Commodore 128 - Part 1

I bought something off eBay about 2 weeks ago now and it arrived yesterday:


As the title suggests - a Commodore 128.  I've wanted a Commodore 64 or 128 for a long time but they always seemed quite expensive on eBay.  This one is a complete gamble.  Sold as is - untested - due to there being no power supply and video cable to test with.  It was however priced appropriately for a change and in Australia.  So I rolled the dice.  The auction included just the unit itself and a copy of the Commodore 128 System Guide:



The outside cover is a bit poor but the inside pages are like new.  Interesting British stamp printed on the front.  I also found a note inside the guide on a bit of paper about how to load a program from disk.  What was interesting about this hand written note was the paper the note was written on:



Check out that offer expiry!

I have a power supply and video cable en route which I'll put some more info up on when they arrive - as well as seeing whether the unit powers up and works or not.

The first thing I did when this guy arrived was open it up.  To my untrained eyes it looks as though it hasn't been opened since it was built in the mid 80's.  Even the heat grease on the main ICs that touch the large metal shield to act as a heat sink looked original.  Apart from the yellowing of the top half of the case it is in pretty amazing physical condition inside and out.  There was just a little bit of dust on the inside (not bad for a life of just under 30 years).  Nothing a quick clean couldn't fix:


I've got a few other things I'd like to buy/try and build for this guy but am holding off doing anything else until the power supply and video cable arrive to see whether this bad boy works or not.  Fingers crossed!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Installing OpenGD77 on an Retevis RT3s

Image
So the Brisbane Amateur Radio Club (BARC) that I joined has been playing with a few different digital modes - and one of them is Digital Mobile Radio or DMR.  The club's page on DMR has some information on how they got started, the radio most members have bought (Retevis RT3S) and there is also a page with code plugs configured with local repeaters to help get people going. The RT3S is a pretty cool little HT for $80-90.  It's UHF/VHF, has GPS, APRS (TX only) and DMR support - and it runs OpenGD77 - an opensource firmware that a number of club members have flashed their HT with. This all looked pretty cool - so last week I ordered an RT3S off the Retevis eBay store and it showed up a few days later.  I opted for the pack with the programming cable:   The radio itself is built pretty well with my only complaint being it doesn't have USB-C (or any direct DC) source of charging.  You need to stick it in the dock that it comes with.  I'll continue to l...
Read more

Installing DD-WRT on a TP-LINK TL-WR842ND

Image
I love playing with routers and network gear in general - who doesn't?  In the past I've never run the same router at home for long while I swap them out with different software and/or hardware.  This has slowed a bit lately due to life, but hasn't completely stopped. I ran an early model WRT54G with DD-WRT for a while a number of years ago.  That was my last foray into DD-WRT (it's been pfsense and now routeros since).  I wanted to give DD-WRT another go and so started looking through my box of bits to see what I might have that would work.  After a bit of digging in the parts box and reading online I soon realised most of my gear would run DD-WRT, but a 'micro' build.  I'm interested in having a play with some of the extra stuff that DD-WRT has to offer so I needed something with a little more Flash and RAM. DD-WRT openly recommend a TP-Link TL-WR740N to start with, and for $19AUD from a local store it's a pretty awesome recommendation.  Gett...
Read more

Baby Monitor LCD Repair

Image
Pretty quick post about my morning repairing the baby monitor that we were given for our new born last week.  It's an Angelcare AC401 (sensor pads not pictured): It's only issue was the LCD display.  It started out just missing a segment or two when our friends were still using it, and slowly progressed until the display was almost useless: We were gifted the monitor, as our friends kids are past that age - which saved us a chunk of $$ on a new one.  So I set about opening it up to see what sort of connection the LCD display was using to see if I could reseat/reconnect it to get the LCD working 100% again: Once it was apart the cable to the LCD was clearly visible, and was just one of those glued ribbon cables.  The best link I could find about repairing one of these is from  Instructables .  I followed that, using a peg to hold the display where I needed it while working on it: I got out my heat gun and put it on the lowest setti...
Read more