First thing I thought of seeing that socket was my father's ancient soldering gun with the trigger light. Those things put out 100w+ at a go. Great for thick cable wiring, not for boards. When I was a kid about 10 or 11, I tried using that gun on a circuit board to add a wire on for and that burn type happened. I laughed so hard seeing this here.
I thought exactly the same, as a kid I used to like making the tip glow red by holding the button in way too long, a weller if my memory serves me right. 🤣😂🤣
Was what I thought too. I still have (somewhere) a soldering gun, I bought that when I was 15 or so. I only use it for cable wiring. But today I have that soldering device that Adrian showed. Whoow, USB and very good!
@@JaapGinder I ended up with a Hakko instead because it's prewired to be ESD safe. That's the one thing I worry about with working on old computers, and the USB soldering irons are a pain to ground properly to be ESD safe.
I've used my 100/140w soldering gun to do lots of work, even basic SMD work and it never caused board damage. I then used it to (try to) repair the through-hole power supply in a VCR and it damaged the board. Board lamination quality is probably a huge player here.
i've done it SOMEWHAT succesfully, however i was just salavaging parts from some e-waste PCBs because i didnt want to wait for months for shipping from china, parts survived board not so much
12:41 I'd recommend making a small slit in the wire coating with an X-Acto knife before heating it up, That way you know where the coating is going to separate. Also I usually only do that if the wiring is serial - ie, I'm connecting the same wire to multiple spots and I don't want to cut and splice it.
My own guess, they use the cheap 130W (maybe more) L-shape soldering iron (for pipe) to solder, that's very hot and a thick tip ruins the PCB and socket, I've been using that when I'm 11 years old, soldering without a table, always have ball of solder rolling off and burn my leg, nostalgia.
I have to wonder if any previous owners of all these damaged C64s ever end up identifying their shoddy work in these videos should they see them, that would be embarrassing, haha! Great video, Adrian!
Seeing circuit board damage brings back fond(?) memories of repairing CB radios back in the 1970s. People would do so many things wrong; not quite to the point of a propane torch, but plenty of cases of acid (plumbing) flux, 100+ watt soldering guns, you name it. Combine that with poor quality PC boards and I saw a fair number of burned and delaminated PCBs, broken traces and feed-thrust. Kudos to you Adrian for sticking with it and finding the problems.
I've been in the industry for over 30 years and I was a component level service engineer on the BBC micros and Archimedes. I have NEVER seen a bodge job that bad :-)
@Cowasaki Electronics Well you need to move around more often and experience life out there in the big wide world hehe! That type of damage is common nowadays. Checkout the arcade scene for some butchers beyond belief. I once had an unbelievable repair, someone pulled out a LM7805 and replaced it with a LM7905 LOL! Yeah they look the same so they much be the same thing right? LOL!
Those machined precision sockets are great for new chips but are really bad for desoldered parts. They can even get damaged when there's an excess of solder left on the pins. That's why I almost always use dual-wipe sockets when in doubt. They are way more reliable than the cheap single-wipe ones Commodore used and are also mechanically tolerable to desoldered and/or otherwise abused parts. Add to that the bonus of being way cheaper than machined sockets... Dual-wipe sockets have never let me down. The only way to ruin them is by ramming too thick of a conductor in them, like some ROM adapters, Kernal switchers and so on, they might get bent and not work with the flat pins of regular chips any more.
I almost always use dual wipe sockets because they contact the pins better. Look at a machine pin socket that has had a dip chip in it and you'll see a groove worn in the hole. Once the chip has been removed and replaced a few times the machine pin socket becomes sloppy whereas dual wipe sockets will hold dip chips well as long as they are not abused by inserting an adapter like you said. For desoldered chips I always use wick to remove the bulk of the solder then just sand the legs with 400 grit sandpaper then the legs are smooth and the chip slides in easily and can be removed without pulling pins out of the socket.
Fun fact, later C64 PCBs were made from compressed paper fiber with a coating instead of G10 in order to cut costs even further. Though at least Darth Jack did it to actually lower the MSRP rather than just keeping prices the same and pocketing the difference. He might have been an assh*** but he did believe in selling affordable computers.
A couple of years ago I came across your channel and watched you working on a c64. I didn't understand anything you were doing but watched right till the end,I promised myself never to do it again.You've bloody done it again!.You should have your own TV show,I'd watch
I'm loving all the retro computers and consoles that are getting much needed modern PCBs that remove redundant parts like tons of resistors and capacitors, plus using modern PCB techniques which means no lifting traces easily and whatnot. Very exciting times
That was a funny repair. Whoever butchered this C64 previously wanted to be sure, that the person which would repair that, would have a lot of headaches. I'm absolutely with you about the point, that trying to repair a board which s.o. already tried to "repair" is usually by far more complicated. Great job Adrian!
