Viewing the output of a C64 on a laptop via an STK1160 based video grabber
January 22, 2020 - Reading time: 2 minutes
I bought a cheap (< €15) USB 2.0 video grabber which is based on the SyntekSTK1160 chipset. My goal was to display the output of my Commodore 64 on the screen of my laptop. The cable which connects the C64 with the video grabber allows me to use an s-video signal.
Fixing failure of software upload to µController
December 5, 2019 - Reading time: ~1 minute
If uploading software from the Arduino IDE or the commandline via avrdude to a microcontroller like an Arduino or an ESP8266 fails due to missing access rights ("Permission denied"), what helps is either
sudo chmod a+rw /dev/ttyUSB0
or adding the user to the group "dialout":
sudo usermod -a -G dialout theuser
Repairing the file system of Debian after hard shutdown
October 14, 2019 - Reading time: ~1 minute
Sometimes after a hard shutdown the file system of my laptop is corrupted and Debian starts in maintenance mode.
What helps is repairing the file system using the command
fsck -y /dev/sda1
See: https://serverfault.com/questions/348315/debian-system-wont-boot-due-to-corrupt-file-system
Changing the RAM chip of the Super Snapshot V5
September 4, 2019 - Reading time: 2 minutes
The manual of the Super Snapshot V5 mentions that the 8kB RAM chip of the cartridge can be upgraded to 32kB. Back in the days™ it was possible to send the cartridge to LMS Technologies. Nowadays this is not an option anymore and I was happy to find an article by Chris Kobayashi which describes the required steps. Since the article does not contain any illustrations, I decided to share some photos I took when I changed the RAM of my Super Snapshot V5.
Re-soldering the reset button of the Super Snapshot V5
April 23, 2018 - Reading time: 2 minutes
In an act of clumsiness I pulled off the cables connecting the reset button of my Super Snapshot V5 and the PCB. I asked Twitter and Mastodon for help, but to no avail. The search engine of my choice also did not come up with any helpful link. Luckily information about the Commodore 64 is all over the web. Read more
Hello World!
April 23, 2018 - Reading time: ~1 minute
This is the first post, but there has been a time before this blog. The old content ist old, but it still exists.