Folded up an Oodie into the hood and accidentally created this monstrosity. We simultaneously came up with the name AmputEeorr and are equally pleased and ashamed with ourselves. It's horrifying, I love it! 😂

Popped into the loft and found some spare wallpaper. It also gives me an idea of when it was last decorated 'cos FADS shut down a long while ago. It's all a bit Nell Mangel. 😂

The garage is utterly chocka and I need a decent work area if I'm to do anything more to the house but it's all REALLY heavy! Luckily, I have a hench Nephew and he is free on Saturday. He is a bigger, stronger (and arguably better looking) version of me and we work really well together. 🙂

I spoke too soon. It turns out that I have a soakaway that doesn't. I've watched hundreds of drain unblocking videos as I find them highly entertaining and I'm quite looking forward to fixing this if I can. The pressure washer did nowt so I've got a set of rods on the way. 😁

I do like a snack but the nice ones are expensive. I've taken to buying raw nuts and roasting them myself. A little vegetable oil, some salt and lots of jiggling around later, and hey presto. I can push the roast a little further than store bought so it makes for a firmer crunch. 🙂

I've battled all the leaks, creaks and squeaks and ticked the last of the list items off. Got some tools up and running in the garage and 3d printed some shelf brackets too. Other than wall ties in the spring, it's all elective cosmetic stuff now. ☺️

WWP\data\User\Speech\English\ohdear.wav

I've got a key safe by the front door that I don't know the combination to or if there's a spare key in there. I've been meaning to get to it so I've made a notch decoder and studied the Lock Picking Lawyer video. If it doesn't work, I can always brute force it to get the combo. 🤔

My Nephew wants to get back into the DS so I'm going to set up an R4 card so that he can 'run homebrew titles'. I'll need my DS to configure it but haven't fired it up since 2019. Not only does it still work but it appears to be fully charged! 😲 I gave it a 'well done' pat on the shell. ☺️

There's a lost cat in the neighbourhood (Pablo). Nearly managed to catch him last night but he was having none of it. He has been missing since Christmas so I'll keep an eye on the garden tonight armed with stinky food and a thermal imaging camera (and also wearing a rather apt hoodie!) 🙂

Slowly ticking off issues and I seem to be making progress! Everything else will need my big tools and a bench so I need to get the garage up and running next. ☺️

Cheeky little sh*thouse! 😂

My high octane weekend adventure in house fixer uppery has been wildly successful. I've built two hoofing great wardrobes. The boiler has been upgraded with a climapro 2 controller and I've become an amateur toiletician (or Bogologist if you will) by rebuilding the loo with all new parts. ☺️

For today's ultra glamorous hijinks I'll be replacing all the internals of the loo. 😂

The move was the most punishing physical exercise I've done in decades. Packing, lifting and shifting for 6 weeks left me in absolute tatters. I'm mostly recovered so have started on 'the list'. We're jotting jobs down as we notice them and I'll pick one and have at it. ☺️

Happy new year everyone! It's starting off well. Got bit by Prosecco last night, am a little fuzzy headed and the cistern has decided to try and pull a great escape off of the wall. I'm actually looking forward to fixing it. ☺️

Still lots of unpacking to do but I'm going to have a bash at setting this up. It arrived just before the move and I've been itching to have a play. ☺️

Merry Christmas one and all, I've been so busy moving I've done eff all. I'm not going to go without a tree here's a bent bandsaw blade and COB LEDs! 😂

New house shenanigans! Went to plug the washing machine in which I assured Sam should be straightforward only to be greeted by a seized valve on the cold and the other is furred to oblivion. I changed the cold infil but it was tense as I've never done any plumbing before. ☺️

Move day is tomorrow so it's the final boxing up. See you in the new place Super Printendo! ☺️

Throwback post - The CrawlerBot is responsible for some of the most dramatically tense footage I have ever recorded. ☺️

The garage is nearly all moved and we spent the weekend cleaning the new place. Fun fact, you can steam out furniture marks with a towel, clothes iron and a brush. ☺️

Gave the new place a look over and set up dehumidifiers etc. The internet is all set up now too. It is... Faster... ☺️ There were some interesting bits left in the loft and the garage even came with a set of screwdrivers! 🥳🎉

I'd nearly finished the garage when the light decided to up and fail. Thought I'd make the best of it. 😂

RIP Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa. He was in so many amazing things. I named my Arduino programmer after Shang Tsung a couple of years ago (because it can lift and drop souls.) and the guy was a legend.