Adrian, for the chips with narrow, short or damaged pins, I have put one into a machined-contact socket and soldered it into place. The chip & socket header assembly can then be used in another machined-contact socket on the board. I learned to do that at work years ago, when needing to swap test EPROMs frequently. I used Augat brand sockets, not sure if they're still around or not. Only once or twice did I have an issue, that was where the little cylindrical contact inside a socket pin was missing.
OMG! Someone really took out the flamethrower on this poor thing! Cool fixes Adrian! I had a similar thing happen to me when I fixed my toast rack ZX Spectrum, where I suddenly lost all of its upper memory because I accidentally hit a trace while lifting out a GAL chip. The damage was also totally invisible and the traces on the Speccy are really, really fragile and exposed as mine lacks a solder mask.. I was about to replace all of its upper memory chips when I discover the broken trace. Good thing I did a full continuity test first; face palm :-)
when I was a kid and I was trying to solder without anybody telling me how to do, I didn't know flux was important - and didn't know flux was in the solder itself. So I would melt some solder on the iron's tip and then (when the flux had all burned away!) apply it on the joint/component. Since the solder would not flow, I thought it was a temperature issue so I would get the biggest and most powerful irons I could find. The results were more or less what you saw on that poor board - well, maybe without the brown patches! :D Great video as usual!
That's why you should use liquid flux. Then you can place it on the lead area and be more precise with it. Particularly with thru-hole parts as the flux will fully penetrate in the barrel and not burn off right away.
Beautiful fix Adrian! I really want a C64 someday and I'm learning all I can as far as troubleshooting goes. Its good to know that even a rough board can be fixed. Thank you for your time.
If it's a single layer board, it can almost always be repaired as long as you don't have big craters where the actual connections lie. It's all down to whether it is worth fixing at that point or not.
This is why I mostly use dual wipe sockets instead of machined sockets. The dualwipes makes much better contact with desoldered chips that has short legs.
I like dual-wipe, but I think they can suffer capillary moisture retention that oxidises pins. I think the machined ones are interference press fit that are too tight to let oxygen between them. Basically it's easier to make contact with DW, but if a machined one makes contact it's permanent.
Bil Herd said in a (now) old 8-bit guy video that you should always use dual wipe. This burned in my brain. For some reason I don't trust those hole-type (machined?) sockets.
What happened with the original socket was probably way too much solder was used, and it got sucked up into the top side of the pins. Maybe too much heat warped the plastic a bit too. I prefer to use round pin sockets only with round header pins, but round pin headers are great for making daughterboards for wipe-pin sockets, such as a 2513 to EPROM adapter board.
I blame this on all the electronics stores (back in the day) selling you basically plumbing soldering irons that have no temperature regulation and plug right into the way. So hard to get things right using those. Even the "learn to solder" kits at Radio Shack came with those. It's like they wanted you to fail.
you'll see warping and burned spot from using a heat gun either to hot (most likely) or holding the heat in one spot for way to long. i worked in a local authorized commodore repair shop. for a couple years and you would not believe the stuff I saw in the 80's that customers brought in from trying to fix it themselves. loved working on commodore equipment!
Hey Adrian. In order to clean that kind of mess you may try to heat board to about 100F and then try to use IPA on some ear stick. If it fail repat procedure with some flux added before heating. To make pads nice and clean it's always worth using wick desoldering tape and some amtech flux (eg. 223 or 559). I love your channel! Thanks!
Yeah I cringed a bit at the use of acetone. It's much better to use a bit of elbow grease and some IPA or use a dull tiny flathead screwdriver to scrape off the gunked on flux. Much safer anyways
That's the mainboard that's in my C64. I have one of the last ones made when my original died back in 1986, I got a new one, and it was a white C64C keyboard in an older C64 case, they were obviously trying to use up some old parts. Getting ready to shoot my own video on retrobrighting and restoring it as the keys are yellowed now.
the board in the vid is the worst one to own because Commodore integrated the color ram into the pla so if the color ram goes bad you're out of luck. every version board before this is better.
I'm not great, but everytime I messed up my C64 repair I fixed it. I have a bodge wire where I removed a trace. Then again I have a 2nd one where I lifted a trace, but it was still attached, so I didn't bodge that. IT's on the cartridge slot. I had to replace it. De-oxit helped..........until it didn't. It got to the point where de-oxit was lasting less and less until it did nothing. New slot = fixed.
One thing I tend to do with plated holes when cleaning up after a poorly done prior repair is to use a pushpin as a mandrel to push any potentially loose barrel plating back into place, and the pads on that ROM socket would be a prime candidate for such a step. Another step is to use a small dowel to press down the edges of pads that may be beginning to lift. Neither step will restore the lost bond between the copper and fiberglass, but will go a long way to improving the post repair appearance.
