Restoring a "Sold as Seen" Commodore C64 from eBay (June 2022)

In this video I take a breadbin C64 that I purchased from eBay for £72 (June 2022). It's sold as spares or repair, so lets see what it is and if we can get it working.
Music:
'A Saturday Night' by Chris Huelsbeck, used under a royalty-free license, please visit / chris_huelsbeck for more info!
Links:
PLA Chip - www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/PLA_(C6...)
GAL PLA Mordern PLA Replacement - www.freepascal.org/~daniel/c6...
Am I stupid poll - / @davepoo2
Chapters:
0:00 Unboxing
1:30 First look
2:48 A look inside
4:23 Boot test
5:08 Test voltages
5:48 Dead test cart
6:40 Fault finding
11:10 Removing PLA
12:30 Boot test
14:15 Keyboard problems
15:54 Game/sound testing
17:24 Check keyboard
17:45 Turrican II & closing comments

[@bitoxic]

Great to see it was a simple PLA fix.... soon the MT RAM should be swapped out as they will cause problems.

[@DavePoo2]

The ram has lasted 40 years so is actually doing really well. I won't swap it unless it fails.

[@chriswebb4162]

Well done. Great to see one of these terrific machines brought back to life.

[@DavePoo2]

Thanks, I really like how that one has turned out.

[@dr.ignacioglez.9677]

I LOVE C64 👍🥂🎩

[@MrJozza65]

Nicely saved! Looking forward to seeing what you can do with the keyboard.

[@DavePoo2]

Me too, hopefully fix it. It actually looks really clean and in really nice condition. I'd like to get it going.

[@patrickdeunhouwer5926]

yes again another broken PLA maybe just put away when the PLA long time ago broke since it still looks very good.

[@DavePoo2]

Another day, Another bad PLA

[@booboyBL]

You wuz robbed! I recently bought 2 working breadbins for £57 each (seperate sellers and not including postage), and both of them included PSU, cassette deck, joystick and a few tapes and manuals. I think I was particularly lucky although one of them had a dead SID chip, and the other one had a non working cassette deck. Good job saving yours though.

[@DavePoo2]

You got a good deal there. It's rare to find breadbins nowadays that still have working PLA chips in them.

[@booboyBL]

@@DavePoo2 Thanks and you are correct, I was lucky. As a precaution, I will be building some GalPla replacements. I have the PCBs and the DIP sockets, and I’m just waiting for the GAL20V8B chips to arrive from AliExpress. I also replaced the dead SID with an ArmSID, which works really well.

[@DavePoo2]

@@booboyBL oh yeah, the SID chips die in these too, it's surprising when you find ones that work. If your board has the older non MOS branded PLA then they are generally reliable.

[@nickolasgaspar9660]

MT RAM chips and PLA....change them before firing up a bread bin.... Lets watch the video and see if I was right.

[@DavePoo2]

1/2 right. The MT RAM chips get bad press but they are 40 years old and really at this point not expected to be working. There are 3 in here that are working fine, so I won't replace them unless they fail.

[@timetorelaxfocus9642]

Nice restoration so far. Looking forward to your keyboard restore video. Now you have a backup c64 to do videos with?

[@DavePoo2]

Yep, I've got a couple of good C64C's but I've got various breadbin C64's in various states, I think this one will be the most pristine when it's fixed up.

[@tenminutetokyo2643]

Jam in new ceramics.

[@DavePoo2]

Ceramic caps?

[@tenminutetokyo2643]

@@DavePoo2 All those little 104 or 473 ceramic capacitors - the ugly round orange ones. Yank 'em out and jam in some new tiny blue ones from Murata. Couple cents each. Also replace the 7805 with a TRS-1 2450 - $5. Runs much much cooler and you can dump the heat sink.

[@stephenwhite506]

Try cleaning the keyboard's pcb with window cleaner.

[@DavePoo2]

I've got IPA for that which I think will do fine. The theory is that the PCB will be quite clean and the dirt is probably on the carbon contact pads. But we'll see when I get into it.

[@SanguineBrah]

It looks like the free ram is lower when you boot at 14:55. Could there be an intermittent fault showing?

[@DavePoo2]

I think it had been taken by the cart that was plugged in (the book I was using as an insulator was hiding the cartridge).

[@DavePoo2]

But, good spot. I didn't think anyone would notice!

[@bordellobrotherz]

Nice vid. Take the keys off and rub the underside on a piece of paper. I did a keyboard last week that behaved like yours, works a treat now. You'll find that the actual membrane is pretty clean. Where did you get your magnifying visor from, I'm looking at getting something similar?

[@DavePoo2]

Thanks for the tip. I was quite shocked that it didn't work as the topside of the keyboard looks really clean, so it's probably been stored quite well. The visor is a cheapy from Amazon, but it's really useful. www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07JCFLSWP - It's a got a light that is crap, and a jewelers loupe that snapped off when I dropped them once. But the loupe is now actually quite useful as a macro lens that I can hold up to the camera lens to get close up video shots.

[@bordellobrotherz]

Thank you. Here's a link for key cleaning, I didn't explain it very well. It's at about 5:32. kzbin.info/www/bejne/mZ-tlWt-f5iHpM0

[@DavePoo2]

Thanks, I thought that's what you meant. However, there are few different designs of these keyboards inside, I've not opened this one up yet, but I suspect it could be the same as the one in that vid.

[@DavePoo2]

Thanks for the tip, it's a good one -> kzbin.info/www/bejne/goernIJpgKqEgZI

[@booboyBL]

I have 4 C64s (2 breadbin & 2 C64C), and I cleaned all the keyboard keys on a sheet of paper. Only 1 of the keyboards was bad though, but now all 4 work perfectly.

[@tiemanowo]

£72 for "untested" machine and nothing more (no accessories)? Little bit too much in my opinion. I can easily buy similar setup in Poland for about £50 or even less.

[@DavePoo2]

The shipping was £10 of the cost. And to be honest, i don't want any more of those original PSU's because they are pretty useless. Poland seems like the place to be to get cheap C64s!

[@DavePoo2]

I did also get that sweet RF cable as well

[@tiemanowo]

@@DavePoo2 But to be clear. I didn't mean that it was "waste of money" or something like that. Just a little bit on the "expensive side" :)

[@DavePoo2]

@@tiemanowo A C64 is never a waste of money!

[@AmigaWolf]

My father also bought also one C64 with original case and PSU and cables, same as yours, and is now also working great, he also bought 2 more and floppy drives, and i have repaired them all but one of the 3 floppy drives, i had to replace chips and mem, and i replaced all the caps of them all, now they are good as new.

[@DavePoo2]

Excellent work. I assume he also had bad PLA in his C64, not sure if there are any left that still work, and even if they do, they will just die sitting in storage. I've got a couple of 1541-II disk drives, and I did recap one of them, but so far they seem to work fine. I'll put them to use when I get this machine fully restored.

[@AmigaWolf]

@@DavePoo2 yeah, and the chip for the keyboard was broken, it was fun repairing old Commodore stuff, also recapped his Commodore Amiga 2000, and my C128D and more. Also a hobby for me.