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It was a Commodore Amiga 2000 – Black Screen of death – Repaired

April 5th, 2016 3 comments
Commodore Amiga 2000 - Black Screen of Death #1

Commodore Amiga 2000 – Black Screen of death

The Battery Acid has corroded some pcb tracks (not visible to the naked eye) connected to the pin of the resistor packs RP900 and to MC68000 and probably other IC.

Gallery before cleaning and repair:

Commodore Amiga 2000 – All that glitters is not gold.

After some work it seems to work but still suffers of some problems.

Present problems:

  • All Connectors are rusty and uprooted.
  • Boot sequence problems, when boot correctly, there are no problems.

Resolved issues:

  • Corroded tracks, i have made 12 bridges*.
  • Replaced “deflowered” kickstart socket.
  • Replaced not working Kickstart 1.2 ROM.
  • Replaced 4 x LM33256 (RAM) shorted.

I need to assess whether or not continuing with the repair…

Big gallery of the repairing:

Welcome back, Commodore Amiga 2000.

I do it very shortly, i don’t like writing a lot because i don’t  have time to do and i don’t like it.

We are left with the Amiga 2000 that sometime works and sometime not.

Defect/Boot Errorr code was: gray / yellow / green / rainbow / out of sync / purple / white.

When this not happen, the boot works perfectly and i can see theusual “hand”

  • To fix the problem of the green screen that indicates problems of the RAM, i had to replace 3 x LM33256 (Total RAM replaced: 7), these ram are not shorted but partially functional and 1 x 74LS244.
  • To fix the problem of the yellow screen which created problems with the LATCH, i had to replace a 1 x 74LS373.

I have also replaced the socket of the MC68000 CPU and i have discovered another interruption between the pitche and track and also a lot of corrosion and recovered some connectors of an old Amiga 2000 REV 4 motherboard to give an decent aesthetic look to the repaired motherboard.

Now the Commodore Amiga 2000 works perfectly.

Before and after Gallery:

Commodore CBM 4008

April 5th, 2016 No comments
Commodore CBM 4008

The Commodore PET 4000 series features Basic 4.0 as a standard feature, along with more memory and a lower price that made them attractive to schools.

Elementary, Middle, and High Schools all over Canada and the United States were filled with these impressive lumbering beasts. Introducing children far and wide to the wonders of BASIC programming. Another lesson taught was the importance of patience, since many schools provided only a tape datasette for loading and saving work.

Like the other models of PET, the 4000 series includes dual datasette ports, though only one is exposed to the outside of the casing. A standard IEEE-488 interface in the back allows the PET to connect to the numerous (and heavy) disk drives and printers being produced by Commodore and other manufacturers.

The PET also has a fully programmable bi-directional parallel interface called the “User” port, which allows the PET to connect and control almost any device one could dream up! The greatest feature, however, is the friendly READY prompt, and the well-laid out keyboard with graphic characters only a keypress away! Pictured here is the PET 4016.

Interestingly, although Commodore provided 8, 16, and 32k versions of their PET 2001 and 3001 series, they had a hard time getting people to purchase higher memory versions as an upgrade. It seemed that people were soldering in their own memory chips onto PET 2001 and 3001 8k and 16k models to upgrade them to 32k. To help prevent this, Commodore sold many PET 4008 and PET 4016 models with the empty memory sockets punched out and destroyed! This encouraged those who wanted more memory to upgrade to the 4032 instead of doing it themselves.

Gallery:

source: zimmers.net

C4CPC cartridge replacement for the Amstrad Plus range & GX4000

April 5th, 2016 1 comment
C4CPC cartridge replacement for the Amstrad Plus range and the GX4000

C4CPC is a cartridge replacement for the Amstrad Plus range and the GX4000.

Using a micro-SD card storing cartridge images it also allows direct loading of the cartridge from a PC (Windows/Linux/OSX) through USB.

Features:

  • Direct access to 16 cartridges selected by dip switches. Cartridge can be up to 512kB.
  • Access to unlimited number of cartridge images using the provided selector cartridge.
  • Direct cartridge loading from host computer using USB.
  • Cartridge file can be in standard .cpr format or raw binary .bin
  • Integrated ACID.

Gallery:

Download: C4CPC GX4000 microSD Games & Demos (1215)

source: cpcwiki.eu

Commodore VIC-20 Repair

April 5th, 2016 1 comment
Commodore VIC-20 Repair

Defect:

  • Black screen.

Replaced parts:

  • Soldered a 24-pin IC socket.
  • Replaced 1 x 901486-07 KERNEL ROM (UE12)

Gallery of the repairing:

Commodore SX-64 USA (NTSC) – Repairing and Cleaning

April 5th, 2016 1 comment
Commodore SX-64 (USA)

A big disappointing this Commodore SX-64 USA purchased for spare parts to fix aesthetically one of my SX-64 PAL.

Why disappointing? because from the photo’s looked in a very bad shape, rust stains, various diseases and not working.

Conversely after removed the shit from the external case, replaced the booring PLA (906114), general cleaning + keyboard / Floppy Drive test and replaced one keyboard lock, the SX-64 is fully working and aesthetically in good condition.

Now i have for myself four SX-64 where the fourth is NTSC/USA, but honestly i was not looking for the USA version.

I am really unlucky :D

Gallery of the cleaning and repairing: