a little more training 😉
@@ThereIsOnly1ArcNinja :D He is, but as a native of Scotland which has many places that are pronounced differently than how they're spelled he did well. Even my stanav manages to mangle Kilmarnock (which is funny though)
The notes in the Elite box, look like the commodity prices at different star systems so you know where you can buy cheap and sell on to make a profit.
Great video, thanks. The number of people I see in the amateur PC/console repair community who just assume cap replacement should always be the first step is distressing.
If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, etc. etc.
Wow brought back some memories looking at all those games, even if i had a C64 a lot of those were on the C64
Once again, thanks for the great content Adrian. Got a new e-waste reseller in my area "Geeks Candy Shop", I'll be checking there as often as I can for any vintage electronics.
Highway Encounter was a memorable game for me on the Commodore 64. All I remembered that the robots are going in a straight line in an isometric view. Took me years to find it just by that alone. But seriously, I only played it like once.
Hi back to you from the UK! :)
I swear that there were more copies of "Make-A-Chip" for the ZX Spectrum made than there were ZX Spectrums. 🤣🤣
BTW the Weird Computer Games book looks like it was originally published by Usborne Books. Usborne is still around and have a number of their classic '80s computer books on their website in PDF format for free download.
22:49 - but those two big caps are not concave, looks more like it's starting to bulge a little. I would definitely replace those.
Came down to the comments to say this.
Yes I thought so too. My BBC PSU had both those badly bulged
IME, with switching PSUs from around 85 to 2012, the secondary side ones fail the most often. I have never seen a bad primary side cap, but they live a hard life (high voltage and lots of ripple) so I always replace them anyway.
I just don’t see the harm in pre-emptive cap refurbishment. Assuming you’re qualified to hold the soldering iron the right way around, of course. Maybe they weren’t failing. Maybe they wouldn’t. But if I’ve replaced them with low ESR Nichicons, they sure won’t now!
That was a nice selection of Spectrum games there. I have the isometric Batman too, but that’s for the MSX. Apparently it is ported from the Spectrum version. I may remember wrong but I think the separately sold version of Elite had the Lenslok protection.
Also, for the BBC joystick, check this out: mansfield-devine.com/speculatrix/2019/05/diy-joystick-for-the-bbc-micro-part-1/
I had that weird computer games book and noticed that a few of the listings had errors in them.
That kind of thing seemed to happen all the time in code-copy books. I had a vic-20 and my parents were too cheap to buy cart games, so we got a book of games instead. I remember my 7 year old self banging my head against the screen trying to troubleshoot bad code in those books. I did learn BASIC for my trouble, so it wasn't all bad.
BBC Micro and Tunnocks Tea Cakes are two of my most favourite things :o)
@5:10 - Usborne recently released PDFs of all their old BASIC game books including this one for free on the web. They're a lot of fun
Aples to Apples is sort of the 21 century Trivial Pursuit.
Yeup The Notes are Priced for various goods that you could purchase in on solar system in ELITE and then hopefully trade for a profit in a different system. They money could be used to buy missiles or more powerful lasers, docking computer or even Narcotics 0_0 I spent soo soo many hours playing Elite. I'm now playing Elite Dangerous also by David Brabum, one of my childhood heroes :)
First thing I check for is bad or cracked solder joints, some of them will drive you nuts because it will be intermittent when there’s heat dissipation going on.
Make a chip & scrabble generally came with the 48k Spectrum, that’s why they are so common.
Yeah, that and Survival - I had that one as well as Scrabble and Make-a-Chip. I had Tasword Two in a box the same style as those also!
This is technically a "Micro Mail Call"
Nice selection of stuff there! That Revenge of the Killer Tomatoes seems to have the same author (Kevin Bezant) as another game I had by Visions, Sheer Panic if I remember correctly. You had to load that in with Load "" Code as it seems it had no standard Load "" header. I suspect Killer Tomatoes might be the same.
You can use a Big light (tungsten o dichroic bulb => a 100 watt or more ) on serial with circuit to test . If the "thing" are on short circuit the light get on an the current is consumed, then it save you. ;)
28:50 - Shots fired, lol.
Oh my goodness I had almost forgotten about the BBC, I used to use those at school to learn programming in BASIC (and, of course, to play Chuckie Egg!)
The video was TOO SHORT! :). Thanks again.
Binge Watching !! Thx For the Great Content
"if you didn't like it, you know what to do"
My dude, seriously, who wouldn't like you??
Who the hell dislikes an Adrian Black video?
Apparently 5 people as of my comment...
@@fnjesusfreak : There's some strange people about!! Such a friendly, intelligent guy as Adrian, who shares his knowledge and hints 'n tips so readily, and in a very understandable way, should not even have a 'thumbs down' button on his channel...!! :-)
It's most likely people who religiously recap anything that hasn't climbed the next tree on the count of three - Nothing hurts more than your god being deCAPitated - pardon the pun. 😏
Oh my gosh tunnocks wafers are the best thing ever
It's quite common to see capacitors in SMPS's close to hot components, it's done deliberately in some designs, far from moral but it's what you may class as "Built in obsolescence" especially with products built in the last 20 years or so. These particular capacitors are usually right in the edge of their rating or underrated. Either with their temperature range, quality or voltage rating. Think of it as a timer. This probably isn't the case with the Astec PSU in the BBC Micro, but this does happen in the electronics manufacturing industry sadly.
Oh, you've missed a bit of a treat if you've not heard of Mercenary. It's a first-person 3d flight simulator and adventure game set on an alien world with a couple of warring factions and you crash land in the middle of it. I played it a lot on the C64 and it had a well-regarded sequel called Damocles on the 16-bit systems like the amiga. It's really impressive given the hardware it's running on - though no idea what it's like on the spectrum - probably not terrible given the faster clock speed and the limited colour palette it used. You might have played the coder's more fast-paced game, Encounter on the C64 - also first person 3D, but optimised for speed.
CodeMasters released a lot of good games back in the day. My favorite are the Dizzy games
It seems like everyone knows about Elite, but no one heard of Mercenary. It's an amazing game with wireframe 3D graphics in the style of Elite but more adventure like
This is a great video, I have an old, rather unusual, 386 with what I think is a dead PSU. So this video may help me with troubleshooting it. :)
Adrian, do you have a variac and an ammeter? When a fuse is blowing and you suspect something could be potentially shorted... An easy way to tell if something is still shorted (without blowing more fuses) is to put it on the variac and watch the current draw on your ammeter as you turn the knob and bring up the voltage. You should be able to tell if current draw is normal or not.
9:17 They should have called it "Mountain Bike Ninja"