Average bits 10.2

May I present some of my non-human babies. Continued thanks go to my employers - you know who you are - for allowing the museum to exist on my desk.

The C128 rear-left has a proto-board built SD2IEC card installed inside the tape drive. I shaped the PCB like a cassette. Press eject and you can insert an SD card into the presented slot. Cheesy but fun :)

The Apple //e front left is my latest baby. I'm awaiting a prototype board from the states so I can build an IDE card. They're ridiculously simple to build, it seems.

The centre column contains a QL, an STe, a Spectrum 128 and a BBC Master 128 with MMBeeb interface. They're nice, but not my favourites. Especially as the Sinclair machines require attention due to defective membranes. A pathology known around these parts as the curse of Clive.

No, the favourite machine honour belongs to the Atari 800. This is another machine with a SD card interface secreted away in a hacked tape drive. I dreamed.. no.. seriously fantasised about this machine when I was pecking away at my ZX81. (Not pictured - it's on the bench at the moment having an SD card and keyboard upgrade, natch)

One thing tends to be common amongst these machines and that's the addition of SD card interfaces.. My hat goes off to the engineers linked in this post. MMBeeb was my first exposure to the practice, which gave me enough of a kick-start to design my own interface for the zx81. Monster maze loads in 6 seconds. Bliss!

I guess it remains to be said - I AM 8-BIT

And proud :)