protek
"Takai desu ne." -"Jinsei da."
A little progress on this front. 
I had the Spectrum booting but I couldn't test neither game loading nor RAM as I couldn't type '"' or '2'. I needed a new membrane, which I bought from Rwap. While waiting for the membrane to arrive I dismantled the keyboard to get the old membrane out. When the top plate was off I faced a massive amount of crud. Also the membrane seemed to have residue from either coke or coffee.
I put the keyboard mat to soak in soapy water and gave it a good brushing with a dish washing brush I bought for the purpose. Looks a lot cleaner now.
I also cleaned the case top and the cover plate. When the new membrane arrived I reassembled the keyboard and attached it. I was now able to test the memory, which was OK as expected. I also was now able to try to load a game. I had no tapes so I just used a wav file stored into my old mobile. After typing LOAD"" the screen just stayed blank and no loading bars appeared. I tried with my other Spectrum, an issue 2 upgraded to Plus case and keyboard and it loaded the game just fine. TC then suggested trying to swap the ULA chips, which I did. The loading bars now appeared on the screen. I also tried the Plus with the ULA from my WIP Speccy and the screen would stay blank, meaning the ULA was bust, or partially bust as the Spectrum would boot. I'd need to find a replacement. Here's the duff ULA removed.
I've actually managed to find a replacement outside AmiBay and just waiting for a final quote with postage. This Spectrum has turned out to be slightly bigger project than I expected but I'm not giving up now since I'm making a progress. Still need to figure out why the Spectrum wouldn't load a game even with the working ULA even though the loading bars were visibile. Have to look into that, when I get the replacement.
I had the Spectrum booting but I couldn't test neither game loading nor RAM as I couldn't type '"' or '2'. I needed a new membrane, which I bought from Rwap. While waiting for the membrane to arrive I dismantled the keyboard to get the old membrane out. When the top plate was off I faced a massive amount of crud. Also the membrane seemed to have residue from either coke or coffee.
I put the keyboard mat to soak in soapy water and gave it a good brushing with a dish washing brush I bought for the purpose. Looks a lot cleaner now.
I also cleaned the case top and the cover plate. When the new membrane arrived I reassembled the keyboard and attached it. I was now able to test the memory, which was OK as expected. I also was now able to try to load a game. I had no tapes so I just used a wav file stored into my old mobile. After typing LOAD"" the screen just stayed blank and no loading bars appeared. I tried with my other Spectrum, an issue 2 upgraded to Plus case and keyboard and it loaded the game just fine. TC then suggested trying to swap the ULA chips, which I did. The loading bars now appeared on the screen. I also tried the Plus with the ULA from my WIP Speccy and the screen would stay blank, meaning the ULA was bust, or partially bust as the Spectrum would boot. I'd need to find a replacement. Here's the duff ULA removed.
I've actually managed to find a replacement outside AmiBay and just waiting for a final quote with postage. This Spectrum has turned out to be slightly bigger project than I expected but I'm not giving up now since I'm making a progress. Still need to figure out why the Spectrum wouldn't load a game even with the working ULA even though the loading bars were visibile. Have to look into that, when I get the replacement.
