ABI Chipmaster Pro – FAIL!

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Jan 022015
 

Here is a sad fact and its one I picked up on quite a while ago when I compared the Chipmaster Pro to my Boardmaster 4000.
Both of these devices test the Z80 CPU out of circuit yet the Chipmaster Pro seldom gives a PASS result where as the Boardmaster always gave me a true PASS or FAIL result.
I bring this up now as Andrew96 reminded me of this issue and has even made a short video of it here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCA_KPoa18I&feature=youtu.be

As he states, ABI refuse to fix this problem and that is just unacceptable.
Be warned before you shell out a good amount of cash on one of these devices. You can’t even add your own test without spending another load of cash on the extra software.

Im glad I never paid much for mine.

 Posted by at 12:33 pm

705 entries!

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Dec 242014
 

Today we passed a milestone. Over 700 entires are now in the archive.
There are most likely more dumps than entries as some unknown ones are in ZIP files as a set.

Thank you everyone who has contributed over the past 3.5 years that this project has been running.
Please keep submitting them if you have them.

 Posted by at 8:19 pm

Atari Jaguar repair log

 General  2 Responses »
Dec 142014
 

Got a Jaguar console for cheap as I originally wanted the cartridge slot but like so many of my idea’s like that I ended up repairing it and not wanting to harvest parts from it.

This was sold as not powering up. Its important to know from the start that the Jaguar will not power on without a cartridge inserted but in this case it made no difference.
Opening it up and removing the metal shield allowed me to see the problem straight away and it is apparently a relatively common fault.
IMAG1087
IMAG1091

The voltage regulator IC has blown.
I ordered a new one and fitted it and now it at least powers up.

I haven’t really been able to test it yet as I don’t have a Jaguar AV cable. Also this version of Jaguar didn’t have an RF modulator fitted as it was the French ‘Peritel’ version.
Ill tap the signals some day and properly test this thing out so if it doesn’t work then it looks like ill have my cartridge slot after all.

BINman update

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Dec 072014
 

As I get more experienced and learn new things in programming I like to go back and update my programs to test things out.
After many unreleased version updates and the end of 2014 approaching I’ve finally got to a point where I think an update is due.

bm3.3.2
Here is version 3.3.2 if BINman.
For those that aren’t familiar with it, I originally wrote this program in 2012 to allow me to quickly byteswap and interleave ROM files. Since then I’ve been adding to it as I needed the extra functionality.
There isn’t a great deal new here but the code has been overhauled quite a lot and is hopefully bug free.
There is also a basic hex viewer now too. It is basic but ive wanted to include one for a while now and here it is.

I hope other find this as useful as I do.
DOWNLOAD HERE
This requires the latest .NET to run (v4.5)

 Posted by at 6:59 pm
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