Diagnosing and Reparing Commodore 64s

There are two possible approaches to giving help with such repairs, which could be compared to the 'give an man a fish' .vs. 'teach a man to fish'. If somebody is starvingm then you give then food there and then. You mioght then go on to teach them how to get/prepar their own food, but the intinal thing is to get them fed. In the same way, if soembody needs to fix something _now_ then you tell them to put the multimeter prones there andto measure the voltage. then to do the same somewhere else. And then to change the regualtor IC or whatever. They don't leran anything, but the machine works again. However, for most people o nthsi list, there is no real urgency in gettign their classic ocmputer running agian. aAnd for that reason I'd rather 'teach a man to fish'. Rather than telling them to check this and then change that IC, I'd ecplain to them how the thing should work, how to check things, and so on. In the end they will learn enough to be able to trace faults themselves, and the knowledge of fault diagnosis -- soemthign that seems to be rarely taught -- is preserved. None of us are goign to eb around for ever, so it is a Good Thing to pass on our skills in this way. -tony