Great RU-vid video! The blue box was used by production to load a test program that was run while the motherboards were in burn in. It clips onto the 6502 on the motherboard. It forces the 6502 to boot into the ROM in the blue box. The ROM copies itself into RAM and jumps into the RAM code to continuously test the motherboard. I think it shows a graphic of the motherboard and what chips are failing. I came up with this idea to help the production folks. The brown connector goes on the keyboard and the green connector goes on the user port. It would be cool to see if this blue box still works. I also sent you a book from amazon about the early years at Commodore.
Thanks for all your hard work at Commodore! I had a C-64 and I did so much with it programming in Basic and Machine Code. Without the VIC there wouldn't be the 64 and without the PET there wouldn't have been a VIC. Take care and this was really neat stuff to see.
Bill, I corresponded with you about Spacewar in 1990-1991 when I was in the 8th grade. :) I still have the XT technical reference that you sent me! Thanks for encouraging me all those years ago. Once the current unpleasantness subsides and I have a reason to visit the Bay Area (where I lived for 12 years before moving away in 2017), let's have a beer!
@@billseiler681 Sorry for the hijack, i have a Bootloader II board with a 901447-18 ROM chip in it. All i could find online is one comment on a site listing cbm roms where it's labeled as "COMMODORE PET ROM TESTER". The form factor is white ceramic with gold and the date code is 2179. Do you have any idea what that -18 ROM is for?
For those who don't know, Bill Seiler was one of the earliest C= engineers on the PET. He was hired by Chuck Peddle (who poached him from Allied Leisure, at the time an electromechanical arcade game company), and Bill was instrumental in the hardware bring-up of the original SRAM and later DRAM pets, and was also one of the engineers behind both the ill-fated TOI prototype, and he contributed greatly to the hardware that became the VIC-20. He would later leave with Chuck Peddle to found Sirius Systems Technology, and produce a machine that would be called the Sirius-1, which was called the Victor 9000 in the US. This box contained lots of interesting stuff. You're very lucky, Adrian.
When I was in the 8th grade (around 1991) and a lonely kid in the middle of the country obsessed with 8088 assembly language, I saw Bill Seiler's name in the credits for the Spacewar MS-DOS shareware game, and struck up a pen-pal correspondence with him. We chatted a few times and he even sent me a copy of the entire XT reference manual. I didn't find out until years later how enmeshed he was with Silicon Valley history! I definitely need to reach out to him to thank him properly for encouraging me all those years ago.
44:20 If some of the floppies are unreadable, here is a trick I did with deteriorated C64 floppies which could not be read at all, the success rate was nearly 100%: put on gloves, cut open the case, and cut open a brand new, well-stored disc's case. Place the bare disc on a piece of soft paper towel, spray some Windex on the disc (I'm in Europe, so I used Clin :) ) but don't let it soak, instantly wipe it thoroughly (but gently) with an other paper towel in a circular pattern. Repeat this on the other side, than let the disc dry for an hour (might be a good idea to bake it in an oven at about 40°C, my discs don't needed it) put the cleaned disc inside the case of the new disc, and read it. Don't use the original case as the slip-sheet in it is probably contaminated with a lot of free magnetic particles and/or mold, which could stick back onto the disc surface again. You can use the one new disc case for dozens of cleaned discs, you don't have to sacrifice a new disc for each cleaned disc. This method removes the top layer of the magnetic particles which became liberated due to the deteriorated binder, which causes constant dropouts during reading as the particles getting stuck temporarily between the head and the disc surface and/or clogging the head gap. Some discs may develop sticky-shed syndrome, in this case you have to bake them after cleaning, then you have about 12-24h to save them before they become sticky again. I was lucky, because non of my discs needed baking. I saved the contents of at least 20 discs until now, and even completely unreadable discs became 100% readable. The few that still had some bad blocks on them after cleaning, had mechanical surface failures (scratches, bumps, etc). Good luck!
@@countzer0408 Indeed! Important for preservation. If the methods listed above work, that would help other people recover data from 5 and a quarter disks.
@@countzer0408 I'd like to see that as well, it worked like a charm for me. I had mostly Parrot branded discs with this failure, but also some 3M, BASF and unbranded ones. I might do a video about it in the far future, I still have a bunch of C64 discs that were stored in basements and attics, pretty sure there are some good candidates amongst them. Main problem is my 1541 got badly damaged years ago by mice during storage. I've bought a second 1541, but that's not working either. A simple board swap would solve this, as my original 1541's board is fine, but I want to repair both. Damn mice ate the cable of the R/W head, and pissed on the metal chassis which is now solid rust on a big patch. Thankfully the board and the mechanism itself are fine. Don't know what to do with the super fine, super flexible head cable, they ate it right where it bends. I will try to stole a head cable from a dead PC drive, but those are usually much shorter, and I think the solder joints and the end of the cable is covered in resin on the C64's head. On the 'new' one the CPU is not doing anything, I've done some preliminary measurements, and my suspect was one of the ROM chips or the CPU itself. There was a bad TTL chip in it as well, IIRC a 7406.