@@SockyNoob I work in a production environment, and such ‘repairs’ do not comply with IPC standards for long term reliability, so I have not used those in ages. I have found that in a pinch, a bit of wire soldered into an open via will work as well if it’s just passing a trace from one side to the other. All bets are off if the board is multi layer.
Funny you mention a torch. Was at a hamfest and a guy was selling 1 lb grab bags of parts from boards. Talking to him for awhile and found out his technique to remove parts was to heat the board with a torch and rake over top with a wire brush till the parts fell out. I didn't buy anything lol
I have problems with machine pin sockets. So much so, that I can't trust them and have switched back to dual wipe sockets. Just as you observed, they will sometimes fail to make contact with all the legs on pulled chips. In addition, when removing and reinserting chips during troubleshooting, contact will become intermittent, requiring you to push down on the chip. I have also observed that chips are more likely to pop out of machine pin sockets. I don't have these problems with quality dual wipe sockets. BTW - seeing all the burning made me laugh...poor board. Looks like a smidge too much wattage on the iron used for that "repair". I also love the heavy duty bodge wire. Reminds me of old times.
BTW Adrian, you were experiencing the exact same problem I had last weekend when working on a C64. I desoldered the MPU and installed a machined-type socket, and kept having intermittent problems which turned out to be the MPU pins not staying in the holes since they were trimmed short at the factory. I took that socket out and put in a double-wipe socket and that did the trick for making good contact. (That C64 was not one of the blowtorch-burnt ones.)
Really enjoyed this video! I get to see diagnostics and repair techniques that I need to learn how to do, like using probes and oscilloscopes and correct sized bodge wires. Also want to know to how to use those replacement through hole via kits. Still have lots to learn! Congrats on getting this to work. Repairing a failed repair from somebody else is ALWAYS the worst.
Don't use hot air on a C64 PCB the later ones were made from a coated compressed paper fiber instead of G10 and have relatively low tolerance for high temps.
Impressive! Wow I fixed some (and probably damaged some boards as an apprentice fixing C64's in my day) Takes me back and YOU did very well repairing that mess!
You can clean up desoldered pins a bit by (quickly) using a desoldering gun on the pin (I mean the type that has a combined heating element and desoldering pump) then applying some flux and reheating the pin to smooth out the remaining solder, then clean off the flux. You end up with a clean lightly tinned pin basically a tin plated component leg.
Really enjoyed this one! I have finally taken the plunge and purchased my first ever C64 (breadbin model) on Ebay. I am looking forward to taking it apart more than switching it on to see what's lurking! Hopefully it's OK as it was not cheap and sold as fully working from what seems like a reputable sellar. Already looking at a replacement psu first as I don't think I would trust the original.
A good friend of mine who has really great electronics knowledge (builds his own 8 bit computers and synths and such) used to desolder large components using the kitchen stove. Only did it to boards that were junked, and definitely caused damage worse than this c64c board has, but it reminds me of that kind of damage. Honestly wouldn't be surprised if a stove was used! My friend has a proper desolding station now!!
Subbed and liked 99% due to your dance party dance. Also, all the info you share that's helped me resurrect several systems, but it's the dance that got me.
It's singular that Adrian likes round machined pins socket and consider the other trash while Sean from the channel "Classic Arcade Repair" has the exact opposite opinion.
I find turned pin sockets reliable over time, as long as they work initially with short pin ICs...the dual/single contact sockets work when brand new...but over time they suffer metal fatigue and fail...it may take many years, but eventually they do fail and I don't want to diagnose again boards I repaired previously
It looks like someone much later on removed the caps and RAM than did the original "work". Someone must have given up on it and just used it for parts. Glad to see it come back to life again.
I actually have butane powered soldering iron that is over 40 years old. It's called "PORTASOL" and made in Ireland. The butane burns in a little chamber behind the ion tip.
Quick tip while we're talking about not torching our boards... auto-ignition temperature of isopropyl alcohol is 399C. There's no need for soldering irons to be that hot, but just in case anyone has theirs set that high, make sure you let the isopropyl fully evaporate first.
This is the kind of board you use as a donor for a repro board. I admire you saving it but it's probably going to eventually break considering how marginal some of those traces and vias are.
Ya, seems to better off just as a parts board when the pcb is that bad. those traces was clearly pushed sidewards. Someone has done some crazy things to it.
@@CirnoBush the c64C PLA is different than conventional c64 PLA. That being said i have repaired many boards much worse than that one in 30 years i have been doing it and they are still working.
