• Stay away from Focal Price

    15 May | 13
    • in Misc • 
    • by FozzTexx

    About a month ago I purchased an Android tablet from Focal Price, a store out of China. The tablet was listed on their web site as brand new and in stock yet for some reason it took over a week before they shipped it. When it arrived the tablet was not new, it was definitely used. There were fingerprints on the screen, the USB cable was broken, the power supply was missing, and the serial number didn't even match the package. I tried going through them to get it resolved. They told me that...

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  • USB Joysticks and Retro Consoles

    07 May | 13
    • in Raspberry Pi • 
    • in Commodore 64 • 
    • by FozzTexx

    One of the things bugging me while tinkering with old computers has been the joysticks. Several of the computers I'm playing with can use the Atari 2600 joysticks, but those joysticks are awful. I've never liked them, even back when the Atari 2600 was new. I kept thinking about getting some other 2600 compatible joystick, or maybe making a box and sticking some of my arcade buttons and joysticks in it and wiring it up with the 9 pin Atari pinout. Neither of those ideas seemed...

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  • Forts, Houses, whatever

    28 Apr | 13
    • in Woodworking • 
    • by FozzTexx

    I made these toys for the kids a couple of years ago. I found a single page description in a woodworking book for making toys at the library. It seemed very simple but it looked like one of those kinds of toys that kids would go back to again and again because it could be used in so many different ways. The construction is very simple, it's thin sheets with notches cut into them. The wide notches represent doors and windows, depending on which way it is turned, and the thin notches allow...

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  • Turning a Teensy into a floppy controller

    04 Apr | 13
    • in Electronics • 
    • in Commodore 64 • 
    • by FozzTexx

    If you've messed around in the Commodore 64 world for even a short time, you've probably discovered that it's theoretically possible to hook up a Commodore 1541 5.25" floppy disk drive to a PC. Most of the information you come across though either talks about a specialized circuit board, or using a computer with a parallel port. While I do have plenty of older computers that have the nifty parallel port that can be used as GPIO, I was more interested in interfacing the drive...

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  • Putting a custom EPROM on an Atari 800 cartridge

    21 Mar | 13
    • in Computers • 
    • by FozzTexx

    Another retro computer I've been messing with is an Atari 800. It has been neglected for a long time and looks like it was left in some areas with some moisture. For the most part it works, but it has no color output. I got the Atari 800 field service manual and it talks about a SALT II diagnostic cartridge. Now that I have working EPROM burner, figured I could make one. There's an existing design for a PCB that would accept a 2764 or 27128 but none for sale. I could probably etch my...

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