October 25th, 2019:

	Work has commenced on my winter projects!  I decided to tackle a 
project I've been putting off for years: restoring my Amiga 4000D to a 
working state, and setting it up as a daily driver.

The first thing I had to do was find an inexpensive way to display the 
Amiga's native RGB output.  My old Commodore 1084 RGB monitor died earlier 
this year, so I gave it back to Slam for him to play with.  Without a 
proper display, I was unable to work on the machine.

Having already invested in a SCART-to-HDMI convertor for my old game 
consoles, I figured it was a simple matter of buying a readily available 
RGB-to-SCART cable.  NOPE!  My HDMI adapter wasn't the proper type, it 
only handled Composite signals and not RGB.  For that, I had to shell out 
for an adapter known to work with RGB signals.  The adapter arrived from 
Bezos Co last week, and I'm happy to say I was able to fix the OS issue.  
The 4000 now boots, and the display will switch to my VGA monitor via my 
Picasso-II card.

Now that I have an Amiga that boots into OS 3.9, it's time to flesh it out 
with all the things I'm going to need.  The first thing I installed was 
Thor, an early email/news/message reader program that ceased development 
in 2002.  While there are newer and better programs for reading Usenet 
news, BBS messages, and email, I like the idea of having them all-in-one 
application with a consistent interface.  That, and I never got Thor to 
work properly in its heyday and stubbornly refuse to let it beat me!

Thor starts up and I've been able to configure it the way I want.  My next 
steps will be to actually attempt to use it.  Stupidly, I forgot to 
install a TCP/IP stack on the 4000, so that'll be my next step.  I 
purchased the TCP/IP stack called Roadshow earlier this year, and am 
looking forward to getting my 4000 online again.

My wife advised that I received a couple of packages in the mail today, 
one of which is a PS/2 mouse adapter for the 4000.  I was left with only 
one Amiga mouse after I cleaned the lab last year, so rather than buy an 
expensive ($35+) Amiga mouse, I bought the adapter for less than ten 
bucks.  This way, I can use any of my surplus PS/2 mice...

My other winter project is my MSX2.  I've enjoyed the MSX via emulation 
since the early days (mid-1990s) of Marat Fayzullin's fMSX emulator, and 
finally bought an MSX2 of my own a few years ago.  It's been fun playing 
all the great games that came out for the system (Undeadline is my current 
favourite), but I've been wanting to see what *else* I can do with the 
system.  To that end, I set about expanding the system.

The first purchase I made last year was a MegaFlashRom 512k SD SCC+ cart.  
It adds 512k RAM, a Konami SCC+ sound card, Nestor (an improved version of 
MSX-DOS), and two micro-SD slots for holding ROM and disk images.  I 
originally bought it for gaming, but it has other uses, too...

The next purchases I made early this year were a CF-IDE controller with a 
2gb CF card.  It acts as a hard drive, and I can also add IDE devices like 
an extra HD or CD-ROM if needed.  It requires additional memory (such as 
found in my MegaFlashROM cart) in order to boot.  At the same time, I 
bought a Musical Memory Mapper cart, which is a 1024K RAM expansion and 
SN76489AN sound chip in one tidy package.  Using the MegaFlashROM and 
Musical Memory Mapper gives me 1.5 meg RAM!

The SN76489AN chip was used by many 80s consoles such as the Sega SG-1000 
and ColecoVision, and as such the MSX is able to emulate these systems.  
I'm looking forward to playing the old Coleco games Sub-Roc and Cosmic 
Avenger!

Speaking of sound, I also picked up an FM-PAC a few months ago, which adds 
FM sound capabilities, greatly enhancing the music in supported games.  It 
also adds save RAM capabilities to store game saves in supported games 
(Psycho World , Ashguine II, etc).

Most of these were bought for gaming purposes, I'll admit, but together 
they add up to a pretty good system.  The problem is, each accessory takes 
up a cartridge slot, and the MSX only has two!  To this end, I recently 
ordered a 4-slot expander, so I'll be able to use the CF-IDE, FM-PAC, 
Musical Memory Mapper simultaneously.

The keyboard membrane is slowly dying on my MSX (a common issue), and 
replacements are only available sporadically, so to alleviate this 
problem, I ordered a PS/2 keyboard interface cartridge.  Now I can use a 
surplus PS/2 keyboard and not have to worry about the built-in one dying.

The only things left for me to buy are either an RS-232 cart or a network 
cart.  While not wholly necessary, they would be pretty handy for getting 
things on and off the MSX's hard drive (rather than sneakernetting).  I 
might pick up a PS/2 mouse adapter for the joystick port so I can use a 
mouse with the system, and perhaps a pair of JoyMega adapters so I can use 
my Sega Genesis controllers for games.

Once that's sussed, I'll need to figure out what I'm going to *do* with 
the MSX.

Ah well, I have all winter.