leaded solder

@leadedsolder.com

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I never met a broken TV I didn't like. Come read the blog at https://www.leadedsolder.com and see what old junk computers I'm fixing this week.

Keith Robinson, showing an Intellivision box
A bunch of box fish that are probably made out of cardboard swim above a rock, with a pair of weird looking sea urchin dudes looking at them. It says "Free Software Collection 10 for FM Towns" by Fujitsu, 2MB RAM required
My cat is shoving his face into a stuffed cat
A blue PlayStation-looking thing is on a box advertising the thing.
The title screen for the FM TOWNS version of A-Train III.
My weird looking thumb is pushing up the door on the jacks
A Japanese pay phone with ISDN jacks in the lower right.
A list of contributors to Chic magazine. The only one listed is G. Gordon Liddy of Watergate fame.
An AliExpress listing for an SG-1000/SC-3000 Retro Game Console for $304.99
A Commodore 64 main board attached to a 1702 that won't show colour for some reason, but basic is booting
The rubber membrane from a TV remote offering Apple TV+, Netflix, Crave, and Prime Video. The background is just grass and leaves from a public park.
An Apple III 12v memory board. Eight sockets are filled with gold MK4332 DRAMs and another eight are empty because they have all failed a memory test. For some reason my legs are at the bottom of the shot.
My Sharp MZ-700, sitting on a table
The title screen for the space shooter Striz B.H., except it's bright red and all the colours are wrong.
A screenshot from KiCad. I've assigned the pins GPIO16 to D0, GPIO17 to D1... all the way up to GPIO22 which is D6. And then, suddenly, GPIO *26* for D7. This will make writing firmware much more difficult later.
An Xbox motherboard with some freshly desoldered holes, ready for some kind of exterior debug device to be installed
The sign-on banner for Sony SMC-70 CP/M version 2.2, containing the files SETUP.COM, STAT.COM, ED.COM, DIAG.COM, BACKUP.COM, DDT.COM, ASM.COM, SAMPLE.TXT, SUBMIT.COM, LOAD.COM, DUMP.COM, XSUB.COM, PIP.COM, and DUMP.ASM
A Mini 4WD car body has been painted with an off white base coat. You can tell it's not a perfect mirror finish and there's spots where the dark grey primer is poking through on the complex surfaces such as the fake vents.
A bunch of garbage has filled the screen.
A red Tandy Turbo Beetle toy car, missing the fake engine in the back. It has the wrong tires in it and the body shell is kind of loosely mocked up.
A Fujitsu FM-New7 with a red floppy card connected to it through a 50 pin ribbon cable.
A grey plastic cartridge in the shape of a charmingly realistic 3.5" floppy disk. You can see the PCB edge poking out of the bottom. The label reads "Socrates educational video system, awareness, age 7 and up: around the world, an adventure in world geography. Copyright 1989 video technology."
The Data East logo, in slightly hot full colour
The title screen to Magical Drop 2 is on an NEC MultiSync 3D computer monitor. It's all very blue, for some reason.
Four small Mac main logic boards sitting in a basket waiting for the ultrasonic cleaner to be ready. It looks kind of like a fry basket so it's making me hungry.
The secondary side of a Fujitsu FM-7 power supply
Brown silastic goop around the base of some capacitors has corroded this innocent wire link.
A glowing green streak shows the flow of flux off the board.
My stupid arm is holding up a Votrax personal speech system in front of an 8" TRS-80 floppy drive and my assorted storage room squalour.
A white PC-8201A slab top computer shows the "leadedsolder.com" url over and over. My feet are in the picture because I forgot how to crop
A "P" is made up of several @-symbols
A receptacle for an oddly short battery with a pull tab and a red extraction preventer
A snowy battlefield of Combat. Two tanks, more alike than different, are locked in eternal warfare.
A paper imitation of a floppy drive card sticks out the top of an FM-7. Based on the light we can see that the 34-pin floppy connector on top will clear.
An "Atari 7800 Mega Adapter" PCB connected to a Sega Genesis controller extension cable
A Thinkpad showing PulseView is sitting on top of a PC-6001mk2 that is showing its startup screen on a TV behind it.
A Lawson's can of Mayonnaise Drink. This is a real product.
A PlayStation 2 is on my test bench. The tv displays the title screen for Outrun 2006: Coast 2 Coast. A neon green Xbox controller is illuminated, showing it is connected to the PS2. A blue dongle hangs out of the PlayStation 2 alongside a FMCB memory card. The rest of the desk has nasty useless clutter
A screenshot of the "Get Info" window for File System Manager v1.2. It is in German.
I am asked "how many files?"
Point 1 says that on PC-6601/PC-6601SR, set the number of drives to zero.
The preferences dialogue box in PC6001VX, offering the option to set "Num of Drives" to 0.
A teal game cartridge showing the Konami logo and a turtle fleeing some kind of dragon.
A poorly Photoshopped cover of a children's book: "The Elves and the Internet Weirdo." Two elves are beating on a smoking Coleco Adam home computer with hammers.
A Track-And-Field looking game where two potatolike athletes are preparing to race the 500 meter sprint. The world record is 03 minutes 31 seconds.
My "Tapestry" tape emulator board showing a menu of options 1 to 6
Two ghostlike characters wearing bandit masks are hanging out. One has a hat reading "MBC," and is sitting in a lawn chair smoking. He looks very happy. The other bandit is staring off into the distance with a look of pride in what he has accomplished today. The vibe is good
The coco with a red keyboard PCB and AliExpress key caps put into it
A red keyboard PCB with a mismatched jumble of keyboard keys stuck in it. Some are crooked. Some are too tall.
A round sticker saying "bad computers, okay repairs, leadedsolder.com"
A "Broken Bell Telephone Company" diorama.
Two Watara Supervision handheld game systems with worn out screens
A BASIC listing with a blue spaceship flying over it.
A simple basic program is written where a byte is put on port B and then handshaked.
A basic program in Nintendo family basic that displays a space ship on the screen
The video and audio jacks on the outside of the Socrates
A Sony voice recorder is attached to a Famicom, which has a Family BASIC cartridge and keyboard attached to it.
The opening screen of Moon Patrol for the Apple II. A message on screen implores you: beginner course go!
A transistor tester shows that the transistor inserted is just two resistors now, not an NPN at all