Power washed the tanks in preparation for the move. Which is a completely normal thing to do. 😂

My MiSTer Multisystem2 Analogue arrived (at an alternative address) and with the move and everything I should be able to get to play with it some time in March! 😂

I've got as far as I can with an analogue output on the Bluetooth cassette. There's too much variation in tape images/hardware and I can't get a one size fits all. I'm going to try a Schmitt trigger setup which should add some consistency. i'll assemble a board and see what it can do. 🙂

It looked bigger on the web site... 😂

If everything works out, I should be able to start work on the largest project I have ever done soon, it's as big as a house! (Because it's a house!) 🙂

It's been a while but I'm over the lurgy hump. Normal service will resume soon! ☺️

I'm going for a battle of the amps with a set of hot swap coils. I need one that has the right dynamic range for the decks at really low amplitudes and also has enough 'torque' to give a reliable zero crossing. I have a sliding scale of 'stuff' in my head and I'll spend some time feeling it out.🙂

The amp isn't agile enough to do a snappy rising and falling edge at low volume so I'm playing with dual wound coils. I have a 100/600 turn setup at the moment and a switch at the side to choose but it's rubbish so I'll try two separates. 🙂

I've been using a .tzx of StrangeLoop to test loading games from a Bluetooth cassette but it has always been weird. I have an original copy and the game loading speed is about 8-10 seconds faster than the .tzx. it's not the deck speed, that's been checked. I might try and rip my copy. 🤔

Got a cheapie Bluetooth Cassette Adapter to play with. I have an idea that ought to be interesting and I'll pop it open tonight and take a look. ☺️

Oh yeah, about that pause detection. The full Arduino is overkill but the attiny doesn't have hardware serial which is needed for snappy pause response from the Bluetooth module. Luckily there's a gpio pin on the module that pauses if you short it to ground. I'll need a PCB for this. 🤔

Hello!! I'm working on a tape loader device type thing and I want to give it something tricky to chew on. What are the trickiest loaders fo the C64 and Speccy? I'm currently loading StrangeLoop and Sanxion without issue and I'm after a challenge. Suggestions gratefully received! 🙂

I have a plan to put this loading business to bed once and for all. If I'm right, it should 'just' be a case of matching the coil to the Bluetooth amp to get a wide enough frequency range with no distortion. There is also HF noise on the output that triggers a double edge detection.

Popped round my local shop and found this highly amusing. 'Superman - The strongest Avenger.' 😂

A new Pi 500 was released today, the Pi500+. The keyboard is pretty nice and goes rather well with FatScreen #3. ☺️

I am speed. 😂

Found an old video of the time I was testing out resonance speakers. I'll use them for something one day but not this. 😂

I've been playing with an XY-SP5W this morning and it has instantly become my favourite amp module. It has all sorts of protections and built in filtering, it's switchable between class A/B and D and has enough power to drive a coil hard enough for a near square wave. It's tiny wee and 80p! 😍

Help!! My cassette advanture has hit a sticking point. No matter how clean the sighal is, the C64 deck will pick up pretty much any noise on the upswing of the wave. I'm looking for a simple circuit/method that'll turn a narrrow band sine into a wide band sine to add some noise. Does this exist?

I thought I'd give chatgpt a go to help with some formulas and stuff with the cassette build and it didn't go well. The last thing I saw was 'thinking for 58 seconds' and it seemed to have pooped its pants and gave up. 😂

I've been referencing the original cassette specs for a project and I'm really drawn to the blueprints. So much so that I've got a printed t-shirt on the way. ☺️

I've received a whole swathe of Delrin sheets in various thicknesses. As materials go, Delrin is in my top 3. ☺️

If you see this post a chef

Cassette testing has temporarily come to a halt thanks to a rather sickly C64. I'll take a look tonight. 🤔

Now the platform is rock solid, I've noticed something odd about tape images and loading through a deck. I've had some games that are really fussy but it turns out that the tape images will work fine on an emulator, but not in the 'real world'. A different capture of the same tap works fine. ☺️