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Unfortunately old, long term unused Cybiko Classics suffer from explodedbatteries. Worse, the residue will eat away at the original battery contacts,and will even begin to damage the motherboard if left in for long enough.
Get the batteries that are in there out as soon as possible, and clean thebattery contacts as well as the Cybikos own contacts as best you can. You mayalso consider disassembling the Cybiko to clean any residue that may have gottento the motherboard. Do NOT mess with the LCD, the ribbon is incredibly flexibleand I have killed a unit fiddling. You could attempt to reuse the batteries, butI would strongly suggest instead either finding replacements, or as a cheaperand worse alternative doing what I did and attaching an alternative powersource. Two Ni-MH 1.2v AAA or AA batteries in a holder soldered to the batterycontacts will work just fine. It is also STRONGLY recommended you do NOT solderdirectly to the batteries, and instead purchase a battery holder instead. Doinga poor job of soldering to the batteries at best can cause irreparable damageto the battery, and at worst can cause a catastrophic failure.
If you do not have the serial cable bundled with the Cybiko, you should knowthat they’re practically impossible to find. If do not mind making a smallafter-market modification to the Cybiko, you will need to do some soldering workto add some wires, which we will later attach to an RS232 port. This isnecessary because Cybiko used a proprietary connector and as far as I can tell noother device used this connector, and therefore the cables are becoming quiterare.
The Cybiko motherboard has a number of test points, and thankfully four of themare exactly what we need to solder to in order to bring the serial connection ituses to connectors we can actually connect to. See the diagram below whichhighlights each test point. I suggest using the thinnest insulated wire you canget your hands on, in order to make running them inside the Cybiko as easy aspossible. One possible egress point for these wires would be the hole on theright hand side of the battery compartment. I also suggest at this point makinga note of whichever colour you soldered to each test point, so once youreassemble the Cybiko, you know which is which.
TP47 is TXDL, which goes to the RXD of your RS232 adaptor, TP48 is RXDS, whichgoes to TXD of your serial adaptor, TP49 is RTS, and the black pin that I’vestuck on the side of the reset switch is GND, because the outside of the resetswitch is grounded, so you can just solder there, or anywhere else you can findground." title=“TP47 is TXDL, which goes to the RXD of your RS232 adaptor, TP48is RXDS, which goes to TXD of your serial adaptor, TP49 is RTS, and the blackpin that I’ve stuck on the side of the reset switch is GND, because the outsideof the reset switch is grounded, so you can just solder there, or anywhere elseyou can find ground.
Once the wires are outside of the Cybiko, you can then attach them to an RS232DB-9 male connector. I suggest picking up a DB-9 break out board, like thisone.Attach each of the 4 wires to the 4 points on the DB-9 connector matching TX,RX, RTS, and GND.
If in the very likely case your computer does not have a serial port, you canpick up a DB-9 Male Serial to USB adaptor like thisone.
With all this, you’re ready to connect.
A safety note regarding Windows XP: I strongly encourage you to not connectit to the internet if you can help it. It is NOT a secure operating system andshould not have unfettered internet access. Copy files you need to and from itvia USB sticks or similar.
Plug in your Cybiko via your serial adaptor or similar. If you are using theofficial Cybiko cable and are connecting to a real RS232 port on your computer,you can stop here. If you are using a USB to serial device, you might need toinstall its drivers: Open device manager (Start > Run > devmgmt.msc > OK), andverify that you can see your serial device (It’ll be under Ports (COM & LPT) ifit is installed correctly and no yellow triangle will appear on it). If you findit under Unknown devices or there is a yellow triangle, you will need to installthe drivers for your serial adaptor. Follow your vendors instructions for how todo that.
One solution to not having a computer of this vintage is to virtualise one. Thisisn’t too difficult.
Plug in your Cybiko via your serial adaptor or similar.
Install Virtualbox. It can be gotten from your favourite Linux packagemanager, or see here fordownload links for less good operating systems.
Acquire installation media for Windows XP. I can’t help you with this one.
From within Virtualbox, select the “New” option.
Give your virtual machine a descriptive name, and ensure that Type is set to“Windows XP” and Version is set to “Windows XP (32 bit)”. The 32 bit optionis important. Ask me how I know.
Select whichever RAM size you would like, 1GB or greater recommended.
Create the virtual disk with whichever size you like.
