MK14 Adventure at Crash Live Walsall 2022.

[Timbucus]

I thought I was being clever sneaking my Version VI into the show as I was running the Adventure Trail stand playing what I think is probably the earliest Adventure type game you can play on a Sinclair machine; MAZE from Computing Today May 1979 (page 39) and Instructions in the Complement and Add magazine (as it was written by Geoff Phillips who ran the user group) - lots of people were intrigued and managed to find the bug that crashes it or get eaten by the Lion...



But then I spotted that the RCM from Leicester https://retrocomputermuseum.co.uk/ had brought one along I don't think we have seen elsewhere. There were a lot of ZX81 and some ZX80 there obviously as well - I also took my Sinclair Programmable but, the battery went dead on me before I could run Moon Landing as a precursor turn based game,



Quite a few people stopped and talked to me including some with replicas in various stages of construction so I mentioned our little corner of SC/MP heaven... maybe a few new arrivals coming.

Edit - blast the speeling error in the thread title - sorry...

[ortek_service]

Unfortunately this is the first I'd heard of this event (I haven't got round to reading my RetroGamer subscription magazines for a while, if it was mentioned in there), otherwise I might well have gone to it as I did go to a (Aldridge) Radio Rally in that area years ago before it ceased.

So thanks for posting some pictures / details of what was there.

[_Ujibay]

Hi Timbucus,
I was one of the people who had a short chat with you on Saturday.
I dug my MK14 out today and tried to get it working, found a 74LS04 doing odd stuff (1V logic log, 4V logic high with 5V and 0V reading correctly on the chip legs, so binned off the "age appropriate" chip in it and stuck a new..ish one in.

Still not playing, so Ill investigate further another day.

Anyhow, nice to meet you and I loved your stand.

[SiriusHardware]

Hi _Ujibay - welcome to the forum.

If you can't make any headway with your machine start a new 'MK14 not working' thread and we'll try to help you to get it going. There are quite a few owners of MK14 originals or replicas (or both) here, so we can make voltage measurements and scope measurements from our working machines for you to compare with.

[SiriusHardware]

I spotted that the RCM from Leicester ... had brought one along I don't think we have seen elsewhere.

No, that's interesting. I wonder if the replacement keypad on that machine was a third party product or just a well made one-off?

The ones with non-original keypads are in some ways more interesting (albeit less valuable) than those which do still have them, as there were almost no two afterbuild keypads which were alike, they are all highly individual.

I did spot a PCB for an external keypad during my recent trawl through Computing Today issues from 1980, so maybe there will be one or two survivors around with identical Computing Today keypads.

[_Ujibay]

Originally Posted by SiriusHardware

If you can't make any headway with your machine start a new 'MK14 not working' thread and we'll try to help you to get it going. There are quite a few owners of MK14 originals or replicas (or both) here, so we can make voltage measurements and scope measurements from our working machines for you to compare with.

Hi! Thanks

I kinda dont want to be out smarted by a computer thats got a handful of dip chips on it, so Im going to try to fix it a bit more myself first before asking for help.

In the mean time Ill stick a post in Introductions to say Hi and keep an eye out for posts I can contribute to.

[SiriusHardware]

Oh, believe me, you would be the one fixing it, even if we made a few suggestions over your shoulder.

Good luck, and we hope to see a picture or two of it working shortly.

[Timbucus]

Thanks for joining up and talking at the show Ujibay! Good luck on the repair...

[Buzby123]

Originally Posted by _Ujibay

I kinda dont want to be out smarted by a computer thats got a handful of dip chips on it, ...

Don't be surprised if you need some help from those who've been there allready.

There might only be a handful of chips, but on my MK14 resurrection about the only one still working was the 8060 !.

[Timbucus]

If anyone want's to see a brief glimpse of Maze running at the show the massive Sinclair museum in Portugal came along and had a chat with me and put the video up the MK14 is towards the end.

Their channel has some other interviews and recordings of many of the panel talks...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0hDM8xVAx0

[SiriusHardware]

I see _Ujibay appears to have got his machine working, assuming this is the same one as he referred to earlier.

https://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/...73&postcount=1