VIC-20 Power Issue

[DistantStar001]

My VIC-20 just stopped working.  It was working fine this morning, but now there's no power light, no picture, not even a black screen.  I checked the power supply.  It's a little non conventional (12v 3A DC), but it does work. I checked the doggle that I made to connect it.  It works too.  So I opened it up and checked the fuse, smoothing capacitor, voltage regulator, and power switch.  

 

The fuse is good.  

 

The capacitor puts out a little over 1 volt (I'm pretty sure that's wrong).  

 

The voltage regulator was reading low (around 2 to 3 volts) on both the output and the in, but now it's not reading anything at all.

 

There's good continuity in the on position, and my multimeter didn't read any continuity in the off.  However, when I measured the voltage between the output pin and ground, I got between 0.28 and 0.48 volts when in the off.  In the on position it's only getting between 1 and 3 volts to the 5v line.  Also, when I checked between the pins on the switch I got 8v in the off and nothing in the on?  This seems weird to me, since according to the same multimeter there isn't any continuity to pass current when off.

 

I've un plugged it for now (not that I leave it plugged in), but I really don't want to hurt this thing.  It's been very reliable over the months that I've had it, and I've really grown to like it (truthfully, it's my favorite platform to play Tetris on).  So any ideas on how to bring it back would be appreciated.

[eightbit]

Reach out to Ray Carlsen. He's a nice guy and will be able to help you (or you can send it to him to repair):

 

http://personalpages.tds.net/~rcarlsen/

[DistantStar001]

On 11/12/2019 at 5:19 AM, eightbit said:

Reach out to Ray Carlsen. He's a nice guy and will be able to help you (or you can send it to him to repair):

 

http://personalpages.tds.net/~rcarlsen/

Thank you so much for the recommendation.  He was very friendly and helpful.  Turns out it was just a dirty fuse.

[eightbit]

Glad he was able to help you. He is a really great guy. I highly recommend his power supplies too. I use his supply exclusively for my Vic...much safer than the original!