Not really been able to do much this week but got the new keyboard for my old laptop through from ebay so spent a few minutes swapping the old one out and getting the machine running.

Firstly removed the old keyboard, its luckily only held in with three spring loaded clips at the top so had it removed in a few seconds.

The new keyboard.

Attaching keyboard ribbon cable.

Completed machine.

Testing the keys all work in Notepad.

Should be getting the Acorn machines wired up tomorrow and Tuesday ready for RONWUG (Risc OS North West User Group) on Wednesday where we are trying out some of the old and new games for the Acorn platform.

Finally got some time to actually do something for my RC.

Tried to get my USB modem to work with my Windows 8 machine but the drivers are pretty much useless and it isn't detected automatically.
Finally decided to break out my old XP laptop, problem is that the keyboard doesn't work so found a USB one and got it up and running.

While I was at it found a replacement one on ebay so may get round to sorting it out before the end of the month.

Connected up the modem to the C-Tel analogue PABX that I bought a while ago for the purpose of providing old school dialing between machines and possibly the internet.

To test the PABX was working and everything should be ok before I start on the older machines I grabbed my old Acorn Pocket Book 2 and Psion 3 Fax Modem and wired them in.

Using the comms software on the Pocket Book and a copy of Putty on the PC I tried dialing the PC.

At this point the Psion modem started with the usual warbling but the PC wasn't happy at all.
I tried dialing the other way round, the USB modem was not having any of it.

I then remembered the laptop had a built in modem and after a few minutes finding the driver online all was good.

Found my Psion 8mb SSD with the internet suite installed and tried dialing the PC using the built in dial in settings, the PC responded but the error in the log indicates that the Psion didn't authenticate correctly.

So at least I have the two machines dialing each other, next step is to setup some kind of dialup server or BBS, have looked at Synchronet and may have a play with that before trying one of the other machines.

Spent the evening configuring this blog.

As expected didn't get home till fairly late so I can see the days slipping away already :)

A little late to the table but this time I'm trying to do something for the Retro Challenge.

I had planned to do something a bit more interesting but due to other commitments I've had to tone down my intentions.

So I intend to try to do some of the following...

1) Setup my Acorn collection to dial up via my PBX and connect to the internet (this may include my reasonably rare Acorn communicator).

2) Wire up some serial cables and setup several machines for the Risc OS North West meeting so we can play retro games via serial linkup.

3) Configure a machine (probably and A5000) to use as an Econet to Ethernet (and possibly dialup) gateway and file server.

4) Archive (disk image and photograph) some of the large amount of Acorn documentation, disks and other stuff that I have.

5) Work on some other secret Acorn related projects (these were my original ideas for the RC so may be kept for next year).

The intention is to at least manage to setup the dialup and configure several machines for RONWUG, the other tasks are currently ongoing so will be time fillers if I manage to complete the first items.