Una riparazione eccezionale. Ti seguo da tanto e come te condivido la passione per la tecnologia e l'informatica vintage come potrai vedere dal mio canale. Nonostante non abbia mai capito l'inglese, grazie alla tua pronuncia fluida e chiara riesco a seguirti nei tuoi video e a capire quasi tutto. Sei veramente bravissimo. TOP !!!!
You can scorch boards like that if you go ham with a hot air station, or worse electric paint stripper gun that some people use instead of a soldering hot air station! If you want to re-use the old ROM you could solder it into another turned pin socket, the pins fit perfectly into a turned pin socket. I've done this in the past to rare chips that have badly corroded pins that couldn't be fixed any other way.
8:21 just underneath the via to the left of the plier tips you can actually see the torn trace (little bright bit of copper to the top of the bend in that track)!
I was thinking of a 60W plumbers iron and a stick of plumbers solder, lol. At least they didn’t use plumbers flux, there would be a lot of missing traces if they had.
34:48 when you were looking under the microscope.. thought to myself ! Jeez some of the trace looks wonkey … I hope Adrian test it 😂 and that was actually the problem …
@@SockyNoob nope. Old pcbs weren't designed to handle hot air. At first you will notice color change, then the surface will swell and traces will start to detach. All in all it's recipe for disaster. Even the way Adrian is using it is dangerous.
Yeah, it's always fun to chase your own tail that way, done it more than a few times over the years. I refer that to being a defective keyboard-chair interface on the test bench.
there are some super powerful flux dissolver stuff! You can tell from the first spray that it's LOADED with rare and expensive solvents you don't usually use. Works really great but expensive
"Who would rip off bypass caps". 20 minutes later "I couldn't find any so I took them from the other board" 🤣
Yeah, it's almost as if whoever had this before treated it like the donor board it is.
@@stevethepocket well, save from using a 100 watt soldering iron for some removals and thermite for others.
Today, Adrian Like a lumberjack !
Yeah, saw that as well. Let's see what happens when Adrian will try to repair the other board he took the caps from ;-)
Adrian, you have the patience of a saint and amazing tenacity. I love the content. Keep up the good work.
First thing I thought of seeing that socket was my father's ancient soldering gun with the trigger light. Those things put out 100w+ at a go. Great for thick cable wiring, not for boards. When I was a kid about 10 or 11, I tried using that gun on a circuit board to add a wire on for and that burn type happened. I laughed so hard seeing this here.
I thought exactly the same, as a kid I used to like making the tip glow red by holding the button in way too long, a weller if my memory serves me right. 🤣😂🤣
Was what I thought too. I still have (somewhere) a soldering gun, I bought that when I was 15 or so. I only use it for cable wiring. But today I have that soldering device that Adrian showed. Whoow, USB and very good!
@@JaapGinder I ended up with a Hakko instead because it's prewired to be ESD safe. That's the one thing I worry about with working on old computers, and the USB soldering irons are a pain to ground properly to be ESD safe.
Good old soldering gun, I member the tip with the shape of a F1 trace 😅 (a circuit is a circuit...)
I've used my 100/140w soldering gun to do lots of work, even basic SMD work and it never caused board damage. I then used it to (try to) repair the through-hole power supply in a VCR and it damaged the board. Board lamination quality is probably a huge player here.
My first ever repair attempt was using a propane torch which I tried to use as a substitute for hot air station. Oh the good ol' days.
Wow, don't ever do that
How much was left of the thing you tried to repair? How charred did it get? XD
@@CraftMine1000 I remember I tried to space it out so it won't melt everything, but the chip I tried to desolder still died)
Propane burns at what? 2000 degrees. I never have heard of this. I never did this one.EDIT 3,560˚ Fahrenheit/1,995 degrees Celsius.
i've done it SOMEWHAT succesfully, however i was just salavaging parts from some e-waste PCBs because i didnt want to wait for months for shipping from china, parts survived board not so much
12:41 I'd recommend making a small slit in the wire coating with an X-Acto knife before heating it up, That way you know where the coating is going to separate. Also I usually only do that if the wiring is serial - ie, I'm connecting the same wire to multiple spots and I don't want to cut and splice it.
My own guess, they use the cheap 130W (maybe more) L-shape soldering iron (for pipe) to solder, that's very hot and a thick tip ruins the PCB and socket, I've been using that when I'm 11 years old, soldering without a table, always have ball of solder rolling off and burn my leg, nostalgia.
:horrifiedface:
That was my first thought as well: the good old (large) Weller soldering gun.
I have to wonder if any previous owners of all these damaged C64s ever end up identifying their shoddy work in these videos should they see them, that would be embarrassing, haha! Great video, Adrian!
