Homebrew Z80 Computer
Last Year The National Museum Of Computing hosted the innaugural RC2014 Assembly v1.0. The first all-day event showcasing the RC2014 and similar modern retro computer kits was absolutely fantastic and I heard nothing but good feedback from other attendees, exhibitors and TNMOC staff. So we decided to do it all over again this year for[...]
This September The National Museum Of Computing will be hosting the RC2014 Assembly. The first all-day event showcasing the RC2014 and similar modern retro computer kits. There will be demonstrations of various hardware and software, lightning talks as well as related kits available from various vendors. Meet and chat with other RC2014 users as well[...]
Like many small businesses, RC2014 started as a personal hobby project. When there was an interest in the PCBs it was easy enough to sell those out of a spare bedroom. As things started to take off in 2016 I set up a limited company, RFC2795 Ltd, to manage the financial side of things. Gradually[...]
The ZX81 Module I designed in 2016 has been an example of Schrödinger’s PCB. It has sat around for 8 years in both a state of working and not working. Only when it is observed will the actual state be determined. In this wrap up post we will finally plug it in and find out.[...]
The schematic for the ZX81 Module I designed in2016 had been designed in a very old version of KiCad, and hadn’t survived all the upgrades too well. This resulted in every component being replaced by a question mark in a box. Luckily I had some photos of the schematic from previous Retro Challenge posts, as[...]
If you remember from my initial post at the start of the month, the first thing that I needed to do in order to make progress on the ZX81 Module was to find a donor for the ULA. Some things can’t be rushed though, so this has only just happened. Luckily I have several candidates[...]
Following on from the failure to get the Portfolio talking directly to the RC2014, I decided to turn my attention to the Cambridge Z88. I already have a custom RS232 to TTL serial adapter for that, and the RC2014 is all set up ready for the Portfolio at 9600 baud, so this should be straightforward…[...]
If you read the intro post to this years challenge, I set myself a secondary goal of getting many of my old computers talking to my RC2014. So I decided to kick things off with the Atari Portfolio. This was going to be an easy intro in to things as this little DOS compatible palmtop[...]
When I failed to complete the Retro Challenge in 2016 I finished by saying that the dog ate my homework. That sounded like a reasonable enough excuse. This year any failure to complete is because The Riddler ate my schematic! One of the first things I wanted to do was familiarise myself with what 2016-me[...]
It has been a while since I entered Retro Challenge, but I think I remember what to do. It goes something along the lines of stating at the start of the month by saying that you are going to design a ZX81 module for the RC2014, and then at the end of the month report[...]