The Commodore 64
So I recently inherited a Commodore 64.
It feels wrong to consider that my first computer, since I was so young that my interactions with it were pretty much limited to Dad loading up Big Bird's Special Delivery for me. (Besides, I always give that distinction to the Macintosh Performa 575 we got at Christmas in '94.)
It had a problem, though: Some time in the mid-90's, it was taken out of storage and hooked up to play a round of games and it did fine for a few days, but then suddenly and mysteriously crapped out. And nobody knew why or what happened or how to fix it, so it went back into storage for another 25+ years, until just now when I ran across it and all of the peripherals (including a defunct modem and a guide to CompuServ) and thought "Hey, I'm pretty handy, I bet I can fix this thing. Normal people were supposed to be able to fix these things, right? It's not like it works right now, anyway."
At any rate, so far I've managed to:
- determine that between the shifting full-screen patterns displayed when it was plugged and the history of it's "breakage" (sat for years, worked for a few days, then stopped), the problem was likely a bad PLA
- order a new PLA (SlimPLA)
- somehow actually desolder and remove the old PLA intact
- solder a socket to the board because I seriously did not want to do that again
- install the new PLA
- be shocked when it all worked and it boots up to an actual, real live startup screen
- be confused over why cartriges won't load
- realize that the startup screen says "6143 BASIC BYTES FREE" instead of 38911
- take to the internet again to troubleshoot and figure out that the problem is a broken trace, which of course happens to be under the socket I just soldered onto the board
- scream and desolder/remove the socket
And that's basically where I am now, trying to decide on the best way to fix this stupid trace.
I've been pleasantly surprised, though, at how much of an online community exists around these old things. It's been amazing to be able to get not only all the diagnostic info, but actually find brand new replacement and upgraded parts.
At this point, my end goal is to get it a new power supply, get an RF/VGA converter (because your mom was right and I feel like sitting too close to that CRT screen is going to melt my eyeballs), and... possibly get this thing online? That would be pretty wild.