Posts by whydoisay

Hi Jens, I don't have the resources or skill to do this kind of modification. A local technician has offered to do the work for $40. I mean we are essentially having to pay to correct a flaw in the original design. Assuming this works, is this something that is going to be corrected in future production runs of the motherboard?

Hello Jens, I received the official Commodore power supply in the mail and tested it again with an NTSC VIC-II in my Commodore 64 Reloaded mk II and had the exact same problem after several hours. I took some video again:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hF4iDUFw7XY

Just to be thorough, ever since I posted that video 5 hours ago, I have been running the same C64 Reloaded mk2 machine with the PAL VIC-II in it and have had no problems at all. So I can confirm it's definitely just the NTSC chip still.

Quote from Jens

A quick ripple measurement on the supply voltage is not exactly "development work". The person could have just said "no". Give me a few days until I have finished work on Indivision ECS V2, then I'll turn to this NTSC issue, again (yes, I've tried to reproduce it twice already, failed, but I'll give it another try).

Hi Jens, I'm only repeating what he said to me. I ordered your official power supply just now, however. So we can see if that makes a difference. Looking forward to seeing what you determine. Thanks!

Quote from Jens

The voltage appears OK, so the next step would be to measure ripple. Maybe a friend around who has an oscilloscope?

I asked a friend with an oscilloscope and he basically told me he does not do unpaid development work for other people's projects.

Jens, are you suggesting that the ripple from the power supply is causing this behavior? Because there are a number of people in this thread including most recently @absolute512 using the official power supply and reporting the same kind of problems with NTSC VIC-II chips.

Hey Jens and pwsoft , it's been about a week since I posted the power readings so I wanted to check in again

Five hours of PAL VIC-II 8565R2 later, I feel pretty confident that this PLL instability or whatever is only happening with NTSC VIC-II chips and it does not appear to be related to power supply.

Okay Jens, sorry for the delay. Here are pics of it unloaded (got straight 12V named unloaded.jpg), under load (11.97V named loaded.jpg), and under load, we took readings from the LED as well (4.953V). So the power looks fine as far as we can see. I did finally get a PAL VIC-II chip (an 8565R2) so I am going to put it through the same tests and I'll see if there are any issues.

Jens Here's what it looks like when the chip is recognized properly. I can get you get the measurements on the 12V input tomorrow.

Thanks.

Hi Jens,

Should I be worried about voiding my warranty with soldering? My friend is an excellent modder and can definitely help me with taking values and do SMD soldering work, but I did see you post elsewhere about people voiding their warranties by soldering.

Also, for the VIC-II chips the Mk2 Reloaded has trouble recognizing the term shows this... I will try recreating the glitched out screen and see what the terminal says when that happens.

Thanks.

Hi Jens,

I'm having this issue. It looks to me like it's an overheating problem with the way the Reloaded MkII motherboard is interacting with the NTSC VIC-IIs or something like that. I've tried with multiple power supplies that I believe fit the specs, but not the one you are selling here. All of the chips are NTSC chips and I have tried completely replacing all of the chips with another set from another known working good C-64. It really does seem to be only the VIC-II chip, and not just the 6567R8, because I had even worse results with a 6567R9. I have two 6567R8s and one 6567R9. One of the 6567R8s is from my childhood C-64 breadbin that has worked without any problems since 1984. The only thing that ever needed replacing was the SID chip sometime in the '90s. So I made a video of the problem.

Basically, the other two VICs I used the Reloaded MKII would recognize them correctly maybe 1 out of 5 times. I connected with the terminal and saw in those cases it would say PAL unknown for the VIC. The 6567R8 from my childhood C64 the MKII never had any problems recognizing.

However, I ran the system for an hour, just loading games and playing normally and the text started wiggling a little and finally the full screen garbled. I opened it up, put heatsinks on the VIC-II, waited overnight, and the next day ran it for about 4 hours and then it started acting up the same way. It seems to happen faster it I turn on the space heater in my room, but I live in San Francisco, by the ocean, and it's fairly chilly here. I took the video of the glitching yesterday, apparently the temperature was a high 68° F/low of 51° F which is 20° C/10.56° C, so it's not that hot out. I turned on the heater because I was cold.

And after it glitched like that, I opened it up and touched the heatsinks with my finger and which it was *warm*, it wasn't burning my fingers or anything.

Here's the video I made:

https://youtu.be/0p-8WGBq0kk

For the record, my monitor is a Sony PVM and it has never had problems with any other thing I've thrown at it and I have a Twin Famicom, an NES, a PlayStation 1, a PlayStation 2, an Xbox, a Super NES, a Sega Genesis (Megadrive)/CD/32X, a Sega Saturn, a Nintendo GameCube, an N64, and a NEC PC Engine CoreGrafx. All have been hooked up it to it, via composite, s-video, or RGB with no issues ever. The monitor supports both NTSC and PAL but none of my computers/consoles is PAL, all straight NTSC. And being in USA, everything is 60hz, power 110.

My C64 Reloaded MkII is hooked up to it via S-video, but I did check and had the same problem in composite.

And yes, I updated to the latest firmware before doing any of this.

Oh, one more note: The only flash cart I have to try on it is the SD2IEC, so nothing big and high power like the 1541 Ultimate or anything.