Blog
What keeps us busy and awake at night?
Add a 512KB MagicDesk to a SX64
As you may know I'm busy with pimping a Commodore SX64 and trying to bring it into the 21th century. Since it is fairly old technology loading a program is painstakingly slow. Traditionally modded kernals or cartridges are used to install fastloaders. Modern...

Connect a Commodore with thermal printer
Since a couple of months I have fascination for vintage computers like Commodore or Nintendo. I'm in the process restoring and pimping a Commodore SX64 and realized I did't have a printer for it. After all it is an executive machine and how do I otherwise print my...

Restoring a Commodore SX64
Some time ago I finally got my hands on a vintage Commodore SX64. This is one of the first 'portable' computers ever made and weighted a whopping 10.5Kg!! I had fond memories of this machine and always wanted one since I was a kid. The SX64 is basicly of a regular...

Seasonal Greetings
The last minutes of 2019 are ticking away... Due to personal circumstances this post is a bit late and our apologies for this. It has been a moving year but never the less we have some nice stuff to bring you next year. We hope that the soldering irons keep you and...

BusPirate: the evolution
10 years ago my friend Ian Lesnet designed the BusPirate. A versatile Swiss army knife that helps you explore serial protocols like SPI, I2C and UART through a simple serial terminal. It was based on a 16 bit Microchip PIC micro controller which features a few clever...

Decap a Chinese chip at home: Clone or not?
It has been a while before I posted something useful. On my search for obscure chips, I came around another interesting Chinese chip (which I don't reveal yet). The chip was advertised as a cheap drop-in replacement for a American IC so I suspected it would be a...