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Re: Reliability and clongevity?

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Yes, but from the point of view of a purist or a museum specimen, 
alterations are not really on, so the ram board, different membrane and 
poking holes etc in the case are a non no, I guess you would need 2, one 
that is working and one that is original.

One thing I did notices was that all the interface 1's I had no longer 
worked. the drives spin and nothing happens.
 Not sure if I have any left now.

As for the gate arrays on the Amstrad, I had to get somebody to change a 
couple of those and it was quite a pain.



Brian

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This newsgroup posting comes to you directly from...
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briang1@blueyonder.co.uk
Blind user, so no pictures please!
"Guesser" <alistair@zxnet.co.uk> wrote in message 
news:nijs4n$hvl$1@dont-email.me...
> Hi Brian,
> There's quite a large cottage industry which has grown up around keeping 
> speccies going these days. Until recently the only thing that couldn't be 
> replaced was the ULA, but there's now a complete drop in replacement based 
> on a modern CPLD available for the 16K/48K. A 128/+2 ULA has been 
> completed and should be available shortly. I don't believe there's any 
> chance of anything similar for the Amstrad gate array unfortunately unless 
> the economies of chip-on-board change just because of the physical 
> constraints.
> There have been plug in RAM module boards available for some time which 
> replace the fragile and obsolete DRAM chips with 5 volt SRAM.
>
> As for UHF tuners disappearing on TVs a lot of people modify their speccy 
> for a composite output anyway or use RGB cables on the 128k machines as 
> the picture is so much better. Beyond analogue inputs disappearing 
> completely there are also people using analogue video to HDMI converters 
> with success, both composite and analogue RGB.
>
> People displaying a 4:3 signal on a widescreen telly is a particular bug 
> bear of mine. TVs are perfectly capable of using the correct aspect ratio 
> and it just means setting it up properly. In the case of using the SCART 
> input it can be set automatically by a suitably wired cable.
>
>
>
> On 31/05/2016 09:28, Brian Gaff wrote:
>>  I was just wondering what people are finding with real Speccies as per 
>> the
>> degeneration of chips and other specific components. are there any 
>> problems
>> which will, in the end mean no real machines will still be working.
>> Obviously there is the keyboard membranes which are now mostly made from
>> other materials than the originals were, but I was thinking about ulas,
>> modulators and components made obsolete by time?
>>  I suppose in the end tvs with analogue tuners will be gone, and then we
>> have issues with either modifying to use other inputs or hacking the 
>> output
>> in some way.
>>
>> Also how do modern tvs cope with the new wide screen systems?
>>
>>
>> Brian
>>
> 

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Reliability and clongevity? "Brian Gaff" <briang1@blueyonder.co.uk> - 2016-05-31 09:28 +0100
  Re: Reliability and clongevity? Guesser <alistair@zxnet.co.uk> - 2016-05-31 12:21 +0100
    Re: Reliability and clongevity? "Brian Gaff" <briang1@blueyonder.co.uk> - 2016-06-01 09:42 +0100
    Re: Reliability and clongevity? Duncan Snowden <duncan_s@talktalk.net> - 2016-06-01 16:51 +0100
      Re: Reliability and clongevity? Guesser <alistair@zxnet.co.uk> - 2016-06-01 17:14 +0100
      Re: Reliability and clongevity? "Chris" <chris.usenet@mail-filter.com> - 2016-06-02 00:59 +0100
  Re: Reliability and clongevity? Volker Bartheld <news2016@bartheld.net> - 2016-06-01 07:58 +0200
    Re: Reliability and clongevity? "Brian Gaff" <briang1@blueyonder.co.uk> - 2016-06-02 19:43 +0100
  Re: Reliability and clongevity? lee.jtcltd@gmail.com - 2016-08-02 07:38 -0700

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