Repair and restoration of retro consoles, 8 bit computers. In this blog I hope to show you how to repair, retrore and modify old consoles and handhelds, from manufacturers such as Atari Amstrad Acorn Sinclair Commodore Dragon Sony MSX BBC Playstation Sega Microsoft xbox Spectrum ZX81 Vic 20 VIC20 C64 Amiga Binatone Grandstand.
Apologies for the delay with this entry; varied reasons include school holidays, two birthdays and some minor repairs of some retro console birthday gifts! Please feel free to use my PCB and 3D printed housing designs found on my Github and Thingiverse should you wish to make your own joystick adapter. Here is the TI994a working with the FlashRom99 and my Joystick Adapter circuit. Here are all the components required for this mod. The gerber files for my PCB design can be found on my Github. https://github.com/Alleged-Geek/TI99-4a-Joystick-Adapter/ And you are looking for the zip file named below if you are going to send the gerber file off to be manufactured. ti99-4a-adapter_2022-07-27.zip My github also contains stl files for printing the housing. And here is my version of the schematic diagram. You will need 10 X IN4148 signal diodes which can be found on eBay. 1 X DB9 D-SUB 9 Pin Female connector, again found on eBay. 2 X DB9 D-SUB 9 Pin Male connector al...
To start things off, here is a recent restoration of a Binatone TV Master MK6
The 1977 Binatone TV Master MK.6
Picture taken from https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/
I
am going to kick off this site with one of my earliest consoles… a 1977
Binatone TV Master MK 6. I bought this as part of a job lot of 3 pong
consoles being sold as ‘untested’ doesn’t that ring alarm bells in your
head lol
I think that I only paid about £6 for all three systems and it was actually more expensive to ship them.
For
this entry I am going to concentrate on the TV Master MK 6. It arrived
with no controllers, no power supply and missing switches but I love a
good challenge!
The
first thing I always do with any old console is to check the
electrolytic capacitors; paying particular attention to any signs of
bulging or leakages. I didn’t take a photograph of what I found inside,
but the following picture shows you the mess that a leaking capacitor
can leave.
What
a mess it had left! This is the circuit board even after cleaning it
with a fibre pen and Isopropyl alcohol. I replaced the ceramic capacitor
as well… just in case!
All
the other capacitors appeared to be ok so I decided to power the system
up. I fitted a 3.5mm stereo jack plug to the end of a modern switched
mode supply ensuring that the positive went to the tip of the plug.
I
plugged in the system with no joy at all, after a bit of fault finding I
found that the two transistors circled needed replacing.
Again
I wish that I had taken photos of the orientation of the original
transistors but after looking at the AY-3-8500 datasheet/schematic
diagram I found that they were probably NPN transistors so I replaced
them with 2N2222’s.
The console had composite phono sockets fitted so I plugged the system in again and success! I had a decent picture.
The composite mod looks like a very basic version of the one found on this site
In fact I think the previous owner tried this circuit taken from the same site.
Now
that I had a picture, I needed to design a pair of controllers, I had a
look at the original controllers and used Solidworks to design the
housing for my custom built ones
Here is a picture of the original set up.
The electronics was really simple, basically just a 1MΩ Linear Potentiometer, connected straight through to a 3.5mm jack plug.
I came up with this design.
I 3D printed the model using my Prusa I3 Mk2.5 printer using orange PLA+ filament then wired it up as shown in the picture.
I then printed a label and screwed it all together, I am quite pleased with the result.
All
that I needed to do now was to design the switch levers and cover, so
again using Solidworks, and copying one of the two levers left on the
console when I got it, I came up with these designs.
here is a picture of the original lever alongside my design.
Again I was quite pleased with the result.
After screwing the system together again, I eagerly switched it on, hoping to enjoy some 1970’s retro Pong action…
But…
I was denied!
The game didn’t want to serve the ball!
Back inside the console I went for some more fault finding
It took a while but I found an unexpected fractured trace from Pin 8 (manual serve) to the serve switch.
Here is a picture of the repair I did.
Circled is where I found the break
After that I tidied up the wiring ad put the console back together again.
And here is the Binatone TV Master MK. 6 in all it’s restored glory!
All that needed to be done now was to play it!
I
had a whole lot of fun repairing and restoring this system, if any of
my ramblings have been of any use or if you would like more information
then please feel free to get in touch
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