Wyluli Wolf

I'm looking on Amazon and there are 5 million of these things with all kinds of different functions. All I really need it for is tinkering with PCB's and testing power supplies for consoles, etc. Probably will not be building any space rockets until they install that atmosphere on Mars. So which device do you think would be a happy, relatively inexpensive medium? (By inexpensive lets say under $50) Thanks!

Thanks Zylon. From the sounds of it the PLA chip might be the most likely culprit of it's not the power supply. Who knows tho!?

I'll give a new power supply a shot for starters. Sounds like it would not be a bad idea to replace that anyway as the old ones have no safety features and can overload the system if they go bad. Does anyone know where I can purchase a good power supply for the commodore 64 or am I limited to building one myself? It looks like it may also be a good idea to add heat sinks to some of the chips. I'll have to research this a little as I'm sure something other than thermal paste will be needed to hold them in place.

Opened her up. She did NOT want to come apart, back side hung on for dear life! Here's some photo's of the innards:

That's interesting! Where did you run across that?

I have some photo's of what the Commodore is doing when the screen suddenly goes "wonky" on me. This happens even if nothing else is plugged into the C64 (no disk drive attached, no controller, etc). I've not taken it apart yet but plan to do so to see if anything obvious shows (loose connections, blown capacitors etc). Thanks.

Right. So after much cursing, swearing, vulgar language, several finger burns, pleading, yanking, pulling and more cursing ... I was finally able to remove the DC power port connector. That thing was by far the most difficult de-soldering job I've ever attempted. The tiny circuit board made it hard to handle and no matter how much solder I sucked outta the thing it just would not budge. Then my solder sucker broke. Blasted thing! Went to radio shack and they did not have the exact part I needed. Had to hunt on eBay and found a good deal on a pack of 30 (not that I'll ever use that many, but hey). Now we play the waiting game till the port arrives. Hope this works.....

Well after much cursing I finally have the "alignment disk" I won off eBay working. Here are the results: Not sure what to think now.... According to the included instructions this should be closely aligned and not be having issues. I suppose it's possible that I just have a crap load of bad disks that are unreadable...?? *sigh... It would be nice if something could be easy for once!

I've googled the issue to death. The only thing I see is what you mentioned about the re-soldering. I'm not seeing anything about the model 1 system. I'm going to try replacing the power receptacle and see what happens.

Guess I have the 5-pin. Posting a pic: Thinking this cable will work: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Commodore-Video-Monitor-Cable-Composite-Video-Audio-6ft-VIC-20-C-64-5pin-/331125982355?pt=US_Vintage_Computing_Parts_Accessories&hash=item4d18a58493 Guess I'll get that ordered and should have it in about a month

Will do Quad. Keep your fingers crossed for me. If it works I'll post the details. If it doesn't, I'll come back and cry about it

Ironically I just read an article about the different versions of Donkey Kong in Retro Gamer magazine the other night. Interesting stuff. Really helped Nintendo get things going. Anyone see "King of Kong: A fistful of quarters"? Storyline In the early 1980s, legendary Billy Mitchell set a Donkey Kong record that stood for almost 25 years. This documentary follows the assault on the record by Steve Wiebe, an earnest teacher from Washington who took up the game while unemployed. The top scores are monitored by a cadre of players and fans associated with Walter Day, an Iowan who runs Funspot, an annual tournament. Wiebe breaks Mitchell's record in public at Funspot, and Mitchell promptly mails a controversial video tape of himself setting a new record. So Wiebe travels to Florida hoping Mitchell will face him for the 2007 Guinness World Records. Will the mind-game-playing Mitchell engage; who will end up holding the record? I caught it on TV a long time ago. Was interesting enough to watch.

I'll add: Mutant League Football Mutant League Hockey Pigskin Footbrawl All good fun!

Cool, thanks guys. I'll figure out which cable I can use tonight (S-video or component). Thanks for the advice on the Sega controllers as well. I've been using an old Atari CX-40 joystick. I also have some bat style Wico sticks and an Epyx 500J. Hopefully all those are ok to use. Once I get the proper cable and get it all hooked up again I'll test it out and see if the scrambled screen issue returns. If it does, I guess we are looking at a failing component. Thanks for the info on the PLA chip. I don't mind trying to do repairs on my own. I did replace a cap kit in an old arcade machine awhile back (Scared the crapnuggets out of me having to discharge that monitor, thought I was gonna kill myself for sure!). It's been awhile so I'll probably do a little solder practice on an old pcb to polish up the skills again... just in case they are needed. Not having much luck on eBay lately. Both the commodore and sega genesis I received appear to be faulty Bummer.

This one looks awesome, but $95 shipped is kinda steep! WHeew!

The fastload cart sounds like the way to go. Now I just need to find one and figure out how to use it. Does it matter what brand? I mostly see EPXY on eBay.....

Thanks for the link. Buying in bulk definitely helps and the additional photo's are good.

I think I'm going to try and de-solder the dc jack. This may prove difficult give how small the pcb is but I'll give it a go. If I manage to get it off I'll make a trip to Radio Shack and with any luck they will have one matching what I need. Hopefully a newly soldered dc jack will take care of the problem.

Hunting around for game cases for my loose NES cartridges. So far I'm seeing the Universal Game Cases (which don't fit NES cases without modification from what I"m seeing) and this: https://www.seymoronion.com/Custom_Game_Cases/Nintendo.html I'm wondering if anyone has placed an order with Seymor's or if these never came to fruition? If you have ordered them, how do they rate for quality? I'm not seeing any pictures of the finished product which would be useful. Thanks.

For some crazy reason...Gunsmoke. The music is stuck in my head. I've yet to find those hidden "Wanted" posters throughout the game. Eventually, if it drives me crazy enough, I'll have to look it up ....

After looking it over more I'm thinking this is what I would need: PCB Edge connector uIEC edge connector uIEC disk drive cable uIEC SD PCB without the daughter card I'm thinking that should get me up and running with power. I'd then have to figure out where to get the firmware that needs loaded on the micro SD card?

I'll definitely invest in either the composite cables or the S-video cable. I have to make sure the old TV has an S-video output. I'd also have to see if I have the 5 pin or 8 pin C64. I wonder if I can use the connector from my Sega Genesis to test it out in the meantime.... If the scrambled screen pops up while using composite I'll snap a picture of the screen and upload. I can also take the case apart and check the connections and clean with canned air. Couldn't hurt. The 1541 Ultimate II is awesome but I can't really justify the price. I was thinking of going the route of the uIEC for $50 - $60 instead. Thanks for the advice and I'll post back with the results!

So now that I have a Commodore I'm thinking about getting one of the uIEC/SD devices by Jim Brain. I've been hunting over the internet and I'm not seeing a lot of documentation for this device. It looks like you would need to mount it inside the Commodore 64 or put it in some kind of case? I don't really like the idea of modifying the commodore case itself. It seems a shame to make permanent changes to an original that can't be undone. I see the deluxe daughter card comes with a connector that looks like you could plug it directly into the cassette slot. Is that the case? It would be nice to have the circuit board in some kind of case to protect it. It would be great if you could mount it in a cartridge like the multi cart for the 5200... Maybe something like this would be the way to go: http://jbrain.com/vicug/gallery/uIEC/bg4 and then mount the PCB inside of something? Could I just get an IEC cable and cut it in half to use? Would the IEC pigtail cable work instead? If I went this route I guess I would not need the daughter card? Just the cable and edge connector? Not sure how I would power the unit though. Would there be any other reason to get the daughter board? So for those of you that have this device, please share your setups and idea's! I was also considering JiffyDos. Looks like this also involves taking apart the case and possibly soldering. Do you recommend getting JiffyDos along with the uIEC device? I did run across the Wiki which has some useful information: http://www.c64-wiki.com/index.php/uIEC Sorry to bombard with questions! Just trying to work this out in my head before I start buying stuff. Thanks!

I recently acquired a Commodore 64 along with a 1541 disk drive and cassette drive. The 1541 drive will load about 2 programs from 2 different floppy disks and refuses to read other disks. When I try to load most floppy's it will try to read the disk, make a clicking noise and the red light will come on. I'm hoping it's just out of alignment and plan to try and align the drive when I get a chance. I bought an alignment disk off of eBay. The cassette drive seems to work ok. I only have one cassette to test with (frogger). Great music in that game! I also picked up the game Radar Rat Race on cartridge and tried it out. It works perfectly. The Commodore 64 itself seems to be in great shape but I noticed the screen is a bit fuzzy on channel 3. For kicks I switched it to Channel 4 and it comes in much better. Unfortunately, while using the system it will sometimes suddenly get a scrambled screen with multiple colors (not the blue C64 load screen). I'm not sure if it is interference of some sort? It's connected to an old CRT television set. I'm also curious as to why channel 3 would be fuzzy but not channel 4. More interference? I am using one of those coaxial adapter connectors and not a "box" to connect to the TV. I'm really hoping there is nothing wrong with the system itself. Any advice or thoughts from you C64 experts out there?

I had a look and cleaned it with some rubbing alcohol. It doesn't appear to be broken or squashed as far as I can tell. It's odd as it cuts off when I move the power cable downward (towards that leaf spring). It's not as sensitive if I move the cable side to side. I pulled that little circuit board out and tried powering it up. The power stays on till you tap it in that one direction and POOF! no more power. Frustrating. Thanks.