scottyau

After getting the 1541 sorted, I thought "What C64 setup would be complete without a dataset?"  They are dirt cheap on eBay and I managed to pick one up with its original box no less for little more than the cost of postage.  The seller even confirmed before sending it that he had connected it up to his C64 and loaded a tape and it had worked first go.  It turned up pretty quickly too: While looking around to see what common faults these guys had prior to it arriving I was surprised to see that it was mainly just the rubber belts (if anything) that fail, with the head, capstan and pinch rollers needing cleaning as well .  There's one belt for the main drive, and one for the little counter on the front.  I ordered one of each as part of another order and waited for them to arrive.  Once they did, it was time to crack this guy open and have a look: These things are super simple - and thus quite easy to take apart.  Four screws on the bottom...

So what have I been doing since the last post - playing some solid C64 that's what.  It hasn't skipped a beat since I put it back together at the end of the last post.  I've been playing some games, writing some BASIC and just generally getting reacquainted with the C64.  I haven't stopped on the hardware side of things though.  Like I mentioned previously I've bought a few accessories, and now the system is running it's time to work through them.  The first being this guy: It's a beast of a thing!  Just like the C64 itself, instead of paying top dollar for something in mint condition I took a punt on something that was listed as "found in storage - sold as is".  The unit looked like it had been sitting on a shelf in a garage for a long time.  Instead of firing it up - I opened it up to have a look before plugging it in: It was dirty - but actually in pretty good condition.  I kept pulling it apart so I could give it all a goo...