Seeing circuit board damage brings back fond(?) memories of repairing CB radios back in the 1970s. People would do so many things wrong; not quite to the point of a propane torch, but plenty of cases of acid (plumbing) flux, 100+ watt soldering guns, you name it. Combine that with poor quality PC boards and I saw a fair number of burned and delaminated PCBs, broken traces and feed-thrust.
Kudos to you Adrian for sticking with it and finding the problems.
I've been in the industry for over 30 years and I was a component level service engineer on the BBC micros and Archimedes. I have NEVER seen a bodge job that bad :-)
Hopefully none of mine ever look that bad
@Cowasaki Electronics Well you need to move around more often and experience life out there in the big wide world hehe! That type of damage is common nowadays. Checkout the arcade scene for some butchers beyond belief. I once had an unbelievable repair, someone pulled out a LM7805 and replaced it with a LM7905 LOL! Yeah they look the same so they much be the same thing right? LOL!
@@johnbos4637 Difference is that I now generally build, repair and modify valve amplifiers plus I can choose what to repair and what to refuse.
Wow. Nothing quite like injecting other problems during troubleshooting. Persistence and a lot of self-checking won the day. Well done!
The best way to solve problems is replacing them.
Those machined precision sockets are great for new chips but are really bad for desoldered parts. They can even get damaged when there's an excess of solder left on the pins. That's why I almost always use dual-wipe sockets when in doubt. They are way more reliable than the cheap single-wipe ones Commodore used and are also mechanically tolerable to desoldered and/or otherwise abused parts. Add to that the bonus of being way cheaper than machined sockets... Dual-wipe sockets have never let me down. The only way to ruin them is by ramming too thick of a conductor in them, like some ROM adapters, Kernal switchers and so on, they might get bent and not work with the flat pins of regular chips any more.
I almost always use dual wipe sockets because they contact the pins better. Look at a machine pin socket that has had a dip chip in it and you'll see a groove worn in the hole. Once the chip has been removed and replaced a few times the machine pin socket becomes sloppy whereas dual wipe sockets will hold dip chips well as long as they are not abused by inserting an adapter like you said. For desoldered chips I always use wick to remove the bulk of the solder then just sand the legs with 400 grit sandpaper then the legs are smooth and the chip slides in easily and can be removed without pulling pins out of the socket.
Fun fact, later C64 PCBs were made from compressed paper fiber with a coating instead of G10 in order to cut costs even further. Though at least Darth Jack did it to actually lower the MSRP rather than just keeping prices the same and pocketing the difference. He might have been an assh*** but he did believe in selling affordable computers.
A couple of years ago I came across your channel and watched you working on a c64. I didn't understand anything you were doing but watched right till the end,I promised myself never to do it again.You've bloody done it again!.You should have your own TV show,I'd watch
This is a good candidate for a one of those C64 modern PCB replacement projects!
I'm loving all the retro computers and consoles that are getting much needed modern PCBs that remove redundant parts like tons of resistors and capacitors, plus using modern PCB techniques which means no lifting traces easily and whatnot. Very exciting times
That was a funny repair. Whoever butchered this C64 previously wanted to be sure, that the person which would repair that, would have a lot of headaches. I'm absolutely with you about the point, that trying to repair a board which s.o. already tried to "repair" is usually by far more complicated. Great job Adrian!
Adrian, for the chips with narrow, short or damaged pins, I have put one into a machined-contact socket and soldered it into place. The chip & socket header assembly can then be used in another machined-contact socket on the board. I learned to do that at work years ago, when needing to swap test EPROMs frequently. I used Augat brand sockets, not sure if they're still around or not. Only once or twice did I have an issue, that was where the little cylindrical contact inside a socket pin was missing.
It's amazing that board didn't need more work than it did!
Your diagnostic skills never cease to amaze me.
OMG! Someone really took out the flamethrower on this poor thing!
Cool fixes Adrian!
I had a similar thing happen to me when I fixed my toast rack ZX Spectrum, where I suddenly lost all of its upper memory because I accidentally hit a trace while lifting out a GAL chip. The damage was also totally invisible and the traces on the Speccy are really, really fragile and exposed as mine lacks a solder mask..
I was about to replace all of its upper memory chips when I discover the broken trace. Good thing I did a full continuity test first; face palm :-)
or a heatgun (i've burned boards similarly stripping parts from them)
when I was a kid and I was trying to solder without anybody telling me how to do, I didn't know flux was important - and didn't know flux was in the solder itself. So I would melt some solder on the iron's tip and then (when the flux had all burned away!) apply it on the joint/component. Since the solder would not flow, I thought it was a temperature issue so I would get the biggest and most powerful irons I could find.
The results were more or less what you saw on that poor board - well, maybe without the brown patches! :D
Great video as usual!
That's why you should use liquid flux. Then you can place it on the lead area and be more precise with it. Particularly with thru-hole parts as the flux will fully penetrate in the barrel and not burn off right away.
