Commodore 64 defect?

Apr 20, 2006 17 Replies

An friend just contacted me about his old (But RETRO!!) Commodore 64 which emitted a lot of smoke when he turned it on. I got a picture of the mainboard, which in my opinon not much good, looks like moisture, but i am not sure. Who can give an correct answer?


Greetings, MisterManiac



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Look in the direction of the CPU (6502).



mistermaniac

Once the smoke gets out, you need to trade it in for a Sinclair.....

Andy in Eureka, Texas

Junk Buy another for $2.00 at a Rummage sale

If you're concerned about the ripples in the copper, don't be. That generation of pcb's typically showed that result from heat buildup during the wave soldering on the large blank copper areas. Normal design practice was/is to use check-pattern or similar ground plane to avoid the heat buildup and copper delamination.

Apart from that, I can't see anything in particular.

I agree. I see no particular signs of moisture damage either. If it smoked, where from ? Plug it back in, and see what smokes again, or just gets hot if it's all outa smoke. Nothing to lose, as it's currently bolloxed anyway ...

Arfa

Ebay often lists WORKING units for around $10.00 on average. So why bother?

64which emitted a lot of smoke when he turned it on. I got a picture ofthe mainboard, which in my opinon not much good, looks like moisture,but i am not sure. Who can give an correct answer?

MisterManiac-

Back when they were new, the power module had the reputation that the regulator transistors were held against their heat sink by the epoxy potting. After some use, they separated from the heat sink, causing either a failure or a thermal shut-down.

I never had that problem, perhaps because mine was a newer unit. However some people became quite good at rebuilding the power modules.

Fred

I find that a surprise, as I once tried to open up a commodore power supply .It was all one big brick of molten epoxy which was to all intents and purposes inpenetrable, at least not without destroying the innards (which i eventually did after hurling it at a wall in frustration ;-)

-b.

retro?

S*it, retro is 'in' right now. I better ebay all my old commodore gear!

:)

"b" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@v46g2000cwv.googlegroups.com:

"MOLTEN epoxy"??

Seems that would be fairly easy to penetrate. The molten epoxy would be running out of the vents,too.

Jim Yanik jyanik at kua.net

Jim Yanik ha escrito:

aha! so you spotted the deliberate mistake then... ;-))

-b.

What do ya know, the commodore has strangely enough, decided to work again, without any problem so far.

mistermaniac

"b" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@i40g2000cwc.googlegroups.com:

If it were "deliberate",then it would not be a "mistake"! ;-)

It would be an intentional error.

Jim Yanik jyanik at kua.net

AH! Yet again you caught his intentional error.. :-P

- Mike

Obviously then, it didn't emit smoke at all....

I was going to say that the fuse looks pretty healthy to me. While not always the case, smoke emission may result in a blown fuse in the power supply area.

Not necessarly... I once had a 5.25 floppy drive with an electrolytic cap that the top burnt off of somehow and it still worked.

- Mike

It didn't want you to throw it away.. ;-)

- Mike

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