Deeper dive

I made some time to finally open up the machine and find out what is lurking under the hood. Firstly I headed off to my local electronic supply place and got a chip extractor, canned air and a magnifying glass for inspection.

The main board didn't look bad after taking it outside of the casing.

The chips were a bit dusty with a few spots of fluff though.

This was the first time extracting chips from their sockets so there was a lot of "Oh shit" moments during the extraction process. But finally, I got a few chips out for inspection.

Looks like we have an assy of 250407 rev 'B|

A rather nice Wiki on the different mainboard versions here: https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/Motherboard

The good old 6581, aka SID Chip

 

And the VIC II

I was happy to see that all chip were in good shape, well there was no signs of corrosion on the pins at least. The thermal paste on the VIC II also looked good.

The capacitor also looked to be in good shape also but I'm no electronics expert but these may need replacing as a preventative measure.

After giving the board an overall 'skooshing" with the canned air, it was put back together and so far so good the usual screen flickering did not become apparent after about 45 minutes of operation.

Fingers crossed.........

Again the only piece of software that can be tested is a tape copy of Talladega by Cosmi, not a great game but at least it loaded and sound could be tested.

 

And so, on to the 1541 deep dive...........