Today I received.....

[hoglet]

I'll be fitting this to my main beeb over Christmas, providing I can fix the ongoing interference issue with the beeb...

Steve, one thing to be aware of with Mark's board is that it doesn't include the debug connector. The purpose of this is to allow access to the integrated debugger that's included in most of the Co Processors. The debugger is there to make software development on the Co Processor easier. It's very similar to the debugger in B-Em, and allows breakpoints, watch points, single stepping, disassembly, memory dumping, memory editing. You use it via a terminal connected to the Pi's serial port. It's PiTubeDirect's secret feature - mostly secret because I haven't managed to find time to document it yet. But it's very powerful.

Anyway, if you did want to use this, you could easily solder a 3-pin right-angle 0.1" header to pins 8 (Gnd), 10 (TxD) and 12 (RxD) of the Pi Header.

I have let Mark know about all this, but I guess his target market is Tube Elite players rather than software developers.

Dave

[cmorley]

I may have over ordered on the right angle pin headers...

[daveejhitchins]

Chris . . . If you want to lose a pack or two (?) I use them! I could collect at ABUG. Let me know if, and what price.

Dave H

[paulv]

Chris . . . If you want to lose a pack or two (?) I use them! I could collect at ABUG. Let me know if, and what price.

Dave H

I'm always in need of right angled headers so if you really do have some spare I could use a pack or two too... I can't pick up but I'm happy to pay for them and postage

Paul

[hoglet]

A little bird tells me someone has received a very very nice new oscilloscope from Father Christmas....

[JudgeBeeb]

A little bird tells me someone has received a very very nice new oscilloscope from Father Christmas....

I think it actually came from a flexible friend. (Ambiguity intended.)

snake.png (66.54 KiB) Viewed 2026 times

[Cutter]

A rather nice looking 4MB RAM expansion board from cmoreley which has found a nice home in my A3000!

[kieranhj]

I really enjoyed the Wolfenstein 3D Black Book from last year so looking forward to reading this one over the Christmas break.

Makes me ponder the feasibility of a Wolf type game on Beeb esp with copro...

[Lardo Boffin]

Thanks Paul!

[markjw]

some new items for the collection - first off, an Acorn Electron - never owned one before but always like the look of them and wanted one to compliment my BBC Micro and Acorn Atom. It is in pretty good condition, no damage or wear but was dirty and yellowed - unfortunately the PSU didn't survive the trip with the courier as well as the Electron, but I think it is repairable.

Also got a Sinclair Spectrum+ 48K, again good condition but the keyboard was very dirty (started to clean it up) - keyboard membrane has failed on it, but that is fixable - also came in the original box with PSU, RAMturbo Joystick/ROM cartridge interface and I believe a DKtronics speech synth (going from the chip inside)

Now need to find a Plus 1 interface to go with the Electron (and likely a games cart)

[JudgeBeeb]

Well Christmas Day, rather than today.

Thanks to Mrs JudgeBeeb and Annie the Snake.

[JudgeBeeb]

Some more storage boxes to tidy up the various bits of kit in the spare room. Because, apparently, 'guests' might want to 'sleep' in there.

[marcusjambler]

I've had this 6128 a few weeks...
But today it got gotek goodness added....

Marcus

[Lardo Boffin]

I've had this 6128 a few weeks...
But today it got gotek goodness added....
IMG_5508a.jpg


Marcus

Nice! I got a nice and probably very similar gotek for my Spectrum +3 recently.

[Lardo Boffin]

A working (except possibly the left bumper which seems stuck on) BBC Buggy and interface card. The seller also helpfully sent me a bunch of PDF manuals for it as well. Finally my Christmas arrived!

[hoglet]

One of these (from trixster):

[richardtoohey]

Doom book; recommended (also recommend his earlier Wolfenstein 3D book, 2nd edition):

http://fabiensanglard.net/gebbdoom/index.html

Makes you nostalgic for the PC days

e.g. of the sort of content in it - programming fire: http://fabiensanglard.net/doom_fire_psx/index.html

[jonb]

A Superbrain II mainboard from Talywain, which I am planning to build into a home made case. Oh dear, I can feel another Superbrain thread coming on..

[trixster]

An X68000!

[kieranhj]

I’d never even heard of this machine before - just looked it up. Amazing!

[RobC]

An X68000!

Awesome

Always wanted one of those.

[tricky]

It has many arcade perfect ports.

[VectorEyes]

That X68000 is beautiful, both the case and the tech spec. Now I want one!

[Lardo Boffin]

That X68000 is beautiful, both the case and the tech spec. Now I want one!

Here you go!

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Sharp-X68000 ... %7Ciid%3A1

[Lardo Boffin]

Strictly speaking I got this in 1998 when it came out but a recent post about two Voodoo 2 graphics cards being available reminded me of this little gem.

This was my first experience of 3D accelerated graphics on the PC and I was blown away. It was incredible!
A year or two later I upgraded my graphics card and this was not compatible with the new one. Back to software rendering which was pants.

I decided to search for an updated version of this that would work with modern 3d cards and found https://oldunreal.com. Not a new version but a patch to bring the original up to speed!
Installed it and instant smooth, silky 3d graphics even on my rubbish old desktop!

That initial fly-by is still impressive 20 years later.

[vanpeebles]

That X68000 is beautiful, both the case and the tech spec. Now I want one!

Here you go!

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Sharp-X68000 ... %7Ciid%3A1

If you hunt about and keep an eye on ebay, you can get them for a fraction of the price! That's a crazy price.

[vanpeebles]

I’d never even heard of this machine before - just looked it up. Amazing!

I have some vids of mine, on my youtube site

[markdryan]

Retromancave did a nice review of the X68000 a few months ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OepeiBF5Jnk

Prior to watching this I hadn't heard of the X6800 either.

There's also a follow up video where he visits a friend who owns rather a lot of X6800s, imported from Japan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Z4FVl4lxYM

[trixster]

Strictly speaking I got this in 1998 when it came out but a recent post about two Voodoo 2 graphics cards being available reminded me of this little gem.


090453AA-7B8E-40C2-A455-D2FFF3FB26A3.jpeg

Unreal is still one of my all time favourites. Like you I was blown away by it bitd. Computing was exciting back then, with new 3d accelerators, GLQuake and then Quake 2, and then Unreal shaking things up. The music in that games was incredible too - that bit when you emerge from the Vortex Rikers into the sun, waterfall in the background. Amazing stuff. And it wasn't all different shades of grey/brown!

I'm very much hoping a port in made for the Amiga. We've got Quake 2, Quake 3 and now RTCW - here's hoping Unreal and Half Life get the treatment too.

[Andy1979]

An Acorn Pocket Book

Had one of these at secondary school and wrote loads of useful programs for it. Sold it to buy a Psion 3A (which I still have) but couldn't resist this for nostalgia value.

Unfortunately the Comms port wasn't working properly, and trying to sync data from my A3010 would crash the Pocket Book, so I've already had it in bits. Cleaned up some brown sticky stuff (cola?) with some IPA and re-soldered the port connector as a few joints looked a bit dodgy. Will have to wait until tomorrow to see if it syncs, but now seems to recognise the 'soap on a rope' A-Link cable properly so fingers crossed.

Getting it back together was the hard bit - completely different internal layout to the Psion 3A and I couldn't find a teardown anywhere online. For ease I tried leaving out the spring-loaded port cover, but turns out the spring bridges a connection so the Pocketbook knows there's something connected.