13:12 - MOOO! Nicely done, Jan! Neat repair, too. It really helps to have the right test equipment. I'd have killed for a Retro Chip Tester Pro back in the day. That thing is as handy as a pocket on a shirt!
I get amazed when I think back to the mid 80s and I had issues with my C64 and somehow managed to deduce it was the VIC-II, somehow found somewhere to buy one and then replaced it and got a fully working computer again. I had no such skills back then. I don't have that C64 anymore, sold that a few years later when I got my A500, but I still have the broken VIC-II.
Always good to see the steps, techniques and tools to debug a C64, even if it's been shown before. Everyone seems to do it slightly different. Now could someone please do a C128!!
Nice fix, and I noticed a thing... While you were demoing "Spaceman Splorf", I was about 83.2874% certain that the backing tune I heard was the tune from the original BBC radio series, The Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy... Namely "Journey of a Sorcerer" by The Eagles from their album One of These Nights. Could you confirm this please chap? I'm a big Douglas Adams fan who knows where his towel is.
Excellent video and repair:) I don't know if you have ever played the way of the exploding fist 2... I've been repairing 64s for 5 years.... but with that game inpectular... on short board only It won't make the kicking sound and when you kick or fight.. it cuts out the sound also... wierd. All long boards including the 466... sound is perfect... strange eh? Anyways thanks for sharing and seeing you working on your loved childhood memories 64s
The sound is probably using samples, which are very quiet on the newer SID chip revisions. It has to do with Commodore fixing some flaws in the SID that the old versions had. Unfortunately they were "exploited" by sound artists to be able to play back samples on the C64.
Easy fix, well done. One tiny correction, long boards do not have 2 separate 5V rails, all the ICs get their 5V supply from the external PSU, hence there are no linear regulators on board. The 9V required for the HMOS VIC-II comes from simple zener based regulator, that is the only separate power rail.
You are right, there is no separate 5V rail on the short boards. I got that wrong. The 85xx VIC-II only needs dual 5V inputs though (both more or less directly from the power supply, with some filtering before they reach the chip), the SID uses the 9V generated by the zener/transistor circuit. Sorry about the confusion!
Legal! Obrigado pelo seu vídeo! Aprendi bastante técnica de diagnóstico com o cartucho dead e o Max. Comprei um commodore c64, mostra a tela inicial azul mas o teclado não funciona e não mostra o cursor na tela inicial.
Excellent work excellent video! Loving your work. One thing I keep noticing and wondering in your videos, that I expect someone else has spotted. :-) The blue, this plant has worked sign. The numbers, are they random? or did you specifically pick defiant and voyagers NCC numbers? Lol Keep up the excellent content!
In den 90ern hab ich C64 RAM als defekt raus gefunden mit dem Fingertest, der RAM IC der zu warm wurde war defekt. Diesen getauscht und der C64 ging wieder. Man muss bedenken das es 1994 rum noch kein youtube und keine Möglichkeiten im Internet zu gucken wie heute gab. Und, es gab noch Ersatzteile zu kaufen, heute ist das schwieriger und teurer geworden.
Der Fingertest funktioniert manchmal sehr gut. Allerdings nur, wenn die RAMs tatsächlich so sehr kurzgeschlossen sind, dass sie heiß werden. Habe ich aber auch schon erfolgreich angewendet. :D
Hi from Wales, UK Jan! I have never fixed a C64 before, can you place a good working RAM chip on top of the faulty RAM chip to quickly eliminate the faulty chip? Like I do with the ZX Spectrum?
I’ve tried that a couple of times in the past and it sometimes works but is not very reliable. I think the "piggybacking" only works in cases where the RAM chip is completely shorted out so that the new chip takes over all the pins. Otherwise you get varying results (which in case of the C64 are mostly going to result in a black screen, unlike with the Speccy where you can often see the patterns change that are displayed).
@@JanBeta I would be interested to see if it works on this occasion as the installed RAM chip was completely unrecognisable with your external chip tester. Vielen Dank für Ihre Antwort! 🙂
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It all depends on exactly how the original chip failed. Not much risk in trying it though if you're careful with the pin alignment. Since it doesn't always work, it's hard to recommend because it can cause confusion if it fails to fix the fault.
