Commodore 128 Repair Attempt Part 2 (Success!)

I finally stopped procrastinating and got back to repairing the C128 you saw in the videos before. I work through some of the viewers' suggestions to find the fault. Lots of detective work involved.

If you find this video helpful and/or entertaining please like, share, subscribe and/or consider a donation!

Thanks!

#JanBeta

[BedfordLevelExperiment]

It wasn't the ZX Spectrum that was used as a doorstop at Commodore; it was the predecessor, the ZX81 or Timex Sinclair 1000 which was even more wedge-shaped, and cheaper. The ZX Spectrum didn't see an official release in the USA, though the Timex Sinclair 2068 was closely related - and very unsuccessful.

[GadgetUK]

=D I knew you would get it working again! You must have missed my "mod carefully" video related to the Neo Geo - same issue with that system. But to be fair, that's the last thing you would have expected on this!!!! It would have taken me a while to find that for sure! Well done!

[RetroRecipes]

Don't cry, what a relief! Kudos to everyone that helped. Another great team effort, and well done Jan for persevering! Another beautiful old machine lives! 👍🎉🕹️

[game_whisperer]

Congratulations Jan. Nice to see the plucky little ZX spectrum helping fix a C 128.

[LeftoverBeefcake]

IT LIVES!!! I knew you'd fix it. And I learned from this video series to 1) always double check the polarity of capacitors, 2) always give hardware a thorough visual inspection before doing anything else and 3) watch the finished video first before shooting my mouth off on Twitter. :P

[Druman]

Dude, that is so crazy! I'm glad you finally got this one figured out, haha. What madness this was!

[BreakingBrick]

You haven't to apologize for your absence! You have also a life outside YT, you have also to earn money for a living.

But nice to see a new upload with a new special sound for cleaning.

Edit: changed live into life. Ortho.

[grotekleum]

I feel your pain. Thanks for sticking with it to the end - you won't forget that one!

[gregdunlap]

Yay - it lives! Glad you got it working again.

[DOSBoxMom]

Congratulations on the successful troubleshooting, Jan! And thank goodness so many of your other subscribers had such useful suggestions as to what to check! (I used Commodore 64s and 128s back in the day, but never got "under the hood" with any of them, just kept the outsides clean and blew dust out with spray cans of compressed air. Even with newer PCs, opening up the case to add RAM chips myself is a big deal, and anything beyond that my husband and I bring to the "Geek Squad" people at the computer store to take care of.)

[JeffSmith]

I learned a lot from all the repair videos, and nice to see now both CPU are socketed too, makes it worth more

[stephenhargreaves]

I onluy subscribed because I want a chance of the Apple PII2, but I've just spent a couple of hours on a Sunday morning watching your journey with the C128. You are also the first I've set up with a Patreon payment, like, ever. I love how you get it wrong so often, but motor on (you remind me of me, I get stuff wrong a lot as well). Kudos.

[RacerX-]

Way to go, Jan Beta!! Very happy you figured it out. Oh those bodge wires. If Commodore was still around I'm sure they would still be using them... lol. Well Done!

[MechaFenris]

I admire your tenacity and troubleshooting skills. I'd have given up 3 minutes into it. :)

LOVE your videos!

[AnimalFacts]

Well, at least you have the processors socketed out of all this :-)

[slaine]

Congratulations Jan. Tears of frustration and relief. Keep up the great videos, they’re really entertaining.

[stephenbruce]

Thanks for sharing. Close examination goes along way. I had a 128D that had a keyboard problem which drove me crazy. Had I examined the unit closely I would of seen the shorted pins on one of the control ports and it would of saved me several hours of frustrating work. Its all fun stuff. Happy to see you got the 128 working.

[robdaemon]

Awesome work! It helps to see others go through this stuff. I learned more about using my scope to detect faults watching you do this!

[lostindesolation]

I really loved this series! And to see a happy ending to it.
These kind of situations are so painful, when things break during a simple repair.
I'm impressed that you persisted till the end.

Also, you don't have to apologize for your absence. Life is more important than youtube.

[vladeb]

First of all - congratulations, i think we were all waiting for that!!! I have one tiny thing to say - you were checking signals and you deducted that one pin signal is too low. It would be a great thing for some inexperienced people like me to show same thing on the workable c128 to show us the difference. I now it takes time so treat my comment like a really wee suggestion.