+2e

Here's inside and outside views of my +2B now that I've fitted the ROMs I burned all by myself. I was going to send off to Garry Lancaster for a pair of pre-burned ROMs but I decided that I should be brave and burn my own so I bought a pair of used 27C256 EPROMs from Ebay and a Willem 5.0e programmer from Hong Kong. To my complete surprise everything worked first time, barring a minor issue with the programmer software and once I'd gently prised out the original ROMs and wedged the newly burnt EPROMs into place I was the proud owner of a +2e.

Now all I have to do is sort out an IDE interface, I decided that I should go with the Simple 8bit Interface but if I change my mind or need to update then I have my own programmer and don't need to send my roms off to be re-burnt again. I'd just like to say a big thanks to Garry, who's hard work has provided the basis of what is proving to be a great fun project for me.

ESXDOS One Sheet Manual v0.2

I was having trouble remembering all the commands for ESXDOS, what with one thing and another going on, so I decided I'd paste all of the relevant info into a printable sheet to keep next to my Speccy. As I've got to use ESXDOS more and more, the need to fall back on FATware has decreased steadily, to the point now where I only use it for loading games via the NMI menu

I decided I would share my 'Idiot Sheet' to help other DivIDE/ESXDOS users along as they get to grips with the system and after collecting some suggestions from Velesoft have produced an updated and revised version. I can't wait for the next update of this exciting new way to use my humble Speccy and look forward to any feedback and suggestions for ways to improve this brief guide.

The ESXDOS One Sheet Manual is available here.

Do you like spheres?

(c)2009 TmK

For some reason, I find this just as amusing as I find it impressive.

DivIDE and rule...

Got my DivIDE interface, complete with 1Gb CF card from the Netherlands (thanks Ben) and almost straight away (after playing Jet Set Willy, of course) decided that I wanted the more advanced functions and read/write capability of ESXDOS, rather than the standard FATWare.

Having spent a couple of hours fiddling around with it and FATWare with the help of Velesoft's Firmware Selector menu which should help me along 'till ESXDOS matures and gains more features.

Some of the things I'd like to see implemented in ESXDOS would be some better documentation, some kind of AUTOEXEC feature and, of course LFN support.

Nope, I was doing it right...

Seems that I was doing it right all along, and that my mini-monitor just doesn't like my +2B. Someone gave me an old 20" Samsung CRT TV and the modded composite output on that is crisp with just a little ghosting but flicker free.

This is what happens when you assume things I suppose...

DSCN5864, a photo by Rick Dickinson on Flickr.

You're doing it wrong...

Looks like I went about my +2a composite mod all the wrong way - a bit of reading later and I realised that the composite signal has to come directly from the TEA2000.

I soldered a length of solid core wire to the outgoing side of D31, thinking that the diode would still afford the TEA2000 some protection with the other end going to the socket inside the modulator case. At first I tried leaving the 100uf capacitor soldered in place from my earlier exploits, this gave me a distorted but recognisable signal for the first time, the image is still 'jumpy' and there is a fair bit of ghosting in evidence, perhaps this is because I chose not to bypass/remove D31 but I'll mess about with that later.

Found my 29 year old copy of Manic Miner, dropped into 48k mode and typed the immortal 'LOAD ""' followed by Enter and pressed play...