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  • What is wrong with my Commodore?

    From John Moore@butter_pat_head@jcom.freeserve.co.uk to comp.sys.cbm on Thursday, July 10, 2003 18:51:45
    From Newsgroup: comp.sys.cbm

    I recently picked up a breadbox 64 at a car boot sale a few days ago. I connected it to the TV and amplifier via the A/V port and the mains using my other C64's beige brick, remembering all the talk here about the black brick (am I getting a little to simplistic?). Anyhow, when I switched it on I instantly knowticed two things, one the picture quality was far worse then
    my c64c (it hade green and red vertical bars wherever there were area of differing contrast) and the cursor wasent flashing. A few on/offs later the cursor was flashing but wasent responding to the keys, so I did the only
    sane thing, I opened up the box and took a look under the bonnet.

    The first thing I saw was a MOS 6596R1 4682. It is slightly lighter then
    the
    other chips, has gold coloured pins and a metal square about 1.5 cm² stuck
    in the middle of it. The next thing was that it is located inside a metal frame (nothing on top though).

    The sencond thing I saw was that the board is a REV A (assy 326298) 1982
    board.

    Back to the cursor problem, all I did was swap the KB CIA with one form a
    dead breadbox I bought about 2 yeasr ago, an dit worked perfictly. So I plugged in my 1541-II and AR 6 and loaded up MatheMatitica. This is where I knowticed that the music sounded like it was being muffeled a lot and also
    It took 2 attemps to get thrugh the entire demo at it crashed on the circles part on the first attempt and then on the interlace logos part before that.
    I swapped (what I think was) the PLA with the one from said doner breadbox.
    I got thrugh the demo ok this time, having to bear the bad picture and poor sound.

    After it had fineshed I reset the c64 and drive and loaded Deus Ex Machina.
    It played allright but crashed during the Coke can part.

    The SID and PLA (I think, the chip to the left of the SID) were getting
    allmost untouchably hot. The ram was fine and the CIAs and CPU were so so.

    Can anybody shed any light on these issues, or is this one of those early unreliable c64s?

    regards
    John Moore


    --
    *****JCOM COMPUTER PRODUCTIONS*****
    C64, SNES, VB and other rubbish
    I want to show the world!
    *****http://jcom.shorturl.com******







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  • From Peter van Merkerk@merkerk@deadspam.com to comp.sys.cbm on Sunday, July 13, 2003 17:25:58
    From Newsgroup: comp.sys.cbm

    I recently picked up a breadbox 64 at a car boot sale a few days ago. I connected it to the TV and amplifier via the A/V port and the mains using
    my
    other C64's beige brick, remembering all the talk here about the black
    brick
    (am I getting a little to simplistic?). Anyhow, when I switched it on I instantly knowticed two things, one the picture quality was far worse then
    my c64c (it hade green and red vertical bars wherever there were area of differing contrast) and the cursor wasent flashing. A few on/offs later
    the
    cursor was flashing but wasent responding to the keys, so I did the only
    sane thing, I opened up the box and took a look under the bonnet.
    ...
    The SID and PLA (I think, the chip to the left of the SID) were getting allmost untouchably hot. The ram was fine and the CIAs and CPU were so
    so.

    Can anybody shed any light on these issues, or is this one of those early unreliable c64s?

    I would check the power supply if I were you. It migh be killing your C64 slowly but surely.


    --
    Peter van Merkerk
    peter.van.merkerk(at)dse.nl




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