@@penguinsushi8442 Please note that it probably won't be that successful on higher density floppies. Maybe even not on PC formatted 360k DD discs, surely not on HD discs. The C64 floppy format with its very low density of 170kB per side is quite forgiving.
That was a tremendous episode. You touched on a topic dear to my heart. It was really different back then, there was "magic" in the air. These were the early years of ordinary people being able to have a computer at home, and to write, and debug programs instantly. Contrast that to my high school computer class ... we penciled in "punch" cards, sent them to a computer in another town... maybe two weeks later you got your cards back, telling you it failed on the tenth card. Debug your program, pencil in a new card(s), repeat sending the cards away. Basically you could spend a whole semester doing two or three simple programs. Home computers opened up a whole new world, at a cost that many could afford.
Assuming the case is ABS you can use acetone to solvent weld it back together. It will create a stronger bond than a lot of pure glues (it's effectively melting the ABS back together) but a big downside is it can damage the surface finish if you're not careful. That said for parts that you can't see (ie. standoffs, clips, screw posts) it's not a big deal and it works great in my experience. Obviously acetone is a fairly strong solvent so practice all reasonable precautions. If I were trying to repair the case here I'd try holding the two pieces together somehow and then sparingly apply solvent along the crack on the inside surface using a syringe. The acetone will get pulled into the crack via capillary action and will melt the two surfaces together. Once the acetone is in there use finger pressure to hold the two pieces together and wait maybe a minute for it to start bonding then leave the whole thing alone overnight to let it reach maximum strength.
Yellow ABS glue for drain pipes also works real well to glue ABS. It's essentially acetone with a few other solvents and ABS plastic itself dissolved in the glue as a gap filler
I use a very small amount of Xylene to refix cases, same theory. Acetone is less dangerous I guess but I haven't use it. Xylene can give you a join so good you can't tell it was ever broken
The C64 case is made from ABS. So instead of adding glue, you can fuse the parts together by "melting" them with solvent. I have had really good results with ethyl acetate. You might remember my recent thread on Twitter where I restored the cracked case of my Zenith eaZy-PC. But you can also try using MEK or acetone, whatever is easier to get.
acetone works well and creates a weld as opposed to a glue joint. You can either use it directly or dissolve a little ABS into acetone to create a slurry that can be applied to the joint
So basically, use some sticky tape to hold the pieces together on the top, then brush on acetone on the backside? I do have some already so I think it's going to be worth a try!
@@adriansdigitalbasement That might work as well. If not even better. Just take care the solvent doesn't accumulate between the plastic and tape, that would ruin the surface. I carefully (well, not on the floppy...) applied the ethyl acetate to the edge and then pressed the parts together. I only used the tape later to hold them together while the plastic cures, so they don't spring apart again. In my case (pun intended) it was a crack, not a part completely broken off, so I had to force the crack shut against the internal tension. Also, here's a monitor I also had to repair some time ago: twitter.com/kpanic/status/1099029611957108736 Unfortunately the solvent dissolved some of the black conductive paint on the inside of the case, which then crept into the crack making it pretty visible.
You should be able to read the 2040 formatted disks with a 1541. With a x1541 cable and a software like Star Commander, OpenCBM or CBMXfer you should be able to pull the software from the disks. Then you can run it from your SD card device. EDIT: Now that I've watched further, I see you came up to this idea by yourself... :D This definitely should work. EDIT2: Okay, I see, I should really stop commenting before watching the whole video m(
Thank you for this video. I remember the price tag for my Commodore, 1540 Drive, and the screen. It was pretty large, but my dad helped al lot. Because I grew up disabled as a small child, due to an accident, and he knew it would help me, and it did big time. At the time I was taking classes in college and writing Basic programs. I was able to help my first child learn after i wrote a basic program teaching Numbers, Alphabet, and Shapes. I was extremely happy I was able to do my homework at home. And on weekends I did a lot of work.