Beautiful fix Adrian! I really want a C64 someday and I'm learning all I can as far as troubleshooting goes. Its good to know that even a rough board can be fixed. Thank you for your time.
If it's a single layer board, it can almost always be repaired as long as you don't have big craters where the actual connections lie. It's all down to whether it is worth fixing at that point or not.
This is why I mostly use dual wipe sockets instead of machined sockets. The dualwipes makes much better contact with desoldered chips that has short legs.
I like dual-wipe, but I think they can suffer capillary moisture retention that oxidises pins. I think the machined ones are interference press fit that are too tight to let oxygen between them. Basically it's easier to make contact with DW, but if a machined one makes contact it's permanent.
Bil Herd said in a (now) old 8-bit guy video that you should always use dual wipe. This burned in my brain. For some reason I don't trust those hole-type (machined?) sockets.
What happened with the original socket was probably way too much solder was used, and it got sucked up into the top side of the pins. Maybe too much heat warped the plastic a bit too.
I prefer to use round pin sockets only with round header pins, but round pin headers are great for making daughterboards for wipe-pin sockets, such as a 2513 to EPROM adapter board.
It feels SO good when you stop beating your head against a wall. Good job!
The most satisfying musical interlude of all the repairs
Good insight here that diagnostics tools only really show where the error was noticed, not where it originated.
I blame this on all the electronics stores (back in the day) selling you basically plumbing soldering irons that have no temperature regulation and plug right into the way. So hard to get things right using those. Even the "learn to solder" kits at Radio Shack came with those. It's like they wanted you to fail.
Knoledge, experience... But a lot of patience too. Great job Adrian: I enjoed this video so much. 👍🏻
If I had a nickel for every time it was a teeny tiny problem that I only saw after everything else! Glad you ressurected that awesome board!
Messy, but you can push a conventional wipe-pin socket into the turned pin socket and then fit the original 'short-pin' IC.
you'll see warping and burned spot from using a heat gun either to hot (most likely) or holding the heat in one spot for way to long. i worked in a local authorized commodore repair shop. for a couple years and you would not believe the stuff I saw in the 80's that customers brought in from trying to fix it themselves.
loved working on commodore equipment!
Hey Adrian. In order to clean that kind of mess you may try to heat board to about 100F and then try to use IPA on some ear stick. If it fail repat procedure with some flux added before heating. To make pads nice and clean it's always worth using wick desoldering tape and some amtech flux (eg. 223 or 559).
I love your channel! Thanks!
Yeah I cringed a bit at the use of acetone. It's much better to use a bit of elbow grease and some IPA or use a dull tiny flathead screwdriver to scrape off the gunked on flux. Much safer anyways
That's the mainboard that's in my C64. I have one of the last ones made when my original died back in 1986, I got a new one, and it was a white C64C keyboard in an older C64 case, they were obviously trying to use up some old parts. Getting ready to shoot my own video on retrobrighting and restoring it as the keys are yellowed now.
It was lovely to learn about this Board as I have two of these 252311 boards and A and B revisions. Love my C64c
the board in the vid is the worst one to own because Commodore integrated the color ram into the pla so if the color ram goes bad you're out of luck. every version board before this is better.
I'm not great, but everytime I messed up my C64 repair I fixed it. I have a bodge wire where I removed a trace. Then again I have a 2nd one where I lifted a trace, but it was still attached, so I didn't bodge that. IT's on the cartridge slot. I had to replace it. De-oxit helped..........until it didn't. It got to the point where de-oxit was lasting less and less until it did nothing. New slot = fixed.
One thing I tend to do with plated holes when cleaning up after a poorly done prior repair is to use a pushpin as a mandrel to push any potentially loose barrel plating back into place, and the pads on that ROM socket would be a prime candidate for such a step. Another step is to use a small dowel to press down the edges of pads that may be beginning to lift. Neither step will restore the lost bond between the copper and fiberglass, but will go a long way to improving the post repair appearance.
What about via repair kits?
@@SockyNoob I work in a production environment, and such ‘repairs’ do not comply with IPC standards for long term reliability, so I have not used those in ages. I have found that in a pinch, a bit of wire soldered into an open via will work as well if it’s just passing a trace from one side to the other. All bets are off if the board is multi layer.
@@Renville80 so you're basically screwed if it's multilayer?
@@SockyNoob pretty much, unless you don’t mind adding jumper wires to replace the broken bonds in the damaged vias.
The "haha moment". Unforgettable. I really thought this was a lost cause. Thank you Adrian. Great work!
Hitting the like button and watching it roll over to 1k was just about as satisfying as the video itself.
