Picked up an untested CE-122 printer and cassette interface for "spares and repairs". Quite grubby and had the usual leaky Ni-CD problems but after a bit of TLC it's working rather nicely.

It's been a fair few years since I updated my stamp collection but I couldn't pass on this set I spotted in the window of a charity shop.

Birthday fry-up with @gigglefox1.bsky.social

I replaced my second monitor with this bucket back in July and the immediate feedback on just how heavily it's raining outside beats any weather gadget I would have shown there.

Killing time in town yesterday I wandered into the game shop and picked up a game I'd not played before for a fiver. For some reason the previous owner really didn't want you to know the title of the game or system it was for, though...

Boards from JLCPCB, components from Bitsbox, soldering iron from... Aldi. It'll do, there are Dreamcast racing wheel dead-zones to defeat! Normally make these in batches of five, but I've already got eight requests in.

Last tape loading issue resolved on one of these so that's now four (mostly-)working Sharp CE-125s, shown here with a range of compatible pocket computers. The only outstanding issue is two dead elements in one of the print heads, but that's not exactly something I can repair. Love this form factor!

2026 is going to be a year of new and exciting projects, which is why I'm kicking things off by repairing yet another CE-125. In my defence I did buy the replacement Ni-CD cells in October last year and they only turned up yesterday.

It's that time again. Merry Christmas! www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugv1...

Putting together a PSION Organiser II pak reader/writer seemed like a good project for a wet and windy Sunday afternoon, following Martin's plans on hackaday.io/project/1766... A cheap boost converters seems to provide a suitable 21Vpp instead of 2x 9V PP3s (the datapak contains an EPROM).

When I am king, it shall be unlawful to sell RS-232 adaptors without including a full wiring diagram so you can be certain as to whether it does what you want rather than guessing based on the gender of the connectors.

Two sets of lights front and back (flashing and static), high-vis jacket with reflective stripes, reflective sidewalls on the tyres, reflective stripes on trunk bag. Motorist still fails to see me and drives into me. "I looked, but didn't see you, there must be something deficient in your lighting".

Superb gig from @espritdair.com last night, really good to hear the new album and some older favourites nice and loud.

I bid on a Psion Organiser II on eBay earlier this week. I paid about the going rate, as something about the ending time called out to me, and rather more than I was expecting just turned up...

What perfect album came out the year you turned 16? I need a saga. What's the saga? You can't even hear it...

I picked up a couple of Sharp ZQ-770 organisers this week. Both had succumbed to very severe battery leaks (hence the discoloured paintwork) but I was able to get both powering up after a thorough clean. Both have the usual LCD failure issue, this one being the worst.

Really enjoying the new album Aeons from @espritdair.com and very much looking forwards to seeing them live soon! Thank you, Kai. :)

I couldn't find any replacement ink rollers for this printing calculator but a few drops of endorsing ink seems to have got the old roller working again and the violet seems to be a good match. Now I just need to find a source of 37mm-wide plain paper rolls, else I'll have to get the scissors out!

Richard Russell's "Z88 BASIC Patch" adds graphics support to BBC BASIC. It can also print out the graphics area, but this requires an Epson-compatible printer which the Serial 8056 isn't. I've developed a patch for a patch, in other words. benryves.com/bin/z88/8056...

Of all the components I'd expect to go bad, a quartz resonator is pretty far down the list. I bought this very cute printing calculator as faulty, expecting leaking Ni-Cd cells inside. A previous owner had removed them (hooray!) but the seller couldn't get the calculator to run on external power.

I was told to avoid smoking the RIFA, so not sure if I should pre-emptively remove these - at least they're on a separate board and have a plastic shield over them to contain any explosions!

I've been hearing an unnerving creaking when putting force into the pedals for the past 2-3 weeks. I guess that would explain it! Only had solid axles before where a snapped axle failure is rather more obvious and catastrophic, the quick release skewer has put up a good fight...

Another weekend, another CE-125 on the workbench... I don't intentionally buy them, but it seems most of the time you buy another Sharp pocket computer or accessory it comes attached to a CE-125 full of leaking Ni-CD batteries and gooey disintegrating belts.

I should have bought a decent solder sucker years ago. I suspected a bad RAM(1) in this PC-1211 and had replacements (and built a RAM tester) but couldn't get the old chip out with my regular solder sucker. The Engineer SS-03 made it an absolute doddle to remove, and another PC-1211 lives again.

