Restoring the Commodore 64 – Part 2
TLDR: Broken trace Under a ram chip, Bad Kernel Rom & oscillator IC, random jumper Dead Test Cartridge The dead test cartridge is exactly what it sounds like. You have a dead commodore 64 computer, plug in the cartridge, it runs a rom and program and tells you what the issue is. Remade versions of…
Read MoreNote: ElasticSearch, Kibana, FSCrawler on TrueNAS
When you finally realize that searching through decades of documents has become a challenge, it is time to acknowledge that you have reached a “big-data” stage. Now, you need some big data utilities to understand, index, search and find out where and what you’ve got. This process is a nightmare. Bits of instructions are scattered…
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Notes: Autostart VNC server on Debian/RPi
To share a desktop on a remote computer using a VNC server. This is done on a Raspberry Pi desktop. The Pi computer auto-starts and logs-into a default user. SSH is already enabled, since the computer is fully remote. If local access, this can be done at the PC. Start with a SSH connection into…
Read MoreNotes: Addressing 27C512 EPROM for C64
This tries to explain how to use newer 27C512 EPROMs used with the Commodore 64. The EPROM chips are programmed with at various memory locations. The one for this post holds up to 512 Kilobits of information (arranged in 64K x 8). The memory location are called out by using a 16 digit binary number.…
Read MoreNotes: Floppy drive information
To have the 5-1/4 floppy disk drive to work with HD formatted disks, here were the jumpers that need changed. This is a Newtronics / Mitsumi Model D509V3 Floppy drive for 5.25″ disks. This drive works with the Feather & Greaseweazle project hardware and software. I was trying to capture flux images on some of…
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Restoring a Commodore 64 – Part 1
Commodore 64 computers were the most popular and best selling computer – in the 1980s. Easy to setup, 8-bit processor, floppy drives, sound chips, games on cartridges, joysticks, a mouse, cassette tapes for cheap program storage, programming books, a graphical interface, modems, hard drives, etc. Before the 8088 PC took off, before Windows, and a…
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