Several years ago I came across a Ford FE 428 engine in need of a complete rebuild and thought that would be a fun build for my 76 F250. The build had its challenges due to the wiping a lobe on the cam.

So, I went with a roller!

From day 1 the engine had a cold lifter tick and would go away at around 140F CT. Years later the tick turned into a squeak. It was time to pull the lifters and cam. Sure enough, one of the roller hydro lifters had flat spots and was dragging across the cam, ruining that too!

This time I moved to a Howards roller cam and lifter set. With lifter preload now at .065, any cold ticks go away quickly and usually around 75-80F CT.

I also advanced the cam by 4 degrees.

End result, the truck has good low end power and runs great.

In my teen years, for a brief time, I had a Amiga 500 with monitor, sidecar for HD and extra ram, software and accessories. It was a great system and really appealed to me for it capabilities. When I had my fill of the fun, I sold it.

Recently I started gathering hardware to build up another Amiga A500 rig. Why a A500? Well, cost is a huge factor and much of the vintage computer hardware is ridiculously expensive.

The A500 that I picked up has a hardware issue and I discovered I had no way to connect it to a color display due to its DB23 RGB connector, making troubleshooting harder. When powering on the A500, the power light flashes 10 times and then a long flash (reset?) then the cycle repeats. Some internet searching suggested it was the Fat Agnus chip. We’ll see.

Next challenge was video. I ordered an unbuffered DB23 to VGA cable. I was able to connect the display to an old Dell U2410 display due to its support for 15khz frequency.

Troubleshooting continues…. With the monitor connected, I get a green screen which possibly indicated bad RAM. Now I have replacement RAM inbound along with sockets.

Couple other items I am waiting for.
– HDMI out using a RaspberryPi Zero and a custom board for a pure signal
– USB mouse adapter
– DiagRom 1.3 for troubleshooting
– Workbench 1.3 disks

This is mostly a test of AWS services and the basic config.