Let's talk about RTC options once again 

Awesome!

@@necro_wareyou should be able to cook the resin casing in hot water too. Just be sure to put some glass shards on the bottom of the pan, so the chip won’t touch the bottom of the pan and burn itself. The same could be done for the C64 power supply.

Now, question, would be possible to instruct an MCU to pretend to be an RTC chip?

Yes, of course. I already investigated that option, but it would need quite a lot of work to replicate all timings and compatibility hacks. Currently it is probably not worth the effort, especially where old modules can be reused in the shown way.

Clone him

@@emuboy85 In the Mac world, the custom 344-0042B RTC was replaced by a pin compatible ATTiny85.

@@ukmk3supra I think it'll get there eventually on the PC side, but for now this option is the very definition of "good enough" in the sense it's cheap, flexible, and relatively easy even for a novice hobbyist.

I was shocked by this. It even isn't so much money to lose, so anger and frustration should lead them to such rattish move. They were probably full of anger of losing money and doing desperate things.

CUSTOMERS!!🤦 The other day they shouted at me because of the invoice amount from a company which sounds similar to the one I worked for. Even when I was the service engineer. Obvious violation of rule 142 "never mess with the service engineer"😁

Same! Thank you!

I had to heat up mine to a higher temperature (270°C) because otherwise the epoxy wouldn't break. I think my hot air station isn't powerful enough (I say this because I didn't even melt the plastic). Also yeah I had the same issue with the pin mangling. I think we should make some sort of tool to do the job properly and efficiently. Some sort of big clamp that would hold the chip firmly in place while letting the hot air flow on it, and maybe also something hard to protect the pins

@@Dxceor2486 That is what I was wondering when I saw this. Might it be easier to use a socket anchored to a board as a jig while you heat it and lift the shell off.

It's just a product that you would presumably replace on roughly the same timeframe as a normal CMOS battery. And the on-board SRAM allows you to use it to store CMOS settings or other parameters.

Soldering ensures no bad connection.

Soldering means a solid connection. Look at any pinball machine and you will quickly see that connectors are nothing but trouble. It's actually easy to remove a part that is soldered in. Smart people get some tools and learn. The rest (90%) throw it away and buy new.

​@@g4z-kb7ctit makes sense for something such as a pinball, that is not meant to be inspected by the average joe and is going to be mistreated for its whole life. It makes less sense for a PC where it's already filled with connectors. You fear the battery is going to loose connection in a machine where the CPU is in a socket, expansion cards are in slots, memory is socketed or in slots as well and the hard drive is connected to a pin header ? 😁 I guess it could make sense in a POS-style computer made for an industrial environment though

@@Dxceor2486 I think you've misunderstood my comment. Pinball machines have dozens of connectors and fail very often due to bad connections between the boards or other parts (switches etc). Connectors in general are a bad idea for anything that is being used or abused by a human.

@@g4z-kb7ct ah yes maybe, though what I meant is that I agree that for something abused like a pinball machine does indeed suffer from having connectors. However I think for a PC, it's just fine

Thank you very much!

I find most "engineers" know a whole lot less than they think they do. Perhaps an element of humility is in order here?

Oh, Peter! What a guest here! Glad to hear from you :)

When I build some kit or do some other soldering with a bunch of new through hole components I usually save a handful of cut legs exactly to have replacement pins for such repairs

Yes, I have small can full of old legs from all kind of parts for such things. That is of course also a good option.

@@necro_ware That is exactly why I collect cut legs from all sort of components. Especially resistor legs (1/2 watt or more) and electrolytic capacitors I find especially useful. That doesn't come without dangers though. Just this morning while walking around in my work area in the basement I felt a pain in my leg, and when I looked I had one such capacitor leg stuck in one of my toes. :P Must have missed it when I collected the leftovers from the motherboard I did a recap on a couple days ago.

@@stamasd8500 Magnet is your friend, I always keep one big old speaker magnet just for that purpose on desk, these legs are useful when building any prototype circuit.

Nearly all potting material is thermoset and has the properties described in the video. The only common exception is bitumen, it will melt and relatively cleanly leak out.

yeah most people think a crystal and an oscillator are the same thing lol. on the usual selling sites with smd 4 pin types they often say active / passive but most people don't know what that means either. The active ones are true 4 pin oscillators and passive ones are crystals with 2 pins not connected.

Yes, you are absolutely right. I even explained the difference between resonator and oscillator circuit in one of my own videos a long time ago, but I keep saying this. I have to stop doing it indeed. It took me also a while to stop calling the electrolyte in the batteries acid, despite that I know, that it is actually a base. People were always confused why I neutralize acid with acid, when I was using white vinegar. I'll try to improve next time ;)

@@necro_ware not to worry! 🙂 Great job finding the best way to remove case and potting from the RTC modules. The longer I think about them the more it seems they had a really daft idea at the time.

Ditto 🦉

So do I

same here

That's because the RTC (chip) isn't dead, just the on-board battery.

I just tried it and it worked a treat. TBH it doesn't really become brittle, it is more like it becomes malleable and soft, you can pry it off like putty.

😂 thank you very much. You just not see me crying out of fear behind the camera. That's why I always have to do it with my eyes closed.

Yeah i've done exactly the same. It was really nice of them to make the contacts at the very ends on the bottom side. Really easy to attached an external battery and save $30... wow they are expensive hehe!

LOL, of course! If you buy one from me you will. There is one problem though, I don't sell any :) Thanks for watching.

If it doesn't work, sell me.... I just need one.