I'm an Atari guy but I love these videos. I learn so much about repair from your very informative videos
I was about to try to fix my C64 with a propane torch... Glad I saw this video
I just love watching your videos. This is something I could never do or understand. Thanks again.
Man these repair videos are the best! I wish I had more time to get to my work bench and tinker.
Ben heck’s style of soldering is my absolute favorite.
Funny you mention a torch. Was at a hamfest and a guy was selling 1 lb grab bags of parts from boards. Talking to him for awhile and found out his technique to remove parts was to heat the board with a torch and rake over top with a wire brush till the parts fell out. I didn't buy anything lol
Holy damn, I wouldn't buy anything either.
I have problems with machine pin sockets. So much so, that I can't trust them and have switched back to dual wipe sockets. Just as you observed, they will sometimes fail to make contact with all the legs on pulled chips. In addition, when removing and reinserting chips during troubleshooting, contact will become intermittent, requiring you to push down on the chip. I have also observed that chips are more likely to pop out of machine pin sockets. I don't have these problems with quality dual wipe sockets. BTW - seeing all the burning made me laugh...poor board. Looks like a smidge too much wattage on the iron used for that "repair". I also love the heavy duty bodge wire. Reminds me of old times.
How funny and relaxing you make all of this repairs. Thanks a lot.
BTW Adrian, you were experiencing the exact same problem I had last weekend when working on a C64. I desoldered the MPU and installed a machined-type socket, and kept having intermittent problems which turned out to be the MPU pins not staying in the holes since they were trimmed short at the factory. I took that socket out and put in a double-wipe socket and that did the trick for making good contact. (That C64 was not one of the blowtorch-burnt ones.)
Really enjoyed this video! I get to see diagnostics and repair techniques that I need to learn how to do, like using probes and oscilloscopes and correct sized bodge wires. Also want to know to how to use those replacement through hole via kits. Still have lots to learn! Congrats on getting this to work. Repairing a failed repair from somebody else is ALWAYS the worst.
Love Adrian’s enthusiasm. I wish I knew what he was talking about 1/2 the time 😂
These C64s can survive a barn, and now we have confirmation they can survive a butcher shop.
That was more like jack the ripper hehe!
Thank you for saving this short board! (my favorite revision)
I love your videos. Your tenacity and enthusiasm is infectious. You always make me smile 🙂
Yep. We were screaming at the screen when you flipped that ROM. You had taken out your reminder notch to get at that broken trace. ;P
I've burned a few boards like that trying to use hot air to desolder DIP packages. Didn't mangle so many traces in the process though.
Don't use hot air on a C64 PCB the later ones were made from a coated compressed paper fiber instead of G10 and have relatively low tolerance for high temps.
Good job. Hoped to see some of that green protective paint applied at the end, but that's me!.
Impressive! Wow I fixed some (and probably damaged some boards as an apprentice fixing C64's in my day) Takes me back and YOU did very well repairing that mess!
Dual wipe sockets give a better connection when using pulled chips.
Yep a repair with a machined pin socket isn't a repair at all, it's just a slightly delayed failure
You can clean up desoldered pins a bit by (quickly) using a desoldering gun on the pin (I mean the type that has a combined heating element and desoldering pump) then applying some flux and reheating the pin to smooth out the remaining solder, then clean off the flux. You end up with a clean lightly tinned pin basically a tin plated component leg.
Really enjoyed this one! I have finally taken the plunge and purchased my first ever C64 (breadbin model) on Ebay. I am looking forward to taking it apart more than switching it on to see what's lurking! Hopefully it's OK as it was not cheap and sold as fully working from what seems like a reputable sellar. Already looking at a replacement psu first as I don't think I would trust the original.
A good friend of mine who has really great electronics knowledge (builds his own 8 bit computers and synths and such) used to desolder large components using the kitchen stove.
Only did it to boards that were junked, and definitely caused damage worse than this c64c board has, but it reminds me of that kind of damage. Honestly wouldn't be surprised if a stove was used!
My friend has a proper desolding station now!!
Subbed and liked 99% due to your dance party dance. Also, all the info you share that's helped me resurrect several systems, but it's the dance that got me.
It's singular that Adrian likes round machined pins socket and consider the other trash while Sean from the channel "Classic Arcade Repair" has the exact opposite opinion.
I find turned pin sockets reliable over time, as long as they work initially with short pin ICs...the dual/single contact sockets work when brand new...but over time they suffer metal fatigue and fail...it may take many years, but eventually they do fail and I don't want to diagnose again boards I repaired previously
We used turned pin sockets in crash test systems, nothing else survived.
i like the use of the denture brush
I laughed at "The Ben Heck style of wire stripping / soldering."
Good job! Leave no stone un-turned
It looks like someone much later on removed the caps and RAM than did the original "work". Someone must have given up on it and just used it for parts. Glad to see it come back to life again.
