C64 gives black screen upon startup

[mr.soul]

I have a Commodore 64 that, when turned on, gives a dark screen with what look like two stripes running vertically down the right hand side. I can't give a really good description of the picture since I'm using a crappy RF cable for an output, and I haven't yet made an RCA cable for it (Radioshack didn't have the part I needed!)

If there is anyone who could lead me in the right direction as far as what to check on the inside I would greatly appreciate it. I've poked around and nothing really looks like it blew up, so I'm clueless.

Thanks!

[jb143]

No idea if this is your problem or not, but I know that the video chips in these have a tendency to go out. It's nothing you can really see looking at the board though. You basically just have to swap the chip and see if it works. Happened to mine years ago in high school. My electronics teacher used to be a computer repair guy and still had some chips lying around so it was an easy fix for me. I have no idea how easy it to get ahold of em nowadays.

Do you get sound? That would tell if there's a greater problem. Like if you run a cart game that has music on startup?

Or if you type really carefully, you could enter some basic sound code to see if it works. Something like this(untested, I found it on the net)...
POKE 54296,15:POKE 54278,240:POKE 54273,100:POKE 54276,33

[mr.soul]

Nope, no sound. I don't have any game cartridges yet either. I guess I should try to find one. I tried running a command to make a disk drive respond and that didn't work either.