27 Nov
2007
27 Nov
'07
12:27 p.m.
On Tuesday 27 November 2007 14:55, Jim Brain wrote:
Roy J. Tellason wrote:
When we had the shop there were a whole lot of times that you couldn't tell
which chip was bad without trying a new one in there, and the dropping
prices of the machines made wholesale replacement of parts impractical, so it
was a policy of mine to *always* unsolder the chip and put a socket in there.
Over the years that I worked on that stuff I noticed that c= had *no* apparent
patter to which chips were soldered in place and which were socketed. It
varied a lot. Sometimes one of the ROMs (not always the same one),
sometimes all three, sometimes one CIA or the other or both. It varied...
Not really, though it was more often the case
than not. The major
difference between those new cases and the old was the difference in the
way the keyboard was mounted. The old-style cases had eight screws
holding the keyboard to the top of the case, while the newer ones had
the keyboard mounted to the bottom half, over some metal support
brackets. If you had a new case and wanted that style but wanted to use
your old parts otherwise, you'd need those brackets. And they were
different for a couple of different form factors-- the later boards with
higher density were narrower, front-to-back, than the older ones were.
A lot of us did this sort of conversion later in the game. My primary
C64 is such a mod, sitting here next to me. Even though the board revs
for the earlier C64C were not terribly different, CBM started soldering
the ROMs in, making mods like JiffyDOS and such much harder to do. Now,
of course, I'd just cut the traces, desolder the pin remnants, and
solder in a socket, but this was when I still used my 64 for everything
(even college term papers), and I was less sure I could pull such a
stunt off. So, I transplanted the 64 board into the C, and no one was
the wiser. Cheap the unit may have been and may be, but I am very
hard on stuff,
and this baby has traveled to college and back 5 times, moved to 3
different houses, and not very carefully in any of those moves, either.
Works fine every time I start it up.
They were fairly robust little machines for the most part, with one or two
minor exceptions.
The original black brick power supply, OTOH, was cheap
and unreliable.
Yup! I accumulated such a pile of those at one point (I used to point to it
to try and sell people on the idea of an aftermarket supply) that I thought
at one point that it might be worth building a "modern art sculpture" out of
them and some epoxy and planting it on the lawn down there in West
Chester. :-)
If anyone does consider a 64 or VIC for children, find
a 1764
replacement power supply or some aftermarket one.
1764? With the VIC20, I find the two-pin power connection to be the
preferable one.
However, when all the units are on at the desk here (4
of them), the
bricks do keep one's toes nice and toasty. :-o
Heh. That's pretty much of what all they were good for.
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin