Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Museum Report 2018-11-16
Yes, My sons Brain (12) and Nate (10) spent about 3 hours with Chris, Tony, and Doug on Sunday. Thanks gents, we had a great time as always. At your suggestion, we downloaded Forever 64 Sunday night and Brian has been splitting his two hour daily screen time allotment between that and "The Eight Bit Guy" on youtube ever since. I signed up to bring our non-working Commodore 64 to the workshop on 12 JAN. The power light comes on, but there is no video from either the RF modulator or the 8 pin video jack. We ran some basic daignotics - power supply produces the correct voltages, voltage is present at specific places on the motherboard, fuse is good - but now we are stuck. Mike Pohl On Wed, Dec 19, 2018 at 8:11 AM Tony Bogan via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
On Dec 19, 2018, at 7:44 AM, Jeffrey Brace via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
Doug was docent with Chris Fala and Tony Bogan. According to Doug lots of visitors due to the holiday train show. Maybe he can fill in the details here. -- ========================================= Jeff Brace Vice President Vintage Computer Federation
Apologies for not updating everyone about Sunday.
Busy day at the museum, quite a fair number of families as a result of the train show as should be expected. While I was in the museum (had a friend arrive at one point so I was absent for a little while as I showed him around) the visitors ranged from quick walk throughs to very interested and everywhere in between. I personally had two different sets of visitors that had worked with systems similar to some of our big iron in their lives and several that had close ties with some of the micros, so their interest was high and they spent significant amounts of time in the museum.
There were three gentlemen (father and two sons) that were extremely interested in the Commodore 64 as well as the micros in general. I apologize for not remembering their names (I do recall Brian was one of the younger men!) but Doug and Chris spent a significant amount of time with them. They are also part of this list so will chime in on their own I’m sure, and we should be seeing them at the January workshop!!
The heavy rain, especially during the first part of the day, kept he traffic down a bit. Quite a few people never made it out of the main building as the wind and rain made the walk down the road unpleasant.
Still it was a busy day for both the museum and Infoage as a whole.
It is also fortuitous that one of the most popular attractions at Infoage (the military vehicles) requires going past our museum to get to, so we get traffic that might not otherwise come down the street.
Tony
On Wed, Dec 19, 2018 at 11:57 AM Michael Pohl via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
I signed up to bring our non-working Commodore 64 to the workshop on 12 JAN. The power light comes on, but there is no video from either the RF modulator or the 8 pin video jack. We ran some basic daignotics - power supply produces the correct voltages, voltage is present at specific places on the motherboard, fuse is good - but now we are stuck.
"Black screen" Commodore 64 is commonly the PLA chip. It's a programmed 82S100 PLA that implements the memory map. Replacements are available. You can borrow one from another machine and see if that's the problem. There is a smaller chance it's a bad DRAM chip. Those occasionally fail. -ethan
On 12/19/2018 3:31 PM, Ethan Dicks via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
On Wed, Dec 19, 2018 at 11:57 AM Michael Pohl via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
I signed up to bring our non-working Commodore 64 to the workshop on 12 JAN. The power light comes on, but there is no video from either the RF modulator or the 8 pin video jack. We ran some basic daignotics - power supply produces the correct voltages, voltage is present at specific places on the motherboard, fuse is good - but now we are stuck. "Black screen" Commodore 64 is commonly the PLA chip. It's a programmed 82S100 PLA that implements the memory map. Replacements are available. You can borrow one from another machine and see if that's the problem.
There is a smaller chance it's a bad DRAM chip. Those occasionally fail.
-ethan
To get more technical, the actual Signetics 82s100 PLAs rarely fail, nor do the toshiba ones that very late breadbox c64s had, but the NMOS 'in house hacked from signetics masks to nmos' ones have an obscene failure rate. IIRC the fusemap from the real 82s100 PLA (two versions of it!) is known/dumped, so if you manage to find a blank NOS 82s100 PLA you can burn a replacement using that. -- Jonathan Gevaryahu jgevaryahu@gmail.com jgevaryahu@hotmail.com
On Wed, Dec 19, 2018 at 11:58 AM Michael Pohl via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
Yes, My sons Brain (12) and Nate (10) spent about 3 hours with Chris, Tony, and Doug on Sunday. Thanks gents, we had a great time as always. At your suggestion, we downloaded Forever 64 Sunday night and Brian has been splitting his two hour daily screen time allotment between that and "The Eight Bit Guy" on youtube ever since.
If you are looking for a good emulator for the C64, I would highly recommend VICE. It is the best emulator available for the C64 and is in daily development.
I signed up to bring our non-working Commodore 64 to the workshop on 12 JAN. The power light comes on, but there is no video from either the RF modulator or the 8 pin video jack. We ran some basic daignotics - power supply produces the correct voltages, voltage is present at specific places on the motherboard, fuse is good - but now we are stuck.
I will be at the workshop with my C64 diagnostic harness and a "parts" C64 to try different chips. I will have a few working ones so that if it is a chip, then we can swap out a known working part. I have many C64 that I need to fix, but have been too busy with VCF duties and grad studies. My focus at the next workshop will be to get as many of my machines working as possible. I am not an expert, but I have gotten help over the years from other VCF members and learned some things. There will be other expert knowledge members there that can help you fix it. Undoubtedly, I will learn something too. A good website for diagnostic resources is run by a former Commodore repair technician: http://personalpages.tds.net/~rcarlsen/.