Nice work man :) Do you think that heat gun is safe enough for the c64 (RAM) chip during desoldering phase? Because the chip could be o.k. (problem elsewhere), and you could lose it in the process...or not? Btw is that plasma TV that you use for the diagnostic screen? It is, right? :) I found them being fantastic for the retro stuff (and more). Thanks!
I'm using a pretty small diameter nozzle on the hot air gun so it should not put any more stress on the chip than a regular soldering iron. Usually the chips can take it (at least in my experience). The monitor is an elderly LG TFT TV (pre LED backlighting), not a plasma. Works well for retro stuff, though. :)
Hey Jan, I love your channel!!! I have an extra dongle type C64 test harness that seems to work as well as the one with all of the cables!!! If you would like me to send it to you, all I need is an address. Keep up the good work!
A complete aside but kind of related, 41464 in the world of Star Trek equates to the year 2364 (actual date varies cos no stardate calculator is accurate!), the year after the Enterprise-D was launched, so, that RAM is a stardate in disguise... :P
Zum Glück geht die sehr selten kaputt. Hatte ich bisher nur ein einziges Mal. Und es war ein "pain in the butt", da einen neuen Chip reinzubekommen... :D
I don't have an awful lot of money to spend on tools unfortunately. So while the old desoldering station still works, I'm not going to be able to justify buying a Hakko.
@@JanBeta i was forced the old on car ecus conectors relays and motherboards the old suck whit bigground planes i uses a compresor air gun trick for that but it was a mesa allwas have to cover the pcb or check and clean
As long as you get cheap spare parts for the "good ole zd915 and compatible"(usually the soldering gun has issues from time to time), I would never even think of buying a Hakko Moooh ;)
either its been a long time since you uploaded or my freaking youtube notifications is messed up again (which it probably is) lol great video though ... Like the video and this comment if you have had this issue before.
I uploaded a bit infrequently recently, but the video before this was 10 days ago or so (there was a little pause before that). RUclips notifications act up all the time though, so it might be that, too...
Sorry about that. I don't pay much attention to the leads most of the times. The voltage values are the same, even if they are negative (and it's very unlikely that the C64 gets negative voltage from the power supply). :D
I wish someone..by that i mean community..would've come up with ways to fix SNES/SFC consoles with surface mounted chips..almost no-one can be bothered on RUclips because so many were sold there's still hundreds of thousands of used ones around..so boards with a failed processor or PPU or a RAM chip get thrown away..i had 3 failed boards once..no-one wanted them..i couldn't give them away
That's a shame. Working on surface mount chips is a bit more intricate than the older through hole stuff but not at all impossible, even with a hobbyist setup. :/
"Blue Screen of Life" - I like that 😁
Blue screens are always matters of life and death.😄
13:12 - MOOO! Nicely done, Jan! Neat repair, too. It really helps to have the right test equipment. I'd have killed for a Retro Chip Tester Pro back in the day. That thing is as handy as a pocket on a shirt!
I get amazed when I think back to the mid 80s and I had issues with my C64 and somehow managed to deduce it was the VIC-II, somehow found somewhere to buy one and then replaced it and got a fully working computer again. I had no such skills back then. I don't have that C64 anymore, sold that a few years later when I got my A500, but I still have the broken VIC-II.
It is always an amazing feeling to fix one of these machines. I can totally relate to past you. :D
Very organized approach to testing and repairing the fault with perfect explanations of what you were doing each step of the way. Great video!
Thank you! :)
Good video! Another C64 brought back to life.
I recently found here a spare C64 board. Can't test it and I don't want to put it into the trash.
Any repaired C64 gets a free like, but also good job explaining the thought process behind.
Thank you! :)
Always good to see the steps, techniques and tools to debug a C64, even if it's been shown before. Everyone seems to do it slightly different. Now could someone please do a C128!!
Thanks! I've done some C128 work but the machine was mostly working fine. So not much troubleshooting needed.
Yay! Another one fixed!
Do you think we'll ever run out of broken C64's?😂
They break all the time so there's an unlimited supply... :D
Frohe frühe Weinachts!
Sehr früh! :D
Thanks...Jan Bita .....Great job.
Thank you! :)
Jan sei imbattibile,sempre grande!
Nice fix, and I noticed a thing... While you were demoing "Spaceman Splorf", I was about 83.2874% certain that the backing tune I heard was the tune from the original BBC radio series, The Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy... Namely "Journey of a Sorcerer" by The Eagles from their album One of These Nights. Could you confirm this please chap? I'm a big Douglas Adams fan who knows where his towel is.
