Troubleshooting A Black Screen

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Don't Panic. Please wash hands.
  • I am trying to figure out why my Commodore 64 Reloaded MKII is showing a black screen. What is the usual way of troubleshooting this?


    My device powers up fine -- shows the green LED for 1 second. However, the display is blank.


    UPDATE1: Through swapping chips and turning on the C64 MKII I found out one of my 8521 CIA chips was faulty. Once I removed the chip, the initial screen displays, but no flashing cursor appears. I probably need to buy a new one CIA chip.

  • although this is solved, i should add perhaps: a good quick first test is to remove both CIAs and the SID - the C64 (not only MK2 :)) should start up with no blinking cursor (for that you need CIA1).

  • although this is solved, i should add perhaps: a good quick first test is to remove both CIAs and the SID - the C64 (not only MK2 :)) should start up with no blinking cursor (for that you need CIA1).

    I started getting the black screen again and I decided to try your quick test. I removed both CIAs and the SID chip and powered on and now the status LED on the MKII is now blinking. Does this mean one of the remaining chips now has a problem?

  • Quote

    I removed both CIAs and the SID chip and powered on and now the status LED on the MKII is now blinking. Does this mean one of the remaining chips now has a problem?

    no - this only indicates that one or more ICs could not be detected (which is quite expected when you removed them :=))

  • OK -- Apparently I've outsmarted myself. This morning I tried my MKII on another LCD screen that had component connections and managed to get the picture to show... I then recalled that my computer monitor NOW has an HDMI splitter that I've grown accustomed to auto switching to whichever HDMI input is powered on. For whatever reason it doesn't auto switch the S-Video to HDMI with this converter box I am using.


    To fix my "Black Screen" all I neeeded was to manually select the correct input... So, my issue is fixed now.

  • The last reply was more than 365 days ago, this thread is most likely obsolete. It is recommended to create a new thread instead.