Huge Find o' goodness + anyone know how to fix C64?

[AB Positive]

I plopped down $60 of my eBay money for a ton of boxes of VG stuff someone wanted to move. I thought the C64 stuff might have some goodies but unfortunatly it's mostly common stuff...

HOWEVER, when I opened the suitcase of "Boring console stuff" as he put it:

Coleco Gemini - no box but instructions and otherwise complete and working. The joystick/paddle combo is nice.

Sears Telegames Super Arcade (INTV) - Also bare but working w/ original controllers and everything

2 2600 4-switches - all working

Some common Atari games, except for the XONOX Artillery Duel/Spike's Peak (R7/$40)

There were also a couple of Colecovision games, cart only, being War room and Campaign '84 (R6/$30)

There was also a loose Arknoid controller for the NES rather randomly in there.

Also a Super Sketch Jr. for the Commodore I can't seem to figure out.


Now, for the C64 bit... I got 2 C64 units, a VIC-20, and a Commodore 128. The 128 won't power up, and I can't get carts or disks to work properly with the C64s at all. The disk drives will power up and load, but the disks won't run properly. Would this be more the disk or drive's problem. Anyone knowing where I could look up C64 refurbishing sites, I'd be rather grateful, 'cause I want to play the Zork series I have on it


All in all, I think I did well with this!

-AG

[SFCfan]

If it says READY after loading, type RUN and press enter.

[maxlords]

I don't know, but I can get a boxed mint new C64 from a local shop for cheap

[AB Positive]

If it says READY after loading, type RUN and press enter.

I've done this and often it drops back to the original blue screen only with no lettering and freezes.

Or it'll load up only the graphics will be severly garbled. This is on the disk games.

I have no clue what I'm doing really, thinking of just dumping the C64 boxes to someone for $20. Even paying $40 I made value back on what I got

-AG

[Flack]

If you wanted to sit down and walk thru this, we could probably figure out the problem.

Are the 2 C64's and the 128 using different disk drives, or the same? Are you using the same diskettes, or different ones?

First thing I would do is pick up a C64 cart game. That'll get around the entire drive train (literally). Throw in an old Tapper cart or something, that'll test the graphic and sound chips. (Just reread your message, you said you couldn't get a cart to work -- what did it do? Is it a known good cart?)

Old Commodore disk drives had a tendency to go out of alignment if not treated nicely. Disks written to by that drive may read, but disks from other drives may not. Also, if you have a bad disk, it's going to test bad on all the systems. If the drives are out of alignment they won't load your Zork disks.

I'll be thinking, let me know more details as to what it's doing. If the drives actually load the games without erroring out, it sounds like a computer problem, although what are the odds of all three computers having the same problem?

[AB Positive]

The 128 won't power up at all so it's out for trying to work...

The 64 using a cart would just show a black screen no matter which game I used. However I didn't try cleaning it and I have no idea if the discs are good.

is it possible to visually check if a drive is out of alignment or not?

I've used a VIC-1751, a regular 1751, and the 128 style disc drive with each 64 with no avail

-AG

[JLukas]

Here's a great tech site about C64 drive and other problems:

http://personalpages.tds.net/~rcarlsen/cbm.html

The C64 drive is very picky, a bad disk will throw the reading mechanism out of alignment, then no other disks will work period. I remember using a solution from that site however its been so long I don't remember what. It was an easy fix though (no opening anything or soldering)

[soupforare]

Drop it, flat, from about 3 feet on to a carpeted floor. That's my #1 fixall for commies.

The chips like to wriggle out of their sockets.

Good luck,
-soup

(edit)P.S. If you decide to give up, I might know someone who'll take them off your hands