silverfox0786
Beware the Hillman
Ok... so i purchased a Commodore 128 a few weeks back and as you know it, untested means NOT WORKING
Upon switching it on i was greeted with a few stray characters.
Commodore 64 Mode shows Out of Memory Error
This suggests this is a RAM error
According to legend, its possible to determinate which RAM chip is faulty by looking at where the stray Characters are, but I'm not that clued up for this sadly
I decided to order some RAM chips anyway as i knew this was what the fault would be and most people recommend changing them all out and socketing them as they are prone to fail
Bulk Purchase of some NEC 4164 DRAM at 150ns
Because i wanted to know what i was dealing with and not just guess i also purchased a complete C64/C128 Diagnostics Kit from USA
That RED PCB is not part of the kit, that is a MEGABIT Kernal Board Adaptor
Tested on a Working C64 everything PASSES which suggested to me the kit is working fine
now on to the C128. results where bad
Defo Ram Error and i was able to watch which RAMS where faulty and where so I started to piggyback some chips, this helped but ultimately failed the test still. piggybacking 16 chips just caused the C128 to not boot at all.
Well i was planning on changing the Ram chips and was using a Diagnostics Manuals that said i need to clear one error before i can go on to the next, The manual explain the order to me
I was kinda confident that changing all RAM chips would fix the issue
So for the next 3 hours i went about removing all the old ram chips and carefully soldering sockets on
I went from this to this
Now to redo the Diagnostics Test to see if ther are any more underlying faults and to make sure all the other customs chips are ok
The results are in
And that was a expensive and tiring but simple and satisfactory repair
I finally have a long wanted C128
silverfox07862015-12-03 22:38:17
Upon switching it on i was greeted with a few stray characters.
Commodore 64 Mode shows Out of Memory Error
This suggests this is a RAM error
According to legend, its possible to determinate which RAM chip is faulty by looking at where the stray Characters are, but I'm not that clued up for this sadly
I decided to order some RAM chips anyway as i knew this was what the fault would be and most people recommend changing them all out and socketing them as they are prone to fail
Bulk Purchase of some NEC 4164 DRAM at 150ns
Because i wanted to know what i was dealing with and not just guess i also purchased a complete C64/C128 Diagnostics Kit from USA
That RED PCB is not part of the kit, that is a MEGABIT Kernal Board Adaptor
Tested on a Working C64 everything PASSES which suggested to me the kit is working fine
now on to the C128. results where bad
Defo Ram Error and i was able to watch which RAMS where faulty and where so I started to piggyback some chips, this helped but ultimately failed the test still. piggybacking 16 chips just caused the C128 to not boot at all.
Well i was planning on changing the Ram chips and was using a Diagnostics Manuals that said i need to clear one error before i can go on to the next, The manual explain the order to me
I was kinda confident that changing all RAM chips would fix the issue
So for the next 3 hours i went about removing all the old ram chips and carefully soldering sockets on
I went from this to this
Now to redo the Diagnostics Test to see if ther are any more underlying faults and to make sure all the other customs chips are ok
The results are in
And that was a expensive and tiring but simple and satisfactory repair
I finally have a long wanted C128
silverfox07862015-12-03 22:38:17