Mike Pohl
On Wed, Dec 19, 2018 at 8:11 AM Tony Bogan via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
On Dec 19, 2018, at 7:44 AM, Jeffrey Brace via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
Doug was docent with Chris Fala and Tony Bogan. According to Doug lots
of
visitors due to the holiday train show. Maybe he can fill in the details here. -- ========================================= Jeff Brace Vice President Vintage Computer Federation
Apologies for not updating everyone about Sunday.
Busy day at the museum, quite a fair number of families as a result of the train show as should be expected. While I was in the museum (had a friend arrive at one point so I was absent for a little while as I showed him around) the visitors ranged from quick walk throughs to very interested and everywhere in between. I personally had two different sets of visitors that had worked with systems similar to some of our big iron in their lives and several that had close ties with some of the micros, so their interest was high and they spent significant amounts of time in the museum.
There were three gentlemen (father and two sons) that were extremely interested in the Commodore 64 as well as the micros in general. I apologize for not remembering their names (I do recall Brian was one of the younger men!) but Doug and Chris spent a significant amount of time with them. They are also part of this list so will chime in on their own I’m sure, and we should be seeing them at the January workshop!!
The heavy rain, especially during the first part of the day, kept he traffic down a bit. Quite a few people never made it out of the main building as the wind and rain made the walk down the road unpleasant.
Still it was a busy day for both the museum and Infoage as a whole.
It is also fortuitous that one of the most popular attractions at Infoage (the military vehicles) requires going past our museum to get to, so we get traffic that might not otherwise come down the street.
Tony
-- ========================================= Jeff Brace Vice President Vintage Computer Federation
On 12/19/2018 6:15 PM, Jeffrey Brace via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
On Wed, Dec 19, 2018 at 11:58 AM Michael Pohl via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
Yes, My sons Brain (12) and Nate (10) spent about 3 hours with Chris, Tony, and Doug on Sunday. Thanks gents, we had a great time as always. At your suggestion, we downloaded Forever 64 Sunday night and Brian has been splitting his two hour daily screen time allotment between that and "The Eight Bit Guy" on youtube ever since.
If you are looking for a good emulator for the C64, I would highly recommend VICE. It is the best emulator available for the C64 and is in daily development. Jeff, 64 Forever is built on top of VICE. And its packaged way nicer than plain VICE, very turnkey. And the keyboard is properly set up for US.
I signed up to bring our non-working Commodore 64 to the workshop on 12 JAN. The power light comes on, but there is no video from either the RF modulator or the 8 pin video jack. We ran some basic daignotics - power supply produces the correct voltages, voltage is present at specific places on the motherboard, fuse is good - but now we are stuck.
I will be at the workshop with my C64 diagnostic harness and a "parts" C64 to try different chips. I will have a few working ones so that if it is a chip, then we can swap out a known working part. I have many C64 that I need to fix, but have been too busy with VCF duties and grad studies. My focus at the next workshop will be to get as many of my machines working as possible.
I am not an expert, but I have gotten help over the years from other VCF members and learned some things. There will be other expert knowledge members there that can help you fix it. Undoubtedly, I will learn something too. A good website for diagnostic resources is run by a former Commodore repair technician: http://personalpages.tds.net/~rcarlsen/.
Mike Pohl
On Wed, Dec 19, 2018 at 8:11 AM Tony Bogan via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
On Dec 19, 2018, at 7:44 AM, Jeffrey Brace via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote: Doug was docent with Chris Fala and Tony Bogan. According to Doug lots of visitors due to the holiday train show. Maybe he can fill in the details here. -- ========================================= Jeff Brace Vice President Vintage Computer Federation Apologies for not updating everyone about Sunday.
Busy day at the museum, quite a fair number of families as a result of the train show as should be expected. While I was in the museum (had a friend arrive at one point so I was absent for a little while as I showed him around) the visitors ranged from quick walk throughs to very interested and everywhere in between. I personally had two different sets of visitors that had worked with systems similar to some of our big iron in their lives and several that had close ties with some of the micros, so their interest was high and they spent significant amounts of time in the museum.
There were three gentlemen (father and two sons) that were extremely interested in the Commodore 64 as well as the micros in general. I apologize for not remembering their names (I do recall Brian was one of the younger men!) but Doug and Chris spent a significant amount of time with them. They are also part of this list so will chime in on their own I’m sure, and we should be seeing them at the January workshop!!
The heavy rain, especially during the first part of the day, kept he traffic down a bit. Quite a few people never made it out of the main building as the wind and rain made the walk down the road unpleasant.
Still it was a busy day for both the museum and Infoage as a whole.
It is also fortuitous that one of the most popular attractions at Infoage (the military vehicles) requires going past our museum to get to, so we get traffic that might not otherwise come down the street.
Tony
participants (5)
-
Douglas Crawford -
Ethan Dicks -
Jeffrey Brace -
Jonathan Gevaryahu -
Michael Pohl