About a year ago I opened up my A500+ & A500 (with A500+ board) to check for battery damage.
It was a tough day
The first unit, the A500, was declared dead. Damage was too great & poor Gary lost a few legs when removed from its socket, due to acid damage.
The other machine was a little better, so I cleaned it & put it aside, where I have forgotten about it until last weekend.
After some more cleaning (including the removal of several ICs, to clean underneath them) and 1 new Gary socket later, this is the result:
All assembled & ready for testing:
And all is well in the world
Feeling good about reviving this unit, I decided to take out of storage a dead C64 board I've put there nearly 20 years ago...
This unit displayed a black screen & nothing more, I have verified years ago that both VIC & SID are Ok, so needed to test RAM, PLA & possibly ROMs.
After some testing I replaced the PLA. This resulted in a garbled graphics screen, but at least it was progress!
The 2nd fault was a bad Kernal ROM chip, which I detected by using the oldest (and some would say best) diagnostic tool in the world - the finger
A ROM chip should not become hot
Both PLA & ROM chips were replaced & put into sockets, and here's the board alive again, running Kickman from cartridge:
I just love days like these
It was a tough day
The first unit, the A500, was declared dead. Damage was too great & poor Gary lost a few legs when removed from its socket, due to acid damage.
The other machine was a little better, so I cleaned it & put it aside, where I have forgotten about it until last weekend.
After some more cleaning (including the removal of several ICs, to clean underneath them) and 1 new Gary socket later, this is the result:
All assembled & ready for testing:
And all is well in the world
Feeling good about reviving this unit, I decided to take out of storage a dead C64 board I've put there nearly 20 years ago...
This unit displayed a black screen & nothing more, I have verified years ago that both VIC & SID are Ok, so needed to test RAM, PLA & possibly ROMs.
After some testing I replaced the PLA. This resulted in a garbled graphics screen, but at least it was progress!
The 2nd fault was a bad Kernal ROM chip, which I detected by using the oldest (and some would say best) diagnostic tool in the world - the finger
A ROM chip should not become hot
Both PLA & ROM chips were replaced & put into sockets, and here's the board alive again, running Kickman from cartridge:
I just love days like these
