Vintage Tech Happy 40th ZX81 I was very honoured to be mentioned in ElReg today as they celebrated 40 years of the ZX81, my first computer. As a volunteer at The National Museum of Computing, I had a
Joto Joto - The Internet of Whiteboards A friend was having a bit of a KonMarie moment and decided to remove some of the technology from her life. One item, which she had only just received, was a Joto. This
Raspberry Pi MagPi #77 In this month's MagPi I do unspeakable things to my front door as part of an ongoing SmartDoor project (more on that soon at this very 'ere blog). Also, I review the beautiful
Raspberry Pi MagPi #76 The rather wonderful MagPi issue 76 is out today. In this issue I'm turning up twice. First as part of the SuperGuide with a look at the Raspberry Pi Desktop and how to
EV So, we bought a LEAF - Four Years On New Toy! New Toy!It has come as a bit of a surprise to me that the most popular post on this ‘ere site has been my original guide to owning an electric
Makes Do You Want To Build a Strandbeest? A time-lapse showing the construction of Just Add Sharks‘ Mini Strandbeest kit which I picked up at EMF Camp 2016. It’s a great kit and took about 90 minutes to put together.
TNMoC The Great Digital Race (or ‘A 15-second Fib’) Connie 1, WITCH 0You can keep your Winter Olympics with all it’s competitive falling and sliding. The real action was last Saturday at The National Museum of Computing where you could witness
Makes Raspberry Pi + iPad Screen + iCade = Bartop WAKKA WAKKA WAKKAWay back when, I bought an iCade. This bartop-style arcade machine was actually a very pretty bluetooth controller. Simply slot your first-generation iPad into the ‘screen’ and pair. A number of
Vintage Tech Re-Capping a ZX Spectrum ZX Spectrums tend to suffer from two major problems. The earlier keyboard membranes were made from the finest Japanese rice paper and would shatter into a million pieces should a flea with a
Makes ZX Raspberry Version 2 In which our hero downsizes radically A couple of months ago we held the first in the ‘regeneration’ of the Milton Keynes Raspberry Jam. I took along my ZX Raspberry for all to
Makes An Atari 2600 in a Cartridge You know when you’re having that long-overdue clean-out and you find a few things stashed away you’d forgotten about? From when you said “that’ll make a great project one day”
3D EMF Camp 2016 IN 3D EMF Camp is a bi-annual gathering of creatives, geeks, makers and anyone with a passion for, well, anything. Over three days in a Guildford field we attended (and gave) talks, learnt new skills
Makes Building The ZX Raspberry – Part Four In which our hero is unable to leave well alone A little epilogue to the ZX Raspberry project. I came into possession of a very dead ZX Spectrum+ and, following my own personal
Vintage Tech BBC Micro Model B Memory Repair So, what do you do when your BBC Model B looks like this? Oh dear…You throw it in the skip of course! Nah, just kidding, you Google like a mad thing. What
Makes Building The ZX Raspberry – Part Three In which our hero triumphs over excessive wiring Back in Part 2, I completed the USB keyboard conversion of an old, abandoned ZX Spectrum. The next, and final, step is to add in
Makes Building The ZX Raspberry – Part Two In which our hero enters the (keyboard) matrix… Ok, time to burn stuff. After hatching a plan in Part One, I’m now ready to proceed with my Frankenspeccy. But first, some more
Makes Building The ZX Raspberry – Part One In which our hero plans and schemes Despite wanting to convert a ZX Spectrum into a USB keyboard for some time, I held off to wait for the unlikely duo of the ZX
Vintage Tech Restoring a VIC-20 I purchased this poor thing last week. After some initial mucking about, life was breathed into it once more. I had a a bit of fun getting the keyboard working but now she’
Bletchley Park The Imitation Game: Fact and Fiction To many of us in the technical community, the story of Alan Turing is well known; a tragedy of a tortured genius who saved a world that may well have killed him in
EV So We Bought a Leaf – Our FAQ on owning an Electric Car in the UK So, you like the sound of going electric, but how does it all work? When Mrs E and I started considering an ‘EV’ (as the cool kids will insist on calling it) we
Vintage Tech Composite Modding the Atari 2600 Buoyed on by my successful project to add a composite video output to a 1976 Pong game, I decided to move to my next target, the Atari 2600. Now, this little beauty needs
Vintage Tech Breathing New (Composite) Life Into a Binatone Pong Console Pong! What more could a young child want in 1978? Despite my formative years, I was already hooked on my friend’s magic-filled box of delights he described as a ‘TV Game’ (for
Vintage Tech Binatone Pong The first computer game I ever owned was this Binatone ‘TV Master MK IV’ – a simple unit that could play the standard Pong variants with a pair of analogue paddles. Yes, it may
Raspberry Pi RS232 on the Raspberry Pi (to a Psion 5) The Raspberry Pi’s General-Purpose Input/Output (GPIO) connector consists of 26 pins that are a hacker’s delight, allowing for some serious analogue and digital tomfoolery. When drooling over the specs, one
Bletchley Park Papercraft Enigma This has been doing the rounds on Twitter but I thought I’d show off my own attempt. UK security firm Franklin Heath have put together an Enigma machine made out of paper.