22:25 Surprise look!😄 Awesome repair!!!
Houston, we have a problem!
That poor board!
Happy day! Good to see you getting this fixed.
We've had a problem
I actually have butane powered soldering iron that is over 40 years old. It's called "PORTASOL" and made in Ireland. The butane burns in a little chamber behind the ion tip.
Quick tip while we're talking about not torching our boards... auto-ignition temperature of isopropyl alcohol is 399C. There's no need for soldering irons to be that hot, but just in case anyone has theirs set that high, make sure you let the isopropyl fully evaporate first.
Good tip!
I think I have set the desoldering station that high when I was trying to get a modulator off the board.
That board sure looked like they used a propane torch on it. Glad you were able to see through all the chard mess and finally come up with a solution.
Thank you Adrian for saving another C64.
This is the kind of board you use as a donor for a repro board. I admire you saving it but it's probably going to eventually break considering how marginal some of those traces and vias are.
Ya, seems to better off just as a parts board when the pcb is that bad. those traces was clearly pushed sidewards. Someone has done some crazy things to it.
yeah. Would be perfect as a donor for a sixtyclone board
Perhaps, but chances are it won't break, it'll be fine for decades I'm sure. Nobody will flex it.
@@mrdali67 You don't throw a car away when it's been hacked by a bad mechanic, why do that to a C64 that aren't being made anymore?
@@CirnoBush the c64C PLA is different than conventional c64 PLA. That being said i have repaired many boards much worse than that one in 30 years i have been doing it and they are still working.
Una riparazione eccezionale. Ti seguo da tanto e come te condivido la passione per la tecnologia e l'informatica vintage come potrai vedere dal mio canale. Nonostante non abbia mai capito l'inglese, grazie alla tua pronuncia fluida e chiara riesco a seguirti nei tuoi video e a capire quasi tutto. Sei veramente bravissimo. TOP !!!!
Nice fix and much to learn! Thansk so much Adrian!
Best regards, DOC64!
You can scorch boards like that if you go ham with a hot air station, or worse electric paint stripper gun that some people use instead of a soldering hot air station! If you want to re-use the old ROM you could solder it into another turned pin socket, the pins fit perfectly into a turned pin socket. I've done this in the past to rare chips that have badly corroded pins that couldn't be fixed any other way.
omg, the poor c64-board :( it was really wrong treated. Glad you fixed it.
8:21 just underneath the via to the left of the plier tips you can actually see the torn trace (little bright bit of copper to the top of the bend in that track)!
Love the emotions--- you make it look so easy!
Best reaction to fixing a machine.
Looong time ago I replaced a VGA port on a mobo with a torch and Works for 5 years until my cousin sell it. Good old disaster days!
I was thinking of a 60W plumbers iron and a stick of plumbers solder, lol. At least they didn’t use plumbers flux, there would be a lot of missing traces if they had.
34:48 when you were looking under the microscope.. thought to myself ! Jeez some of the trace looks wonkey … I hope Adrian test it 😂 and that was actually the problem …
Good Job, AND your antics are very entertaining.
just wanted to cry seeing the extent of the damage
More entertaining sleuthing than an Agatha Christie novel, for us nerds of course. That really looked like it was too far gone. Fantastic work.
Good diagnostic job on this one.
You are amazing. That board was a basket case.
That machine is now a grizzled, battle-scarred badass.
That was a wild ride man. Great Job
Loved this video and I think the dance parties are getting better.
Nice work Adrian! Kids - Don't try to repair old electronics using hot air either. Unless you want your PCB split in funny way :D
Unless it's a proper hot air soldering gun
@@SockyNoob nope. Old pcbs weren't designed to handle hot air. At first you will notice color change, then the surface will swell and traces will start to detach. All in all it's recipe for disaster. Even the way Adrian is using it is dangerous.
This is unbelievable, congrats!
Great video Adrian! I really enjoy watching them!
Yeah, it's always fun to chase your own tail that way, done it more than a few times over the years.
I refer that to being a defective keyboard-chair interface on the test bench.
Flux-Off spray takes care of that really bad flux, it's pretty strong stuff and often takes of printing on some stuff too so use sparingly.
I did the same thing except it was my vic2e in my 128 still works.
What a journey! Fantastic Fix!
there are some super powerful flux dissolver stuff! You can tell from the first spray that it's LOADED with rare and expensive solvents you don't usually use. Works really great but expensive
19:48 - I must've missed when you upgraded the tester display but man, it looks so snazzy with that OLED.
well done, that was awesome. much respect for your skills sir.
Wow this reminds me of hand wiring prototype boards lol fun times!! Great video
Are you sure a Dalek didn't (try to) exterminate, er, I mean repair that board? Great Save!