Hardware
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How I Built a 2025-Ready ZX Spectrum Keyboard Case Without a 3D Printer (PCBWay to the Rescue)
There’s a special kind of retro tragedy that happens when you’re ready to print, paint, and perfect your next ZX project… and then your 3D printer doesn’t survive the move. I hit that exact wall recently—right before retro stuff became the plan—so I had to ask myself: can I still build a brand-new Spectrum-style case in 2025 without doing the “3D printer hobbyist” thing? Turns out, yes… and it involved a sponsor, a material choice, and a level of paperwork I didn’t know existed. Also: I may have invented a packing-foam soldering jig. Let’s rewind and walk through exactly what I did. Watch the video on YouTube Why I Didn’t…
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I Upgraded My Amiga’s Power Connector with a Magnetic USB‑C Style Hack (and a Few Soldering Gremlins)
This started as a simple “what if?” after I noticed my MacBook Pro’s magnetic power connector. You know the feeling: no fumbling, no wiggling, just click—and the power’s connected. Naturally, I thought, “Could an Amiga get the same quality-of-life glow-up?” And because retro projects are basically 50% engineering and 50% accidental slapstick, I also decided it would be fun to find out whether it was even possible. Watch the video on YouTube The Juice Box: the power supply I didn’t expect to love this much Before I touch the magnetic connector itself, I need to set the stage: my “Juice Box” power supply has been a bigger success than I…
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The Curious Case of the ETX Amiga 2000: A Debugging Odyssey
What you see on the bench now is a working ETX-form Amiga 2000—but to understand how we got here, we need to rewind a bit. This strange little tale really begins when I picked up the board from Cathers in Cambridge. The First Setup Fresh back from Cambridge, I wired it up with a ROM switcher—technically meant for an A600. Not the perfect fit, I’ll admit, but it had all the Kickstart images I needed to investigate the problem for myself. That issue? Something was seriously wrong with the display—especially under Kickstart 2.0 or higher. The colors were just… off. Glitching, corruption, odd effects during animation. It was like looking…
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My Journey Modding the VC9900 with GBS Control for HDMI Output
I’ve always loved retro tech, but sometimes working with older video equipment can be… frustrating. That’s why the GBS Control project caught my attention—it takes an affordable video scaler and transforms it into a powerful tool for retro enthusiasts like me. So, when I decided to tackle a long-forgotten V9900 scaler from my project pile, I knew GBS Control was the way to go. The Problem with Stock Scalers The GBS 8200, a budget-friendly scaler from the arcade and retro console world, is functional but far from perfect. Latency issues and subpar video quality made it less than ideal for anyone serious about retro displays. Enter GBS Control, an open-source…
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Flashing PCIe X1900GT for G5 Mac
I did this to install MorphOS on a PCIe G5 PowerMac Required Hardware Flashing Steps MS-DOS Boot Disk Download I have a pre made disk image here Dos6.22 ATI.img at the prompt type cd ATI then to check the contents type dir You should see ‘X1900GT.ROM’ and ‘ATIFLASH.EXE’ listed. We need to know the adaptor number, type atiflash -i note the adapter number of the installed X1900 GT, which is identifiable by the ‘R580+’ tag in the middle column. Usually, the adapter number to the far left of the ‘R580+’ will read ‘0’, provided the card was installed to the PC’s first (or only) PCIe x16 slot. Note In the…
