Posts by dansalvato

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Don't Panic. Please wash hands.

    My latest update is that 3.16k seemed pretty stable, but the solder pad has weakened on the motherboard and the solder just doesn't want to stick anymore. It's kind of a bummer since that sort of thing is pretty much beyond my expertise to repair. I might have to commission a local electronics shop to do it or something, but for now I just have to suggest 3.16k as a solid "maybe". Sorry my skills haven't really been up to the task - even though my tools are somewhat better now, I think I had already somewhat damaged it from my previous attempts, so it's just not really holding up anymore. If you have any workaround tips for worn out solder pads, I'm happy to continue this.

    My C64 has been on the shelf for a while, but I recently decided to start using it again and am surprised to find the video signal quite stable after several days of power. There is some slight wiggling of the scanlines, but it hasn't destabilized. I'm still using the previous resistor values that I reported.


    I'm going to be removing them and soldering new resistors in to make sure that I do a better job and eliminate "bad soldering" as a variable here. I have a couple better pieces of equipment compared to last time. I'll update everyone once I do that hopefully this week and give it some testing.

    I have the same issue when using it in my PAL A600. I never noticed it in my NTSC A2000 when using the same unit, but it's really bad on my A600, both on my Acer monitor and my Elgato HD60 Pro capture device. I attached a screenshot to help visualize. The bleeding is at its worst when there is a longer horizontal line of white, such as the top edges of the icons.


    Just finished my second test run - the video degraded again the exact same way about 40 hours into the test. Is there any more information you'd like me to share?


    I would consider this a fix, at least for me. I would never spend 40+ hours straight on any computer platform.

    Even with the original resistor values, I'd only start to see the video signal degrading after around 24 hours of power-on. I think the issue is most pertinent to people who use the C64 for unattended tasks that require it to be always on, such as running a server or interfacing with other equipment.

    Ah, I'm about 42 hours in and it looks like the video got kicked slightly out of sync. It must have happened quite suddenly, since I only looked away for about an hour before it happened. The whole screen is shifted about 10 pixels to the right, and all the scanlines are wobbling.


    Very strange, since previously the image would gradually get worse and worse, but this one seems to have happened immediately.


    I guess the best thing to do is to restart the test and see if I get the same result in the same amount of time, just to rule out something like bad soldering (which for me is a strong possibility). I'll report back with my findings.


    For anyone just discovering this thread, my current resistor values are: R32 at 3.2k, R31 at 27.17k. (R31 does not need to be modified from its original value of 27k.)

    So I've carefully moved the center frequency of the VCO circuit by reducing a resistor value. The resistor on question is R32, near the PLL chip U23. If you want to try this modification, you will NOT need to remove this resistor, but merely add a 100k resistor in parallel. Putting that high value in parallel will reduce the overall resistance from 3.3k to about 3.2k, and this will result in the VCO control voltage to drop to 3.2V, which gives more headroom for regulation and component tolerances.

    Would you be able to provide the resistor values of R31 and R32? I don't have very precise soldering tools and would rather fully replace the resistors. I'm including R31 because I already accidentally got some solder on it, so replacing it would be safer than risking a sloppy job.

    Thanks, I'll go ahead and try this. I hope to get to it this week, but I'm traveling soon so I may not get to it until the following week. I'll let you know my results.

    I was wondering if anyone here has any additional hardware to help keep their VIC cool? When my C64R is powered on for an extended time (>24 hours), the image starts to lose stability with a lot of horizontal jittering. I want to do some more testing, but I think this is related to the temperature of the VIC, as it gets quite hot over time.

    The issue is that the VIC is half obscured beneath the keyboard, so I don't think I can fit a heatsink on top of it. Is this something that anyone else has looked into before?

    I was reading through the previous thread by NOForker about NTSC video issues, and I noticed a couple people bringing up an issue where their 6567R8 would not be detected on boot. Since it's a separate issue, I decided to make a new thread about it.


    I am having the same issue where my C64R MK2 is having great trouble detecting my 6567R8, booting only on rare occasion after many power cycles. Today I switched to a 6567R9 and the chip is being detected flawlessly. Although that makes this issue no longer relevant to me, I hope that a future firmware update might address it to prevent others from making the same mistake as me, buying a chip that does not work in their C64 Reloaded.


    I'm also wondering how common this issue is - does it affect the majority of 6567R8 chips, or only a rare few? I'm new to C64 hardware, but I'm happy to do my best to provide any information that can be useful for further diagnosis.