
I have always been a Commodore fanboy and therefore never understood all the fuzz about Sinclair Computers. For me they always seemd to be underpowered, cheapy cripples – no sprites, no joystickports no real sound. As a constant reader of the fabulous Retro Gamer Magazine, you have no choice to neglect those tiny computers, though and talking to some guys at HomeCon really made me curious.
Now, two weeks ago, I bough a realy nice 70s design black and white TV on a bootmarket – the cool model that I spotted one week before was gone (oh wonder!) and so I had to go with the remaining Telefunken. Despite having a big scratch on the front, that I didn’t notice due to all the dirt, it is in working order and I took both – the ZX81 and the TV – to last weekends HomeCon. After some heavy knobturning sessions I went for the BBQ outside and Mugg managed to tune in on the ZX81. Great.
Just turning 30 years last year it cam to no big surprise that my ZX81 that I kept in the closet for ages now had the same problem. A quite common problem is keyboard membran that it stops working after a few years. The plastic band usualy is broken due to being bent inside the case and sitting on top of a RAM chip that tends to get hot, leaving the cable dry and brittle. Same was here. So no chance to load something.
A quick search on the net and I got an all newly produced replacement keyboard from RWAP. Replacing it is no big task and here are some pictures. As I stored away the tiny black and white TV in the basement, I haven’t tried the fixe machine by now, but a quick hookup to the TV that only gave me a really bad picture so that I couldn’t read a thing, showed that at least the keys are responding. Mhhh… if I should sneak down to the basement for the TV and give it a run now???
Some pictures of the process. In retrospect I should have read the included instructions prior so that I would have used a hairdrier to lift the old sticky keyboard… I did it the brutal way.







Lately I found myself pixeling along for the C64. Off all the old computers that are in my collection the C64 still is my first an biggest love. Early 90s, I teamed up with a guy from around my hometown and despite some lame stuff at the beginning, the newly formed Laxity (or LXT for short) was big fun.





I don’t know if I mentioned it before that most of my spare time goes into the 











Sometimes there are things that really leave you gobsmacked in a good way. Today seems to be one of those. Everything seems into flow and fall into its place and some things fall – strangely enough – into the dumpster. Checking our electronic trash at work from time to time brought me a lot of useful things for my projects. From sorted out old CRT screens down to cables and cases, hence quite a few good things turned up, but today it must have been christmas. I spotted a 5th gen iPod in the trashbox and thought I just keep it for our 











Jack Tramiel died yesterday at the age of 83. Besides Jobs and Gates one of the driving forces of the early eighties homecomputer market. His vision of building a coumputer that was affordable and had enough power brought Commodore the C64, that is the most sold home computer of that time. Known for beeing a real tyran when it came down to giving orders and talking to his engineers – the game Jack Attack shows how some of the Commdore Staff was feeling.







Recent Comments