(Originally posted on Dreamwidth Jan. 10th, 2019)
So if you’ve been reading this a while you’ll know I bought 3 dead C64s. I managed to get one working by cleaning the power switch. (Cleaning the switch also got the next two working closer to full completion). The second one I got working by taking the RAM out of the third, which was showing symptoms much worse than the other two.
The third one was just sitting there, taunting me with a black screen and nothing else.
I did some research and it turns out the fault was likely to be one of 3 chips. Two of those chips were pretty reliable and also insanely expensive to replace, so I ordered the third chip (The PLA) on a whim and some new RAM. (Apparently, yes, you can buy new RAM for C64s. Who knew?)
All those parts arrived today.
I then took my “good” C64 (the middle one) and socketed it’s PLA. (I had already socketed the RAM chip). This allowed me to test the new components in a known good machine. The new parts all worked fine.
So I socketed up the third machine and tried the RAM and PLA in there. It worked first time!
So now I have FOUR working Commodore 64s. This is 4 more than I had this time last year 😀
(Big shoutout to Shrydar for allowing me to buy his old parts for an excellent price)
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