Cracking the Key part 1
A discussion on Twitter lead to a bit of a reminiscence about breaking game copy protection on the Archimedes, in the good old days of yore. There was one copy protection system I used to…
Infusing Rum the Quick Way
After a discussion about using ultrasonic cleaners to infuse flavour into alcohol I ended up buying a cheap one for Amazon to mess around with it. The cleaner cost around £20, so if it didn’t…
Making Banana Mead
Introduction In a slight diversion from my normal tech entries, it’s time to talk about something I like doing: creating alcohol. I’ve dabbled in the old home brew before; starting with homebrew beer kits and…
Reversing the “nokelock” BLE padlock
I’ve been reversing a couple of cheap Chinesium “smart” padlocks that unlock via Bluetooth instead of with a key. My intent is for a talk and a couple of posts on how “smartness” doesn’t stop…
Reversing the Recreated ZX Spectrum Part 1
A couple of years back I kickstarted the “Recreated ZX Spectrum”, a creation by Elite who basically made a Spectrum case and turned it into a Bluetooth/USB keyboard with an Android/iOS app to interface and…
Reversing the ZX Vega: The Emulator
If you’ve been reading this, I’ve been (over a couple of years) messing around with my ZX Vega to try and work out how it works. You can read part one, where I look at…
Reversing the ZX Vega: Hardware
It’s been a while since I wrote part one. I promised I’d have a look at the hardware on the Vega. Here is the front of the board: And the rear: As can be seen…
Reversing Robico’s Island of Xaan
Overview This is a basic description of a reverse engineer of Robico’s first text adventure: Island of Xaan. Although it is one of their weakest, it shows a number of trademark features of Robico’s adventures:…
Reversing the ZX Vega: Firmware
Introduction A while back I got a ZX Vega for the LOLs and trying to remember what the Spectrum was like. Of course, I didn’t need to remember: I have quite a few in watertight boxes…