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Fixing a broken Fossil charging dock cable

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My other half somehow managed to break the USB connector from the cable of the Fossil Smartwatch Charging Dock.  It seemed that the cable itself only exposed two wires in the lead, which suggested that it could be easily fixed:  I couldn't find anyone with this same issue on the internet as I vaguely recollect the watch can be connected to USB for debugging purposes and USB data requires more than 2 wires...  I may have remembered that wrongly, but I figured I had to open up the connector to make sure that it is indeed just a two wire connection.  The connector itself was a bit of a pain to get into. After prying the silicon sleeve from the connector I could see just two connections: GND and VCC. So far, so good... I had to use a pair of snips to get the transparent protective plastic off so I could get at the actual contacts: Luckily, there's a pad marked "GND" on the tiny board, so I could easily figure out how to connect these two leads back on the PCB.  I ad...
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Commodore 64 Displaysette? LCDSette?

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I bought a relatively cheap LCD screen from AliExpress to use with a C64 project I'm working on. It came without a case and as I am not one of those fortunate guys with a 3D printer, I had to think of another way to make a decent case for the screen. I noticed the dimensions are very close to an old school compact cassette case, so I decided to use that. Step 1 -- Mark where to cut The PCB must fit inside the case -- so to make room for it, I needed to cut a rectangle from the case. I could have opted to modify the case so the screen fits inside , but I did not have any cases without scratches. Step 2 -- Cut the case I used a Dremel to cut the rectangle from the case. NOTE: Always wear protective glasses when cutting plastic, it may damage your sight if you get small bits of plastic in your eye. Step 3 -- Glue the screen I used UV hardening epoxy to glue the screen to the case. Step 4 -- Put it together Here is a picture of the screen connected to my ...
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RetroUSBJoystick - connect your old-school C64 joystick via USB (updated 2020-01-22)

I quickly put some code together so I will be able to connect my old-school joystick to the TheC64 when it finally arrives. (And so I can wear down the joystick and eventually break it while playing Decathlon. Just like the good old days. :-D) It requires an Arduino Pro Micro, a Leonardo or other Arduino-like boards that are based on the ATmega32u4 (those are the ones with native USB support). I have put the code up on Github -- you can check it out right here: https://github.com/hugovangalen/RetroUSBJoystick Update January 9th, 2020 It is now also possible to connect joystick wirelessly by using NRF24L01 transceiver modules. This requires an additional Arduino board. The updated code has been pushed to the Github repository linked above. Check the included README for further instructions on how to get things going. Update January 16th, 2020 I discovered earlier the TheC64 did not see the device as a valid joystick... After some more research, I found a fix for this by s...
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