I don't know about that but the initial music was definitely Battlestar Galactica.
It sounded just like Hitchhiker's to me. I did a search on the comments to see if anyone beat me to it, yup, you did. ;)
@@mryon314159 We're both hoopy froods it seems!
I‘m a big Douglas Adams fan myself and I can confirm it is a SID rendition of that tune. :)
@@JanBeta NOICE!
It appears that we have found our 42! (I will tell my other head in the morning)
Blue Screen of Life! Jeeeeej! 🙂
11:50 serious Herlitz Schnellhefter content!
Only the best filing tools here in the lab!
Excellent video and repair:) I don't know if you have ever played the way of the exploding fist 2... I've been repairing 64s for 5 years.... but with that game inpectular... on short board only
It won't make the kicking sound and when you kick or fight.. it cuts out the sound also... wierd. All long boards including the 466... sound is perfect... strange eh? Anyways thanks for sharing and seeing you working on your loved childhood memories 64s
The sound is probably using samples, which are very quiet on the newer SID chip revisions. It has to do with Commodore fixing some flaws in the SID that the old versions had. Unfortunately they were "exploited" by sound artists to be able to play back samples on the C64.
Oh, spaceman splorf uses the HHGTTG theme! Nice. Simple but good fix!
Thanks! Yes, they used several sci-fi themes in the game, it seems. :D
Easy fix, well done. One tiny correction, long boards do not have 2 separate 5V rails, all the ICs get their 5V supply from the external PSU, hence there are no linear regulators on board. The 9V required for the HMOS VIC-II comes from simple zener based regulator, that is the only separate power rail.
You are right, there is no separate 5V rail on the short boards. I got that wrong. The 85xx VIC-II only needs dual 5V inputs though (both more or less directly from the power supply, with some filtering before they reach the chip), the SID uses the 9V generated by the zener/transistor circuit. Sorry about the confusion!
Legal! Obrigado pelo seu vídeo! Aprendi bastante técnica de diagnóstico com o cartucho dead e o Max. Comprei um commodore c64, mostra a tela inicial azul mas o teclado não funciona e não mostra o cursor na tela inicial.
A commodore 64 repair video yessssssss 👍
I never get tired of repairing C64s for some reason. :D
the de-soldering mooo sound always makes me laugh.
The game music appears to have been inspired, in part, by Battlestar Galactica.
The title screen music is Battlestar Galactica, the in-game music is from the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy. ;)
came here so see the DesTestThing in real operation!
It worked beautifully. :D
Sid Meyer's Pirates actually complains if the is no SID chip, as it along with many other games used it for random numbers.
Oh, I'm going to have to try that. I wasn't aware of that. Interesting.
Excellent work excellent video! Loving your work. One thing I keep noticing and wondering in your videos, that I expect someone else has spotted. :-) The blue, this plant has worked sign. The numbers, are they random? or did you specifically pick defiant and voyagers NCC numbers? Lol Keep up the excellent content!
In den 90ern hab ich C64 RAM als defekt raus gefunden mit dem Fingertest, der RAM IC der zu warm wurde war defekt. Diesen getauscht und der C64 ging wieder. Man muss bedenken das es 1994 rum noch kein youtube und keine Möglichkeiten im Internet zu gucken wie heute gab. Und, es gab noch Ersatzteile zu kaufen, heute ist das schwieriger und teurer geworden.
Der Fingertest funktioniert manchmal sehr gut. Allerdings nur, wenn die RAMs tatsächlich so sehr kurzgeschlossen sind, dass sie heiß werden. Habe ich aber auch schon erfolgreich angewendet. :D
Thumbs up, and hitting play :)
Nice Video! But no Turrican test this time?
I usually use Giana Sisters for C64s, the Turrican test mostly is for Amigas. ;)
Hi from Wales, UK Jan!
I have never fixed a C64 before, can you place a good working RAM chip on top of the faulty RAM chip to quickly eliminate the faulty chip? Like I do with the ZX Spectrum?
I’ve tried that a couple of times in the past and it sometimes works but is not very reliable. I think the "piggybacking" only works in cases where the RAM chip is completely shorted out so that the new chip takes over all the pins. Otherwise you get varying results (which in case of the C64 are mostly going to result in a black screen, unlike with the Speccy where you can often see the patterns change that are displayed).
