[vcf-midatlantic] Jan Workshop Report

[Chris Fala]

Primarily worked with Mike P. and his son Brian (sorry if I got the names wrong. I previously communicated with them via the list and coincidentally ran across them while I was a docent. At that time I discovered that Mike is a huge collector of vintage telephone equipment. While not strictly a VCF thing, it is very cool and somewhat related. We got to talking about a 1950ish rotary telephone that I bought on eBay a few years ago because it was the exact model that my grandparents had. I didn’t think it worked because Comcast doesn’t provide a real phone circuit (sort of). Mike brought a line simulator with him and it turns out my phone works perfectly! I enjoyed the sound of the real bell ringer, hope the other attendees did too! :-)

We also tried to diagnose a C64 that he and his son recently acquired. The Commodore didn’t do anything except produce a video sync signal. Didn’t respond to diagnostics cartridge at all. Thanks to Todd for loaning us his Hakko desoldering gun. I removed the PLA chip which was soldered in and installed a socket (thanks Jeff). We tested the chip in a good C64 and proved it was bad. Installing a good PLA didn’t fix the problem, but it was still good experience and at least we confirmed one bad chip.

Definitely time well spent. Perhaps the most productive workshop I attended so far. One of the most enjoyable for sure.

Chris F.









On Jan 14, 2019, at 12:54 PM, Jeffrey Brace via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic at lists.vcfed.org> wrote:

The workshop was great. I estimate that on Saturday there was about 20
people there. Lots of things fixed. I started evaluating my many, many C64,
but didn’t get very far. I will get started earlier on Saturday next time
as many people do one day and leave early.

Who else wants to tell what they worked on and fixed?

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Jeff Brace
Vice President
Vintage Computer Federation