Nice to read some good news for a change. www.reddit.com/r/london/com...
07.03.2026 16:41
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Nice to read some good news for a change. www.reddit.com/r/london/com...
Yes, and they're the best! Other suppliers are available, but this site uses the same reference photo as your post. oldestsweetshop.co.uk/products/jel...
Spogs!
It's in You->History - www.youtube.com/feed/history - and then you can switch it off ("Pause") using the controls on the right. When disabled it also breaks the Home page (which just displays an error telling you to switch it back on) but the subscription page still works.
If you have your watch history disabled/cleared then that box doesn't appear. Probably not an option if you rely on your watch history, but I can't say I miss it...
It's one of the modern replacements by the Half-Baked Maker on Tindie. I do miss the original yellow tint, but the old LCDs were getting tricky to read. bsky.app/profile/benr...
Biorhythm program is a modification of one supplied with the CE-125, with changes made for narrower print width and lack of string operations on the PC-1211. Variables A$~Z$ overlap array variables A$(1)~A$(26), see lines 290 and sub 900. benryves.com/bin/sharp-pc...
When swapping multimeter leads back and forth the continuity tester would briefly beep, like it would with a capacitor. The bad diode had a weirdly high capacitance, and I think the test pulse on RMT CK was too brief to charge it and change the output of the diode OR gate. New diode fixed it!
The CPU briefly pulses RMT CK high via diode at S11 then checks level of K6. If switch is closed then S11 should also go high, but it was stuck low. I suspected a faulty diode after the NOT gate was holding the line low, so removed it and then the switch worked. The diode tested OK out-of-circuit...
Part of the CE-122's circuit diagram, with two diodes relating to the remote control switching highlighted.
The manual "remote" switch didn't do anything, either. The remote relay could be switched on and off by the computer, so the CPU was working, but a bad diode (low, right) was preventing the CPU from testing the state of the remote switch (which shorts RMT CK and RMT SW).
Photo of a faint printout from the printer. At first there are rows of asterisks that don't reach the right hand side of the paper. Further down are rows of text that do reach the right side, indicating an intermittent fault.
Photo of the flex cable that connects the dot matrix printer to the main PCB.
Microscope photo of where the flex cable had become disconnected from the PCB due to a poor solder joint.
After a thorough clean and gentle freeing of the printer mechanism I seemed to be missing the last four characters on each row. There are four solenoids and the one for that section wasn't firing. I traced it to a bad connection, fortunately not a bad flex cable but a failed solder joint.
There's just something about the sound of dot matrix printers...
Photo of a Sharp PC-1211 pocket computer in its CE-122 printer and cassette interface. A data cassette recorder is also connected, and the printer is showing a biorhythm plot.
Picked up an untested CE-122 printer and cassette interface for "spares and repairs". Quite grubby and had the usual leaky Ni-CD problems but after a bit of TLC it's working rather nicely.
Photo of eight stamps in a frame with the caption "Video Games" underneath. The stamps show scenes from selected British video games: Elite, Worms, Sensible Soccer, Lemmings, Wipeout, Micro Machines, Dizzy and Populous.
It's been a fair few years since I updated my stamp collection but I couldn't pass on this set I spotted in the window of a charity shop.
Photo of a table in a cafรฉ with two fried breakfasts on it and a lady smiling at them.
Birthday fry-up with @gigglefox1.bsky.social
Lotus III puts up a good fight: www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEwT...
I thought I was lucky when I found a case that had three drive bays. Turns out only one of them was deep enough to take an optical drive, the other two would bump into the motherboard and leave a couple of cms sticking out the front. I ended up cutting the corner off my DVD burner to get it to fit.
Screenshot of an example sentence from Duolingo, stating ๅใใกใฎๅบๅฐใฏใๅ จใฆ็งใใกใใใใ ใใใ translated as "We have taken over all of your bases".
Someone at Duolingo did. Aside from the dodgy translation Zero Wing has superb music (at least on the Mega Drive).
I replaced my second monitor with this bucket back in July and the immediate feedback on just how heavily it's raining outside beats any weather gadget I would have shown there.
Photo of a video game disc where the title and the logo of the game console it is for have been scribbled over in black permanent marker.
Killing time in town yesterday I wandered into the game shop and picked up a game I'd not played before for a fiver. For some reason the previous owner really didn't want you to know the title of the game or system it was for, though...
Photo of 10 assembled "De-Dead Zone" modification circuit boards.
Photo of box of mods on a table next to a copy of Daytona USA 2001 for the Dreamcast and the Dreamcast's racing wheel.
All assembled and programmed. Now to test and package each one, which involves cracking out and cranking up Daytona USA 2001.
Photo of work bench set up with a tea towel surrounded by unpopulated PCBs, electronic components and a soldering iron.
Boards from JLCPCB, components from Bitsbox, soldering iron from... Aldi. It'll do, there are Dreamcast racing wheel dead-zones to defeat! Normally make these in batches of five, but I've already got eight requests in.
Photo of four Sharp CE-125 printer and microcassette recorders, three of which have pocket computers installed (PC-1245, PC-1251, PC-1248).
Last tape loading issue resolved on one of these so that's now four (mostly-)working Sharp CE-125s, shown here with a range of compatible pocket computers. The only outstanding issue is two dead elements in one of the print heads, but that's not exactly something I can repair. Love this form factor!
You can see the opposite effect if you overload an LED - as it heats up the colour will shift, so a green LED will turn yellow and then red. If it goes black you've gone too far, though...
As far as I'm aware Ni-CD is rather more tolerant of overcharging than Ni-MH, and as the device never stops charging I don't feel too happy using Ni-MH in it. As I'd need to buy batteries anyway I figure replacing like-for-like is easiest option.
Oddly when I last closed it up it only printed every other line. It now seems to work fine. I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth, but a device that fixes itself in storage is much more troubling than one that develops a fault on its own...
Photo of a Sharp CE-125 microcassette recorder and printer that is opened to show the internals. Tools are spread out around it.
2026 is going to be a year of new and exciting projects, which is why I'm kicking things off by repairing yet another CE-125. In my defence I did buy the replacement Ni-CD cells in October last year and they only turned up yesterday.
Could have been worse, considering Dell's track record: www.theregister.com/2008/06/25/d...
It uses the same thermal rolls you'd use in a fax machine, so it's reasonably easy to find paper for. It's not a particularly unusual size or format, fortunately!
It's that time again. Merry Christmas! www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugv1...