Perhaps Bill actually helped PET-Shack out with advice or documentation and they sent him a free copy as thanks or even for approval or error checking? Fantastic haul, I'm jealous ;)
Such a great video. Sent me back to my young days at university. 1981-1984. At university we still used punch-cards and batch-processing… we used to write our code on coding-sheets, and some old and kind ladies would type onto punch-cards. Only the very brave or foolish students (like me)would actually type in code, and the next day you would get your printout…😂😂😂 ok in 1982 the university upgraded to an IBM 4331 and we moved to 3270 terminals. But where I worked during holidays, we had a Commodore PET running ATE software on which I learnt so much. Managed to get them to purchase a dual-floppy drive, and during holidays, upgraded the ATE-software and learnt programming, which more often than not, left me with egg on my face trying to show off. In the chief-engineer’s office there was an Apple II, where I had another less-than-successful programming project going on using UCSD-PASCAL. The good old days, or maybe not, lol
Now this was really neat stuff to see. You scored on the Early Commodore PET Items , I would Love to see the Blue Box Working . I Sure hope you get the Program Files up on the Internet in a Few different Places , Thank you for your Curating , Collating , storing and Video Work and getting the Software Archived . The World needs more People doing this . Great Stuff :) QC
16:50 : Me: " Wow that looks pretty comprehensive and detailed." 17:00 : Adrian: " It helps you probably ... if you are a total novice..." Me : *sadface* ... :D
I can't believe that I started to follow this channel because of some TSR-80 repair videos - and now it's easily one of my favourite channels. Keep it up, Adrian! PS Happy Canada day.
hi adrian i enjoy your videos and do not shorten them because you get a few moaners as you say at the end if you enjoy then thumbs up i think a lot of you viewers will agree your vids are interesting and informative and you take your time to help people who are stuck fixing there own computers
I mailed lead bullets from Alaska, where I lived, to North Carolina, where I was moving. The boxes (four of them) were about 70 pounds each and they were somewhat destroyed when they got here. I had double-bagged the bullets inside the boxes in tyvek envelopes, so I didn't lose anything. These were JUST the bullets (the lead parts) not loaded ammunition.
love the entusiasm before it starts, short video ;) i love the long ones and watch every minute.. so much love for your digging into the subjects in such details.. loves the repair video and learning a lot every time.. hope you live forever or until im done ;)
The disk that said Butterfields, I wonder if that refers to fellow Canadian Jim Butterfield? He was big into programing and writing for computers during that time. Especially Commodore.
@@adriansdigitalbasement I don't think he worked for Commodore. He was a tech journalist at the time. He wrote a number of books on Commodore computers. Mostly about machine language programing. He was also a contributor to Compute! magazine in the early days. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Butterfield
Wow, that broken case is an interesting one. If I had to fix that top part, I would 1. use silicone somewhere else on the surface to get an imprint of the plastic's texture. 2. glue on the missing part. 3 sand down the seam a little bit deeper than the surface. 4. fill with a plastic filler. 5. use my silicon imprint to recreate the texture in the filler. 6 mask off the labels and most of the top case and leave a large window over the glue job. 7. cloud-paint the seam with an airbrush. Should be invisible to the unsuspecting eye. I once used this technique to restore a very-very heavily broken-into-pieces Amiga top case and it turned out very nice and strong (I even used shredded-to-powder plastic from another case mixed with glue to re-create some missing parts). Amiga cases are also very brittle with age. I'd love to see how yours turned out :) Cheers.
Totally blown away by this video of Bill's donations. Would love a full size copy of the PET schematic! I know of several printers that could print out a copy, but none that could scan it in one go. Perhaps get a high resolution photo of it. Uploading everything to archive.org (and Zimmerman) would be excellent. 🇨🇦
My favourite way to glue anything is to apply clear nail polish on both sides of the pieces (any material really), then use super glue to get the seams together. Nail polish adheres to most things, super glue adheres to nail polish.
Commodore cases are made with ABS plastic. I’ve had very good results with the Loctite Plastics Bonding System. It has two things, a “marker” with heptane (I think) for preparing the joint, and the superglue made for plastics. I broke the entire corner off a pristine C64 bottom case, and that stuff fixed it with a very strong bond. If the break is really clean you might be able to hide the seam, but if not there is the option of painting the case so the primer and paint hides the seam.
I had to rewatch this. You only made it through two of the three boxes. Surely we need to see that third box. Enjoyed every minute of this video. You provide context that is immensely important.
2 very generous donations there, nice to see that commodore stuff with the personal connection to the company via Bill. Just picking up on your comment about self repair, I suspect that part of the reason manufacturers don't give out the details is to stop Joe public from jumping in an potentially hurting themselves then claiming damages. Back in the day people had common sense and wouldn't necessarily dive in whereas these days it's your fault I hurt myself being a dumbass.
Thanks Adrian and Bill! That was quite enjoyable to watch. Brought back memories of typing programs in in my middle school PET computers and learning BASIC. By the way, if you haven't tried it, I'm guessing from the coding that "Burrow" program looks like a star character moves randomly and leaves a mound in its path.
Some Common BASIC Programs for the Commodore PET is a book. Cursor was a tape magazine for the PET, a lot of popular programs mostly games, some animations and a few productivity and learning programs - some were converted to the 64.
I've fixed pins on chips by soldering them into a socket ... it makes for the resulting pins to be nice and strong, and immune to soldering heat (e.g. desoldering if you had soldered a pin in place.) It's just another option if you're interested.