A DS5000 is a 8051-compatible microcontroller with a battery-backed RAM inside. When the battery dies the RAM also clears and the code that was in there is gone forever. They are designed to self-destruct on purpose as a security device. We (as in MAMEDEV) had exactly the same issue when emulating/reversing the Gaelco arcade game World Rally Championship. Eventually the manufacturer provided the code and the game was emulated perfectly :-)

@@g4z-kb7ct ooo, interesting! I do know the System 16 boards, for example, with the dreaded "encryption modded" 68000. Seeing an arcade board with an 68k AND a DS5000 is quite cool :) I was very lucky in two ways with the device that contained the DS5000. The Battery wasn't dead yet, AND protection was not enabled! The manufacturer even designed the thing in a way to enter programming mode via the DB9 serial port it had (Well, like the datasheet recommends...). So I managed to get the configuration and memory contents out, hacked on a new battery (luckyly there's an image of the unpotted chip, so I could confidently dremel away.) I was quite stunned to find a device with such an advanced set of features from that time! - programming directly over a serial connection by simply sending an Intel Hex file. - Partionable Memory for different ROM/RAM configurations - Program readout protection (seemingly implemented in a way that even physical access to the SRAM Chip would'nt help) - integrated RTC The Datasheet and the document about this line of secure microcontrollers is a quite interesting read. FYI: The original programming software "KIT" runs flawlessly in DOSbox-X (tested on a Windows 10 host and FTDI USB to RS232 adapter)

​@@g4z-kb7ct yes, I'm quite familiar with the DS5000 now :) Interesting to see an arcade board with a normal 68k and the DS5000. I do know the System 16 boards, for example, with the dreaded "special sauce" 68k... The DS5000 totally surprised me with its feature set, regarding the time when it was created. The Datasheet, and the "Secure MC Userguide" by Dallas are a quite fascinating read. I was doubly lucky with the device I got, because the battery wasn't dead yet, AND the encryption was not enabled! So I dumped the content, installed a CR2032 holder onto the DS500 and re-uploaded the formware. (I even could merrily dremel away at the part, because there's a photo of the unpotted DS5000 without the battery and the 32kHz quartz). I even found another guy with the same but dead device, wich he could revive with my firmware dump! Initially,6 I did the backup/restore via a nortmal terminal program, but I can confirm, that the original config/programming/terminal software "KIT" runs flawlessly in DOSBox-X (Host machine was Windows 10 with a normal FTDI USB to RS232 adapter)

That dive would be probably too deep. I'm certified only for sports and hobby diving up to 45m ;)

that happened way before 90's. Started at least 20-30 years earlier.

I found an old post that says to use 1-methyl-2-pyrrolidinone. I bought some on eBay, soaked the chip, and a week later I came back and all the potting was dissolved.

​​@@owenmann1 THX 4 hint. But in EU this in no more allowed in EU, in Germany look: "The restriction stipulates that NMP may not be placed on the market as a substance or in mixtures in concentrations ≥ 0.3% from May 9, 2020" Paint and paint thinner are available without restrictions in Germany and can be handed in at the recycling center (municipality). Sry 4 my bad English.

That's true, but it is not too complicated to get the resin block out of the case on the C64 PSU. If you go with a knife along the edge and wiggle the walls of the the enclosure a bit, the block of resin will just fall out. This is how people usually fix those PSUs. The internals get removed and a new transformer with a DC-DC voltage regulator goes in place of the old resin block. Once you have that resin block out you could try to heat it up and see if it reacts in the same way. (Un)fortunately I have currently no broken C64 PSU at hand to try.

@@necro_ware Cool didn't know the bond between potting and casing was weakened by now. I have one Commodore PSU and it's entirely healthy so i'm not very inclined to go poking in it :D

@@SianaGearz I think his point is that the resin and plastic aren't necessarily bonded, just a very tight fit. They probably used a mold.

you can still do it now on a modern PC using dosbox

I was also surprised to see how good the heat worked. In regards of the new modules, I heard, that they are still produced somewhere in Philippines, however I was not able to find any in Germany. I could order some of those from U.S. but the shipping costs and taxes were too high. For some rare mainboards it is probably worth it, but in such cases I prefer to use my nwX287 module anyway. For everything else, extracting the chip from the old module is a great option imho.

Yes new modules are still being produced. You have been able to buy them from Digi-Key for at least 10 years. I bought one back in 2015 and also recently. I did a little research on this and Analog Devices owns the tech now as they bought Maxim previously. These ICs are used in the Industrial sector so I am sure that is the consideration here. They also still manufacture the 12885 and if someone wanted they could easily bend the pins and add the XTAL and battery holder on the back. But yeah the video shows a great solution to be able to reuse the old modules.

It's confusing that the new manufacturers continue to make the modules in such a way, they own the IP to the circuit so they could easily make the same design as Necroware's and save themself money on the assembly line too!

Absolut. Er ist halt auch einfach Klasse.

Clima neutral does not exists. It is a politician's fairy tale.

Yeah, unfortunately the lemons didn't get into the video this time ;) May be another day.

If you cut the lemon in 4 and use 4 pair of electrodes, and connect them in series, you can even get to 1.2V. That ought to last for a while longer :)

​@@necro_wareYes plz provide an open source lemon holder.

@@AncapDude He shouldn't do that! then people would get back to him complaining that their lemon is too SOUR!

For me at least, drilling precisely and cutting the internal connections with the spent battery is at least a 1h job. I just tried this method and it was only 10 minutes, and much less precision and stress were involved.

Yeah, especially if you count the delivery and import taxes to Germany. It's barely worth it, especially where I know how to make it use a normal battery :)

This is basically, what my old videos on this topic were about :)