Mortis

Carlsson - very wise information there. If anyone else does this (I hope not), I GENTLY painted clear nail polish on the graphics in hope to keep them stable. So far it has worked out well. I'm not sure if this will cause issues in the future, but it is a strong, clear, protective coating for now.

Hi All, It appears that this is not related to 303 or anything like that. I had a quick dialog with Adrian Black (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCE5dIscvDxrb7CD5uiJJOiw) and he also tested a spare key that he had and confirmed that IPA is the cause. If you haven't seen Adrian's work, I highly recommend that you check out his channel NOW. He is really the best at what he does and is always willing to help out if needed. Anyway, this is what Adrian confirmed: "Yep -- at first the printing was fine with the 99% IPA... I almost thought it was fine and unaffected. THen, after about 30 seconds I was able to wipe it right off the key. -- although I needed a little bit of IPA to do it -- but I would assume it broke down something in the print as it became super easy to rub off." So, don't do what I did; if you want to keep your petsci graphics anyways. Thanks again Adrian, Morty... Adrian-Black-C64-key-wipeoff.mp4

Hmmm, 303 plastic protectant - I know that I used it on this keyboard. I'm not willing to test that out on another one, but if you are using it might want to test it on a sample first...

Thanks everyone for the replies, I really appreciate it. I looked at all my other keyboards and none have demonstrated this behavior. This has to be a one-off process that Commodore used or something. Or maybe there was another chemical contamination or something. But anyone looking to cleanup or restore their keys, I'd take the advice of carlsson and Papalapa! Lesson learned for me...

Totally agree! But the weird part is, without ipa, some of the keys petsci characters will just rub off. Wondering if the original use of ipa maybe did something bad to the paint.

Has anyone else experienced the front petsci graphics just wiping off their keycaps with a finger brush? I made the mistake of using 9x% ipa to clean the function keys and the front letting came off. So I was flicking a piece of debris off the 8 key and the petsci white letting just rubbed off. I'm not sure if this keyboard is an odd ball or not, but i've used ipa on others and never had this issue. Oh, and just to get this out there; the ipa use was months ago. The finger brush rub-off was like 10 minutes ago. If it takes that little effort, there will only be top key characters left on that keyboard. Come to think of it, I can barely see faint markings on the function keys that came off. Anyone know of any method to repaint them? Thanks all, Mortis...

Just to finalize this one: no success here. I tried a few different things. It may be that my old recorder starts to drop time after a longer run. I'll pick this up again later as I have other projects going on. Thanks all...

Hi Mr. Carlsson! The unicart is the GGLABS one you linked to above. I appreciate all the attention and work you did on this. Totally unexpected. ? I'm not totally sure about Tapdancer being able to invert the sample, but I'll look into it. I'm going to extract the prg and fiddle around with it. I'll post here as a wrap up either way. Thanks again...

Hi everyone, I'm not expecting too much assistance on this one as I think it may not be possible. Keep in mind that I am thinking here which is mighty dangerous. In the beginning I loved to play Fort Apocalypse on my C-64 via tape. Today I can't for the life of me create a working physical tape to use so I use an EF3 to run a converted copy of Fort on it. Runs great. I've noticed that the contacts on my Ef3 are getting a little worn and was hoping to use it less. So I purchased a Unicart and have mixed success burning roms for it. Here comes my question, Fort was never actually produced on cartridge for the C64 and the EF3 boots it via command with load "", ef, 1. When I attempt to burn the 16k bin to an eeprom and use the unicart, it just blue screens. Anyone out there have any suggestions for a working cartridge or a good method to record a real tape for it? Tapdancer, recording to mp3, direct from wave to recorder, nothing works and I suspect it is due to the fastload. Using the same methods on another program works perfectly. I can use my A400 with it's cartridge just fine, but I actually prefer the C64 version. I can try and find a link to the crt image or upload it here (even the source code is out now). Anyways, thanks for looking...

Rybags, thank you for the awesome link there and all your help. I did verify my programming but for some reason I had missed the part where my ROM ends at 1ff0. Remember what I said out my brightness before... So I am now using a 27c128... Thank you again

Hi Rybags! Thank you for the quick reply. Much appreciated. I'll try a jumper and see what happens. I'll reply back if no-go... Thanks again ?

Hi everyone, I apologize in advance if I missed information on this; I couldn't find anything that helps me out (not saying that it could be that I'm just not all that bright). I have "burned" many 8k rom files to cartridges for both the C-64 and the Atari 400/800 machines. I have the PCB that requires a 74ls00 chip which i populated along with the cap and I absolutely can't get a 16 k rom to execute correctly. Any that I test (verified fine btw) starts the Atari directly to memo. My main objective is to get Fort Apocalypse on a physical cartridge (loved that game). I have also tried boulder dash and other's to no avail. They all boot to memo. Anyone want to share what I'm doing wrong? I know that these may have been two proms and etc, but I thought that the 74ls00 was designed to mitigate that. Oh, i've been using M27C64A eproms. Also any 8 k roms work perfectly (even with the 74ls00 installed). Thanks for looking ?

...and just to close the loop. The N82S and 6581 made no difference. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Very very cool leech! I have a Rev A. board coming in and it looks like the SID and PLA are in sockets. If they are, I'll try that #28 test with those chips in and see if there are any differences. Just to be thorough and because one day, SIDs and PLAs will dry up.

I thank you both for the quick replies. Looking like a 7800 is in my future...