Monday, August 17, 2015

Tis Good, Yar...

Sorry for the lack of updates lately, but as promised in my last post, here is a more in-depth reason to my neglecting the Captains Blog. 

It's been a bit of a whirlwind couple of weeks/months and lots of things have been going on that has meant I haven't had the time to concentrate on this blog.  It's not a shock to anyone who knows me that I've been suffering sever depression for quite some time, and although occasionally I have good days, the majority of them have been bad. 

However, things have been looking up recently and I genuinely feel as though we (the family) have been given a shedload of good fortune.  Of course, I haven't discovered a miracle cure for depression, and I do still have occasional lows but it's always nice when many things happen to work in your favour all at once.  It all started with a pay rise at work, then Michelle gaining her qualification to become an accredited nail manicurist a few months ago, leading to her starting her own business (www.at-your-fingertips.co.uk) which is proving to be quite a success, to finally being able to afford a larger, bigger and better house and move away from the hell hole that is/was Coronation Street in Evesham.

Anyway, with the school summer holiday now in its 5th week, I've got 3 more weeks to get a ton of jobs done in time for when term starts on the 7th September.  Fortunately this year has not been as stressful as last year - as some of you may remember, last year was one hell of a nightmare getting the two school networks merged in to one on time.  I definitely lost a few years of my life (and some hair) from that one!

Anyway, there you have it.  Yes, I know life has its ups and downs, and the pessimist in me does not expect this to last, but life is fantastic at the moment.  Long may it last.

Monday, August 10, 2015

Commodore Plus 4 Gets a Service

Hello again!  Sorry for the lack of posts recently.  I will explain why in another post shortly.

Anyway, the reason for posting today is because of a little project I've been doing to restore my Mum and Dad's faulty Commodore Plus 4 (which they have so kindly given to me - Another one to the collection!).

This one only had a faulty 8501 CPU which I was able to replace thanks to a working spare that I fortunately had in another damaged Plus 4. 


Today, I got some more heatsinks to put on the chips. Stuck down with some thermal adhesive.... That should mainly keep the MOS8360 TED and MOS8501 CPU cooler. It's amazing how hot these old chips get. It's been on for nearly two hours now and the temperature is definitely cooler than usual. Hopefully it will prolong the life of this 30 year old computer.

Oh that, and a nice clean with some IPA solvent, leaving the motherboard a tad bit cleaner than it was too.


Happy happy!