SX-64 "portable c64" question

[Soviet Conscript]

recently aquired a sx-64 for free thats in decent shape

when i turn it on the screen lightrs up but thats it. it does not take me to commodore basic. tried adjusting the brightness to see if maybe it was just to bright but nothing (though it did indeed adjust brightness). i don't have any disks or carts with me to test the drive though.

does anyone know what the problem may be? do i need a disk inserted in the drive first? if so this is deffenatly diffrent from a basic c64

its a nice unit its a shame if its dead.

[jb143]

I seem to remember a similar problem with my C-64. I believe it had a bad video chip, which if I remember correctly is a pretty common problem. I replaced the chip(easy to do) and it's worked fine ever since.

You could probally also carefully type the correct POKE commands to see if you can get it to play a tone. That would at least verify that something works.

[evildragon]

on my C64, the glue chip fried and i had a hell of a time finding that.. replaced it and still works today, though i hardly touch it. ;)

[Dangerboy]

I had the same problem with mine, and found it was actually a dumb problem with an even dumber solution.

If you open up the shell, somewhere on the inside to the right, you'll see a board going into a larger board forming a T-Shape. That connection seems to always pop out loose, especially after transport. All you do is push it back into it's socket, and then put something behind it so it doesn't pop out, instant fix.

[Soviet Conscript]

I had the same problem with mine, and found it was actually a dumb problem with an even dumber solution.

If you open up the shell, somewhere on the inside to the right, you'll see a board going into a larger board forming a T-Shape. That connection seems to always pop out loose, especially after transport. All you do is push it back into it's socket, and then put something behind it so it doesn't pop out, instant fix.

hope mines problem is as simple as this, i'll open her up after work tonight and give a look. since there is a monitor built into the unit do i have to discharge it first as you would when opening a TV or pc monitor?

[Dangerboy]

Not that I know of. I didn't. >_>;

[Soviet Conscript]

nope, no dice. was hopeing it was as simple as a loose connection but everything inside seemed very solid. think i found that T part you were talking about but the boards were connected very solidly.