@@JanBeta I would be interested to see if it works on this occasion as the installed RAM chip was completely unrecognisable with your external chip tester.
Vielen Dank für Ihre Antwort! 🙂
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It all depends on exactly how the original chip failed. Not much risk in trying it though if you're careful with the pin alignment.
Since it doesn't always work, it's hard to recommend because it can cause confusion if it fails to fix the fault.
6:40 did you swap the leads at the multimeter on purpose? trying to trigger the viewers? xD
It did trigger me, and I stopped and I looked for this comment :D
Whoops. No, that wasn't on purpose, just my usual chaotic way of doing things. Sorry if it triggered anyone... :D
Nice work man :)
Do you think that heat gun is safe enough for the c64 (RAM) chip during desoldering phase?
Because the chip could be o.k. (problem elsewhere), and you could lose it in the process...or not?
Btw is that plasma TV that you use for the diagnostic screen? It is, right? :) I found them being fantastic for the retro stuff (and more).
Thanks!
I'm using a pretty small diameter nozzle on the hot air gun so it should not put any more stress on the chip than a regular soldering iron. Usually the chips can take it (at least in my experience). The monitor is an elderly LG TFT TV (pre LED backlighting), not a plasma. Works well for retro stuff, though. :)
👍🏻
Hey Jan, I love your channel!!! I have an extra dongle type C64 test harness that seems to work as well as the one with all of the cables!!! If you would like me to send it to you, all I need is an address. Keep up the good work!
A complete aside but kind of related, 41464 in the world of Star Trek equates to the year 2364 (actual date varies cos no stardate calculator is accurate!), the year after the Enterprise-D was launched, so, that RAM is a stardate in disguise... :P
Haha, nice! Even more sneaky Star Trek references then. :D
Really wondering how many stacks of boards and computers waiting for repair you have. 😂
Slowly working through the piles. I indeed have a bit of a problem with storing all the broken stuff... :D
Shortboards sind ja nicht so meine Lieblings-Basteldinge, ich sage nur Super PLA...😅
Zum Glück geht die sehr selten kaputt. Hatte ich bisher nur ein einziges Mal. Und es war ein "pain in the butt", da einen neuen Chip reinzubekommen... :D
worth get a hakko FR-301 i got bored one the ones you use and buy the japanese ones whit second hand autotrasformer 220 to 100v all was 200€ whit tax.
I don't have an awful lot of money to spend on tools unfortunately. So while the old desoldering station still works, I'm not going to be able to justify buying a Hakko.
@@JanBeta i was forced the old on car ecus conectors relays and motherboards the old suck whit bigground planes i uses a compresor air gun trick for that but it was a mesa allwas have to cover the pcb or check and clean
As long as you get cheap spare parts for the "good ole zd915 and compatible"(usually the soldering gun has issues from time to time), I would never even think of buying a Hakko Moooh ;)
@@holleholl3057i say the same and ended whit a original hakko 951 and the fr ones and also a jbc the GAS sindrome is strong XD
.
Thank you so much! :D
either its been a long time since you uploaded or my freaking youtube notifications is messed up again (which it probably is) lol great video though ... Like the video and this comment if you have had this issue before.
I uploaded a bit infrequently recently, but the video before this was 10 days ago or so (there was a little pause before that). RUclips notifications act up all the time though, so it might be that, too...
I enjoy watching your repairs but your meter leads are reversed causing the dvm to show minus voltages!!
Sorry about that. I don't pay much attention to the leads most of the times. The voltage values are the same, even if they are negative (and it's very unlikely that the C64 gets negative voltage from the power supply). :D
Multimeter leads reversed!
Sorry!
I wish someone..by that i mean community..would've come up with ways to fix SNES/SFC consoles with surface mounted chips..almost no-one can be bothered on RUclips because so many were sold there's still hundreds of thousands of used ones around..so boards with a failed processor or PPU or a RAM chip get thrown away..i had 3 failed boards once..no-one wanted them..i couldn't give them away
That's a shame. Working on surface mount chips is a bit more intricate than the older through hole stuff but not at all impossible, even with a hobbyist setup. :/
MOOOOOOHHHH!!! 😂