After the wizard has finished, right click it and select settings. Select USBon the left, and then click the USB Plus (+) icon on the right. A list shouldpop up listing all your USB devices. One of these should be your serialadaptor. Select it.
Note: If you do not see any USB devices listed, you may be running Linux andtherefore may need to run sudo adduser $USER vboxusers in a terminal in orderto add your user to the Virtualbox users group. If you’re not on Linux, dunnolol.
Select “OK”. Double click your virtual machine.
From the popup that appears, select your Windows XP installation media andfollow through with the Windows XP installation procedure.
Once you are at the desktop, you’ll want to install the Virtualbox GuestAdditions. You do this by selecting “Devices” at the top of the Virtualboxwindow, and selecting “Insert Guest Additions CD”. Then open “My Computer”from within the virtual machine, open the CD that is now there, and select“VBoxWindowsAdditions.exe”.
Follow the installation prompts, and reboot when prompted.
Open device manager (Start > Run >
devmgmt.msc> OK), and verify that youcan see your serial device (It’ll be under Ports (COM & LPT) if it isinstalled correctly and no yellow triangle will appear on it. If you find itunder Unknown devices or there is a yellow triangle, you will need toinstall the drivers for your serial adaptor. Follow your vendorsinstructions for how to do that.
Cyberload is a piece of software released with the Classic. It was superseded byEZ Loader, however I actually prefer Cyberload for Classics. Its purpose was todownload the game/app catalogue from Cybiko.com (long gone), and to send gamesto the Cybiko.
Get a copy of the UK Cyberload from here, or the US version of Cyberload from here.
After installation, open Cyberload. If it doesn’t pick up on your Cybikobeing plugged in, try powering the Cybiko entirely off (hold the escape keyfor around 10 seconds) and switching it back on while connected to thecomputer. You’ll know you’re connected once the Cybiko displays “Connected toPC” and the software shows your Cybikos ID on the right hand side. If youcannot get past this step, ensure your connections to your RS232 adaptor arecorrect!
You can now peruse the ‘Help’ section within Cyberload to learn about thevarious features of Cyberload.
To upload software to the Cybiko that you have found (for example, from here), follow the below instructions. I should also note I built the Cybiko Game Archive which lists every game that was ever released for the Cybiko, along with a description.
Counterintuitively, we need to move a file from your Cybiko to your PC, sothat Cyberload creates directories on your local machine. To do this, selecta file from the right hand side of Cyberload, and then press
<= Move.Check
C:\Program Files\Cybiko\CyberLoad\Local Filesand you should now seea folder calledFrom Cybiko Computer XXXXXXXXwhere XXXXXXXX is your CybikoID. Inside there will be a folder called Device Flash. Copy your desiredsoftware into there.Close and reopen Cyberload. The software should now appear on the left, andyou can move it using the
movebutton.Close Cyberload, and disconnect your Cybiko.
The latest version of CYOS for the Classic is 1.3 System Pack version 57/58. 58is for the UK, 57 is for the US (this determines which RF profile your Cybikouses, since apparently there are different laws between the US and the UK). Youcan see which version your Cybiko Classic is running right now by pressing the? button at the desktop.
If you need to update it or simply would like to factory reset it, the processis relatively simple.
Connect your Cybiko to a power source and also your computer.
Grab the Cybiko-Autoupdate-UK.exe file here orthe US version here
Run the update and wait patiently for the update to complete.
There is a problem I have seen with numerous Classic Cybiko units where the LCDbecomes almost unreadable with extremely poor contrast. Not entirely black, butonly viewable from extreme viewing angles. It seems to me this problem isafflicting many Cybikos. I believe is due to their age, but have no furtherdiagnostic insight sadly.
One solution I came across was to use a piece of Cybiko software I recently cameacross called LCD Setup 2,
Grab LCD Setup 2, which can be downloadedhere. Push that to your Cybiko using yourpreferred method.
Run the software on the Cybiko and be careful, the wrong options can resultin a white screen, requiring a full software reset to fix.
There are 5 values that are configurable here. I suggest firstly moving thecursor to the fifth value (the contrast), and increasing it to something like11. The other 4 values control the ‘colours’ the cybiko has. For myparticular unit, the following values work well (31, 18, 14, 00, 11).
Press enter to persist, and then escape out of the app. Enjoy!
Let me know what you thought! Hit me up on Mastodon at @kn100@fosstodon.org.
