What Do I Do Behind The Scenes?

[@RudysRetroIntel]

Excellent video and work! Love the bonus part! Thanks for sharing, and let me know if you need help with the PET repairs

[@YARC-1981]

I thought you might like that bit. 😆 Thanks for watching and I'll definitely keep that offer in mind.

[@MarcusLlewellyn]

Thanks, this was fun! Was neat to see a silver label VIC-20. I have one as well, and it also still works, sadly. 😉

[@YARC-1981]

Glad you enjoyed it, Marcus. That's my 3rd gold label. I actually have more of those than rainbow labels (well, it would be a tie if I hadn't sold one rainbow). The first two had power problems when I got them, so I ended up replacing the rectifier and regulators on both. One of them had RAM issues as well. But those were before I had a channel. One of those two is the machine I installed c0pperdragon's VICdigitizer into in a recent video.

[@YARC-1981]

Just a quick update, kiddos. I tried again to get a VIC-20 to fix for you. Bought a VIC-20 and 1541 disk drive locally through FB Marketplace for $50 US yesterday. Hooked it up this morning. Wanna guess what happened? Yep, you got it. Worked first try and passed the full diagnostic harness test. I just can't lose for winning. I'll keep trying to get you guys a VIC-20 video.

[@donaldblakley6796]

Great video bud.. very informative. I have 3 vic20s myself. One is gold label... 2 are later one's... bought a couple parts motherboards... and only one good vic... soldered in. The other one.. paddles don't work.. the one I bought complete.. which I'm retrobrighting now.. has sound issues. I do not have a diagnosis test for these... do they test the vic chip? That chip does alot compared to 64

[@YARC-1981]

The VIC-20 diagnostics ROM is a bit rudimentary compared to the C64 version. When you ask whether the diagnostics test the VIC chip, certain aspects of it are tested. It runs a sound test, but it doesn't test paddle input (as far as I can tell). It doesn't "test" the video, but you would obviously see if there are issues there. It tests RAM and ROM, keyboard, serial port, joystick, timers, IO edge detection and a few other things. And yes, the VIC is doing a lot. It's basically the VIC-II and SID rolled into one (or, more properly, the VIC was separated out into the VIC-II and SID for the C64). But it has fewer video modes, no bitmap graphics, no hardware sprites and a much less complex sound generator.

[@JimsRetroStuff]

Cool video. What software are you running on the tablet to act as a stream deck?

[@YARC-1981]

It's actually ElGato's software. The thing that sux about it is that it's subscription based. Costs $2.99/mo. Thanks for watching!

[@michaelstoliker971]

Clean it and re-cap it.

[@YARC-1981]

Clean and recap what? The TI-99? It's been cleaned and, so far, doesn't show any signs of needing re-capped.

[@YARC-1981]

Oh. You're talking about the VIC-20. I'll clean it and retrobright it later. It doesn't need re-capped. Those old caps are just fine.

[@michaelstoliker971]

@@YARC-1981 Probably, but there are many retro channels that call it future proofing so it was just a suggestion if you were looking for something to do.

[@michaelstoliker971]

Do something different? Get an Atari.

[@YARC-1981]

Which Atari would you suggest? I've already worked on a couple of 2600's and a couple of 800's on the channel. I haven't worked with any of the later models (XL, XE, etc...).

[@michaelstoliker971]

@@YARC-1981 The 800 is a beautiful beige tank, but I'd recommend an 800XL for the memory expansion options. I've just recently bought a reproduction 1090XL which plugs into the parallel bus and allow memory and an 80 column video card to be plugged in. The 1090 was almost ready to market in 1984 when Atari abruptly cancelled it. Dumbest of many dumb things Atari did.