Commodore 64 back to life.

My brother found an old Commodoe 64 in his basement, and asked me if i wanted to have it.

I got this box from him, it was very dusty, and yes that is a printer.
I was not sure what to expect, but went ahead and connected it to the TV, and it actually turned on.

I was quite surprised, i did not expect that, but i soon found a issue with it, Almost none of the keys on the keyboard was working, so it wasn’t possible to use it for anything other than the pretty blue screen.

I took it apart to see if there was something obvious wrong with it, but there wasn’t, so took the keyboard apart, and cleaned the print with some isopropyl alcohol, some of the soldering point didn’t look to good, so i gave them some new tin. i cleaned the rest of the Commodore

The bad soldering point on the Keyboard print.

Logic-board of the Commodore 64 after it has been cleaned, it was covered in a layer of dust and even some mouse droppings. this one has been modded with a reset switch.

There was a lot of dust under the keys, so removed them all, and cleaned under them. some of the keys where missing the springs so i have ordered some new ones from http://store.retroleum.co.uk/
I haven’t received them yet. but it is a easy fix.

Finally assembled, and the good news was that more of the keys where working now, but sadly not everyone, so was still not able to type “LOAD” on it, so i took it apart again and messuret on the keys that wasn’t working, and the connection was fine, and the problem was the connector you plug on to the logic board, it had some bad contact, so had to replace some of the pins, i used some from some RC connectors i had they did the job and it was now working perfectly, although it very yellow, i’m thinking about giving Retr0bright a go to see if that will make it nice again. but that will be a project for another time.

The Commodore has been cleaned and is now working. i think i will look into a SD card reader for it, because i don’t have many diskettes for it and many of them aren’t working, but still looking into which SD card solution i will go for, if you have any experience with it please leave a reply