Category: Blog

Upon close inspection, the panel board suffered enough moisture damage to decide to scrap the board and create a new one. It’s not a complex board at all, thankfully. I started by removing all the switches so all the traces could be reviewed. During this process it became obvious that most switches have snuffed it […]

And I got to inspect it up close to see where we’re at. First I took a ton of close up pictures I can use for referencing wiring etc. Next up was to remove the mainboard. This yielded a surprise on the backside. Some kind of rubbery substance was splashed over the backside. I noticed […]

Here starts an important and cool restoration project. A lot has been said and written in the past about Vangelis custom “Direct” machine – as a result, this particular device has retained a certain ‘mystique’ on what exactly it did. We’ll probably never fully know for sure as some things like the most recent software […]

There is a little update, now that I’ve receieved one of the Most Amazing frontpanels created by Paul – and holy cow does it look good! He made one for himself compleet with wooden sides etc, and oh my…. I’m working on the Teensy version as well and mostly actually on the software, which is […]

So now that we have succesfully cloned the Zyklus with that learned a great deal on how it all works from a hardware perspective, it’s time to get deep with the code and try a new hardware platform. Obviously the Z80 is limited, which is why the code included some very handy bank switching to […]

The original Zyklus code was written in Z80 Assmebly, using a Macro assembler from 1985. Thanks to the current popularity of retro computing and the vast resources of the internet, I managed to obtain a copy of the assembler (though not the linker, although I’m fairly certain I have one from an earlier release that […]

After having new MCLZ8 boards created, this time with the components pre-populated (and thanks Paul for guiding me through the ordering process on that), I now have a working MCLZ8 emulator running. The emulator supports various modes, two of whcih are interesting for us: Mode 0, which means the emulator runs without acceleration, using external […]

I want to introduce our user PaulMC a bit. This gentleman has been responsible for a lot of the succeses we’ve had. He took the schematics and created new PCB layouts and basically nailed them in the first try. Then he surprised us with a completely redesigned modern power supply, suitable as a drop-in replacement. […]

This gentleman (https://microcorelabs.wordpress.com/) has created a Z80 Emulator, based on a Teensy 4.1 module. It is supposed to be a drop-in replacement for the cpu, with which we can use its features to easilly develop new features for the Zyklus. Using this emulator would negate the need to burn new EPROMS, as we can simply […]

I’m trying to think of ways to deal with the software. My thoughts for now are to create a hardware abstraction layer with API’s that the software can interact with. By decoupling the logic from the hardware, it should theoretically be easier to develop new functions. And to simulate these. Not sure yet how I’m […]

It’s been a while – I’ve been a bit busy. But here we go. A new Zyklus is born. Actually, quite a while ago, User PaulMc and myself managed to finsih building the first version of the mainboard. While there were one or two little bugs, it ended up working quite nicely! So with that, […]

It’s been a while, but there was a lot of progress. All the boards have now been built. The powersupply board works as should. There was an issue with the voltage regulator being not strong enough (1.5A), so it’s been replaced with a 2A variant and now it works nicely. It gets hot though. The […]

So after spending some time debugging and not getting why the new button panel board didn’t work, as it measssured exactly how it should following the schematics, and after basically replacing every TTL chip (I did find some dodgy ones), it was time to start comparing it to the original and soon enough the issue […]

We have a great little community going in the discord server. One user, PaulMC, has created the KiCad files for the 3 PCB’s and had a first run printed. We’re trying to build these. I’ve started with the button panel PCB:    

It took a fair bit of time to get to this point, but here we are.. Going step by step to the various repairs. First off was the encoder. This one was pretty much completley stuck, but with some grease it started moving again. Not fluent enough though to keep, so I replaced it with […]

Things are getting a bit crazy, as a second Zyklus has shown up at my door. Actually, this machine was Pete’s and suffered moisture damage. It was considered dead, but recently it actually did show some signs of life. Given the rarity, all the more reason to refurbish. Besides that,  now I can use this […]

Recieved the new capacitors (Axials too) to recap the whole Zyklus. Yesterday, I started with the powersupply, as that is the most important part and these capacitors have to work the hardest. This is the powersupply board. It has three 4700uf 16v axial caps: The procedure is quite simple: Desolder the old cap Clean the […]

Going to recap the whole unit. It’s actually not that bad, only a few needed: Shopping list: 3x  4700uF 16v (originals are axials, but with a bit of creatativity, I’ll use normal radials. 3x 220uF 16V (there’s one on the switch/display board as well) 2x 10uF 50v 1x 100uF 6.3V These things are dirt cheap, […]

Thanks to Pete Kellock going through his archives, here’s a really unique pic of one of the very first Zyklus machines along the the finished version:

I found some OLED 40×2 for a reasonable price and ordered a couple. Onto the surgery to replace the unit. First step is to remove the inverter and transistor – they are no longer needed. That’s the easy part. The hard part is to remove the display. These boards are pretty old, the solder as […]

Ever since I got it, the display would flicker or need a tap or two every so often to have its backlight working. Felt like a typical loose connection, so I took a look and quickly determined that the inverter was the culprit.   Time to take it apart: It’s a transforer, transitor, some caps […]

To make debugging easier, I will be installing all IC’s on feet: