johndias

I'll check with Jay, thanks. The chip you sent didn't help unfortunately. It won't boot from floppy or Gotek (although it does at least prompt for Diskette?). I sent Ian an email but would like to avoid the international shipping cost if possible.

My III's FDC decided to quit. I'm looking for a replacement if anyone has a spare they'd be willing to sell me.

You don't need a lot, @eightbit. I did about a 50/50 mix of water and Salon 40. Just be sure to wash your hands after you touch the solution - at first you won't notice anything but it will start to burn your skin. Gloves would be ideal when handling. You can always add more if you think you aren't getting results but if you get little bubbles on the plastics after about an hour or so, it's doing the job. Just my limited experience, of course.

My VIC-20 was the first retr0brite I tried. Turned out fine but we will see if it sticks. I used liquid just like @Arnuphis in a tub, left it in the sun for a few hours. Now, my attempt at doing a retr0brite on the keys, THAT was a disaster. I used cream and the outcome was discoloration of the brown. So, lesson learned on that. Currently working on a retr0brite of a calculator body for my brother. He asked me to give it a try, even after I explained the possible issues. WRT brittleness. I, in my very limited experience, have not found the plastics to be brittle - at least for the age. My guess is that the plastics that are yellowed also suffered structurally from the same environmental stress, and the assumption is that the process made them brittle, when in reality they were already brittle. Looks great (except for the above mentioned key botch) and runs great. I recapped it, but I'm toying with the idea of doing the S-Video mod. Not 100% sure I want to go that route yet. I did get the Penultimate+ cart, love that thing! Oh and the spring I lost on the keyboard; got a replacement in and I'm whole again!

I did it, turned out great. Time will tell if I made the right choice.

Not a fan, but to each their own. But, I would be interested in a paint job that matched the original plastic coloring (versus doing a retrobrite). I'm sure it wouldn't look 100% the same but close enough to make me happy. Actually getting my TRS-80 repainted (via @Texas Tandy restorations ) which is a nice alternative to dealing with the yellowing.

Found replacement springs here - http://retroleum.co.uk/ At a very reasonable price!

I've had to match springs before, it's challenging. There are online places that sell springs. That's my last resort, I'm hoping to find a kind soul with a spare VIC-20.

IPA and a paper towel. I think the problem before is that I was using a non-cotton fiber swab like the ones here and it wasn't doing much scrubbing. They're great for general grime and cleaning tape and disk heads, though.

Oh man, rookie mistake! Short story, while I thought the contacts were clean I put them under my microscope and realized there was corrosion on most of them. So, with extra diligence I cleaned them all up and for kicks tested the resistance on all of the plungers (they were all around 100 ohm which I guess is good?) and tested - all the keys work! Well, except for the Commodore key, for which I lost the spring. Anyone know where I can buy one?

Hmm, I have some graphite powder and was attempting to make conductive paint for an electroplating project - I might play around with that and see if I can re-surface those plungers.

There's no pattern, that I can determine. The working ones are scattered about.

I pulled the keyboard PCB out and cleaned it with IPA. Then I plugged it back in and used a wire to jump the contacts to see if that would respond. The keys did (I didn't do a complete test but enough to convince me that I had a mechanical problem). Then I took a plunger (the commodore key) and used it to connect each of the contacts. No bueno, the key presses did not show up. So, I think my plungers are bad, what to do? These are NOT the rubber dome ones but rather like this one

Hi all, my new power supply from Ray arrived today so I got a chance to boot up for the first time. System comes up, no problem, but the keyboard ... probably 80% of the keys don't work. I had pulled them and cleaned them while I was retrobriting the case (and lost one spring - anyone got a spare?). I saw another thread @carlsson recommended swapping the 6522 chips, which I will do. What else can I check?

WOW that's a huge difference.

OK, so if I do the mod, just null pin 1 and 5 based on carlsson's advice? Also, looks like I should get the Pi1541 - sold!

Well, I may just proceed with the RF converter repair for now until I get more familiar with the machine, plus I don't know what else may be wrong with it. I have a spare Gotek, which I assume could be used with the VIC-20?

Oh yeah, I did see something on DenialWIKI that I bookmarked for later, might dig into that this weekend while I await the PSU.

+1 for the Harbor Freight cleaner - it does the job, and has held up for at least a couple years so far.

Oh yes, 8BG is one of my YT subscriptions! I've never bought Planet X1 but I probably should go ahead and grab it, and that'll give me an excuse to add the RAM expander!

Got a VIC-20 over the weekend, a CL find (although it was a 3 hour drive one-way). Came with the box (in OK shape, cardboard is holding up but the artwork is looking rough), computer, PSU, RF converter and TV adapter. OK, you're gonna cringe but I plugged it in with the original PSU before I found out that's not a smart thing to do! It powered up but I got no video. Fortunately, I didn't have it powered on long and after I learned about the problems with these PSUs I ordered one from Ray Carlsen and also tested the one I have. It was still reading 5V on the DC pins so... phew! 😬 As for the video, I saw on Ray's site where he talks about the Mitsumi's having some cap issues. Sure enough, I pulled it open and it's a Mitsumi and the two cans are showing some corrosion on the legs (but thankfully didn't leak). I'll be replacing those. I'm excited to join Team Commodore - what else should I be looking for on this unit? Tips? Mods? Webby links appreciated, too!

Ah, figured it out - again, newbie here. Booting into LDOS and trying to access TRS-DOS disks seems to be my problem. After reproducing the issue on Matthew Reed's emulator (which I will be purchasing, what a handy thing to have) I realized that the disk images from the web were pretty much all TRS-DOS disks so I used TRSTools to copy the contents to an LDOS image I had and it read just fine in the emulator and then again on my Model III, so pumped! Wondering if there's an easier way to do this though 🤔

Yeah, I'm missing information as a newbie. Here's the thing, when I converted images from the sites you listed to HFE on my HxC Gotek. I see that the virtual drive is being accessed, but after a bit it tells me "Illegal drive". I found a thread where someone posted a JV3 image and I tried that - bingo, reads just fine on my III. So my assumption is that I don't have the right disk drivers loaded, i.e. SYSTEM(DRIVE=2,DRIVER="filespec").

How can I find disk drivers for DMK/DSK? Seems to be my problem reading some (many) disk images. JV3 images read just fine.

Never mind, it's working now thanks everyone - final issue was a bad disk image!