Hi Adrian, I would place a piece of good sticking tape over the gap of the breadbin and make sure to press the tape firmly along the fracture line so no glue can bleed to the top, maybe mask of the top of broken piece to protect against glue, Then place the case top side down on the table make sure you have a firm underground don't do it on an ESD mat, now you have the sticky side of the tape that you applied on the top, apply a little CA either on the broken piece or the case put the piece in place, the tape would help you aline so the piece is not glued to high nor too low and the stickiness from the tape will hold the piece in place while the glue is curing. Leave it a couple hours before removing the tape and hope the tape prevented glue squeezeout on the top and that the tape itself leaves no marks. Maybe do a test on some scrap pieces of the same material Good luck and thank you for your nice videos. Edit: Forgot to say if you mask off the top of the broken piece you may need to apply two layers on the case , for the first layer cut the tape along the fracture line and the apply the second on top of the first but don't cut this layer, now you have a good reference otherwise the piece would sit a tape thickness to low.
That is crazy on those printers. I have a brother monochrome laser printer that my dad bought for around $70. Still going strong, and the toner/drum replacement is like $30. I remember buying a Panasonic printer in the 90’s as an open box special at Best Buy for around $200 🤣
The case is likely ABS plastic, so just use CA glue or make your own ABS cement. Take broken ABS bits, throw them in a blender, chuck them into a mason jar and fill with acetone. LEt it dissolved and you will basically have chemical ABS weld.
I came here for the Tang! As a type 1 diabetic, I appreciate the link to sugar-free drinks. I found that you can order 3 (2 liter) packets at a time on amazon, so I am going to try out some flavors. Thanks, Adrian!
One unbeatable thing USA has is the quality of its printed magazines; I was totally mesmerized back in the 80s (here in SouthAmerica it was very difficult and expensive to get the imported mags) by the color, satin pages, variety of content, typography and even the ads looked great and were interesting to read! And the best thing about US mags is they still ARE quite fascinating to read 40 years later!
The little 8-pin DIP MC741CP is a bipolar op-amp. Like the 555 timer, this is still a very useful little device even today. There was also a much less common 14-pin DIP version, though it still only contained a single op-amp.
This is just awesome, I love watching your videos and learning all the crazy stuff that could be done with the old micros. I think this stash is worth making a page on internet archive so it can be kept forever. I would have prints made of the schematics and hang them in my office :)
I'd probably hold the broken piece in place by gluing some strips across the crack from the backside, so no glue is then visible from the top. Then maybe some worktop colorfill could fill any small gaps? if you can get a matching colour, or mix one to match.
Love the extended Videos as one can skip around at any time. Hey, I have a 2031, 4040 and 8050 Drive that I'm going to also pull out of the garage next week...we'll see how well I've stored them. -Mark.
"I wonder if that building is still there?" I live in the next town over from West Chester PA where Commodore once lived. Their old address, 1200 Wilson Drive is now the TV studios of QVC so no, its no longer there sadly.
The problem with the CP/M option for the C64 is that, for most of the machines, it didn't work. The cartridge for CP/M had to include the Z80 processor, and only early versions of the C64 could provide enough power for it.
You can still buy IC test clips on the open market. I just found a couple of 8-pin, 28-pin, 14-pin, and a few other variants thereof at Newark, Amazon, and a few other places.
As a kid in 1981, I (or maybe my mom) paid $5 for one Apple branded disk to use in my after school computer class. They gave me a couple of Apple stickers, as well, but it wouldn't surprise me if that Apple dealer was ripping me off.
I had a 32K "New ROM PET" in the late 70s. I also had a copy of Eastern House Software's PET Rabbit - at first the cassette, just like in the box, then later, the "ROM Rabbit". I only had a single tape drive on my PET. We couldn't afford a disk drive because while the PET was $1100 new, the CBM floppy drive was still $1295 over a year later (2040 then the 4040). Tapes were reliable and inexpensive but slow. The PET Rabbit was great for quick loading, plus it included a couple of extra commands in the ROM version to filll out the remainder of the 2K space. The only disadvantage was that the format was proprietary to Eastern House Software and nothing else could read it. This mattered later when the VIC-20 and Commodore-64 came along and supported the original PET tape format. My Rabbit tapes couldn't be read on newer hardware but my regular PET tapes could. That made it harder to copy and preserve everything, but wit some extra work (manually loading and re-saving) I eventually migrated my programs.
Hey Adrian, could you do a series of videos going into the various bus architecture of the old machines. So command, memory,address etc. Can you go into waveforms and PCB layouts? That would be really cool, and you'd be raising the level of overall geekdom of us viewers. Think how much better we'll all sleep knowing how the C-46 addressed ram.