I did pick a couple of new Sharp devices in the month of #sharptember - a programmable scientific calculator, the surprisingly small EL-512, and a "faulty" PC-1251 for parts to replace the front cover on the one I damaged when replacing the LCD. Amazingly, the original LCD on the 1251 fully works!

Spent a lovely few days on the Isle of Wight last week.

A 1983-vintage Ni-CD battery pack strikes again!

I had been putting a little preferred resistor value program on the PC-1211. DEF S sets the series (e.g. E12), DEF L prints a list of values in the series, DEF F finds the closest match (here I asked for 500Ω resistor in the E12 series). benryves.com/bin/sharp-pc...

Two Sharp PC-1211 pocket computers that were increasingly hard to read due to failing LCDs back in service after installing modern LCD replacements. The new ones are green instead of that classic yellow but at least they're not going black around the edges.

I feel the English translation they've gone for here lacks a certain je ne sais quoi.

Wondering if it's worth the hassle of keeping old (and unvisited) forums online these days. I'd been doing it for archival reasons but over the past few months the amount of bot scraping has gone through the roof and brings the DB server to its knees (my guess is training data for AI LLM)? PITA!

Tonight I'm attending a cat's tenth birthday party. An ABBA tribute band are putting on a great performance in his honour. Happy birthday, Cosimo!

I much prefer a paper manual for reference but didn't have one for my PC-1248. Here's my first attempt at some DIY book-binding using stuff around the home, think it turned out OK and it certainly beats scrolling around the PDF!

I think it's fair to say Guitar Wolf have been the most fun band I've gone to see live - highly recommended if they're playing near you. So so sweaty... but all very worth it!

Name a film flop that you wish had done better at the box office. #filmsky

The Secret Life of the Home was one of my favourite parts of the Science Museum so it was sad to see it close last year. Here's a nice guided tour from Tim Hunkin recorded just before its closure: www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqpv...

I'd like to order some small LCD panels from a US supplier who refuses to post to the UK. Has anyone had any good experience with cheap parcel forwarding services from the US to the UK they could recommend? As the panels are $20 each I don't really want to end up paying more than that in postage!

It's not entirely perfect, but I've found a way to access the whole screen on an IQ-8000 when using the 16-column-only IQ-707 BASIC card. Only requires a couple of POKEs, but figuring those out was a bit of a faff. www.benryves.com/journal/3763...

I guess that silver conductive "glue"/paint for PCB repair has a shelf life. I had a sealed new syringe of it in the fridge (I bought a three pack in 2023 and kept them all in there), it seemed to flow OK and I painted on a replacement pad. A couple of days drying later it still measures >2MΩ.

The postie just brought me my £20 job lot of assorted "vintage calculators" from eBay. There were two items in this listing that made me think it was worth it, which do you think they were? Everything's a bit grubby and will need a good clean!

Lovely ride up to Richmond to watch the sunset (and enjoy a pint) last night.

I used to think that ugly silver paint that shows all the scratches on early/mid-2000s electronics was my least favourite enclosure style choice, but I'm learning to dislike disintegrating rubberised coatings even more. At least it prints, and can solve the P↔NP problem by pressing Shift+Enter.

This is great flux, but I usually end up losing half the bottle due to how prone they are to tipping over. I think I've figured out why the seller's best-selling option is the three-pack...

One day I'll realise it's a bad idea to pick up old electronics that have soldered-in Ni-Cad battery packs. Or maybe I just like the challenge. Nice and crusty in here, either way!

Trying to figure out why my Osaris won't read CF cards formatted by Windows, but will when formatted by my digital camera. I think it's the partition ID that's the issue that can be fixed in DISKPART with SET ID=06 (Windows uses 0E by default). Can even get my 1GB card to show up now!

youtu.be/kimRqP-aHqM One way to get people to remember your birthday is to open an album with your date of birth. Happy birthday, Josh Homme!

Got a little soggy tucking into our packed lunches but the sun's out now so very nice to be out for a walk on a bank holiday.

Oh that looks lovely 👏 Cycling along the Wandle Trail, you might have come across the Earlsfield Gap, where you have to leave the riverside and join busy motor traffic. If you’d like to see this fixed, please sign the petition set up by the Wandle Valley Forum www.change.org/p/fix-the-mi...

What a lovely day for a bike ride! Packed some sarnies and took the back roads up to the Strand with the Croydon Social Cycling group then cycled back home along part of the Wandle Trail. Took the folding bike because, well, why not?

Turns out there is a cure for the summertime blues, and that's booking tickets to see Guitar Wolf when they visit London in a couple of months... www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPS6...