• Evil genius control desk


    So I’ve been asked to build, what’s being called, “the evil genius control desk”. In reality it’s a studio lighting and audio control solution that has some unique features.  The studio space in question is divided into several areas and split over two levels. It needs multi-channel lighting and audio control for each area, and…


  • An evil genius control desk – work begins


    For the last 18 months, work has been crazy. Things calmed down around Christmas 2020 and I was hoping to get back into hobby mode but the universe had other ideas. Christmas eve the river burst it’s banks and flooded the house and workshop. I’ve been dealing with the fallout from that ever since.  Thank…


  • Acorn System 1 Speed Test


    Lots going on with this project right now, but I thought I’d do just a very quick update.Another batch of PCBs arrived a couple of days ago and I’m slowly working my way through assembling them. The one thing I’m pleased with is that by replacing the relatively slow (in terms of access speed) EPROM…


  • Acorn System 1 Memory Board and Dataman programmer update


    Last week I’d had enough of that Dataman programmer. It would sometimes work but more often that not Windows would fail to recognise the programmer. I’d tried it on Windows XP and three different Windows 10 machines (one was a brand new out the box machine) and it was always the same. So I sent…


  • Acorn System 1 progress and Dataman programmer


    I’m sort or regretting buying this Dataman programmer. I need to spend a lot more time trying to figure out exactly what’s going on with it, but assuming my unit doesn’t have some weird intermittent fault, then the quality of the software; specifically the USB driver sucks. I’ve tried this programmer now in three different machines;…


  • Dataman EPROM programmer and fake EEPROMS


    One of my ongoing projects is building a replica Acorn System 1 computer and this has required programming EPROMS. Programming EPROMS in itself is fast, but erasing them ready for re-use is time consuming. So for this project I decided to use EEPROMS. Ebay had numerous Chinese sellers listing all types of devices from 2K…