I am happier now

[arnoldemu]

The wife and daughter are away so I finally had time to look at my broken CPCs.

So far I have done:

CPC664 didn't boot, power led didn't light: power switch was faulty. Tried to clean, but in the end I replaced it.
Now it boots up. However some keys don't work, probably dirty membrane, but on CPC664 it has lots of nasty tiny screws on the keyboard and also the ribbon cable is clipped onto the motherboard making removal difficult. Will try it later in the week when I have the patience

464+: keyboard didn't work at all. Took keyboard apart it was filthy. Seemed previous owner had split chocolate or something over the keyboard.Cleaned and now 99% of keys work. Only a few don't Don't know why. Tried resoldering connector with no change. I also sanded and cleaned up the copper wire connection from motherboard to keyboard. No change. A doesn't work, or D that seems about it. Any ideas?

464 type 4: keyboard didn't work. Tried cleaning it, only a few keys dont work. grrr. Any ideas? Strangely L, F4,F5,F6 and one other key don't work.

The good:

CPC6128: Didn't boot at all. Screen one colour, no keyboard response. Well for this one I got a replacement PAL16L8 (ram management), because I sent the other to be dumped and the guy never returned it. I found I had put the new one in wrong and one pin was not in. Replaced and now it boots fine.

CPC6128: Some keys didn't work. I cleaned membrane and it works fine.

CPC6128: This one didn't turn on, no power led. Cleaned switch - as good as new


Funnily, I have an old style CPC464 with the taller keys, and that is filthy, but keyboard works beautifully.


Also, I replaced my aging 1Ghz Athlon (that was given to me for free) with a 2400AthlonXP (that was also given to me for free).

[steve]

I think it is important to note that people give pc's away for free but you must pay quite a lot for CPC's.

[TFM]

Well, usually only things that have a value cost money ;-)

[arnoldemu]

CPC664 didn't boot, power led didn't light: power switch was faulty. Tried to clean, but in the end I replaced it.
Now it boots up. However some keys don't work, probably dirty membrane, but on CPC664 it has lots of nasty tiny screws on the keyboard and also the ribbon cable is clipped onto the motherboard making removal difficult. Will try it later in the week when I have the patience

tried it this morning and the keyboard decided it was going to work fully.
So that's another one down.

464+ and 464 (costdown) are still not happy.

Another point to me fixing these machines is that I plan to run some tests on them, and check some hardware and then I can contribute some more findings.

Fired up the kc compact today. Keyboard needs cleaning I think, some keys don't work first press.. anyway.. found some differences already with the way the crtc is mapped, and I even got the kc compact to crash by doing an IN to the CRTC. I think it must ignored read/write signal for i/o...

I also did some quick tests on crtc type 4, confirmed that be00 and bf00 read the same, and that these read the same kind of values as the crtc type 3 does. In addition it seems to have those two "status" registers I found which can tell you some of the internal state of the crtc.

[redbox]

It would be nice to have a wiki page concerning getting dead CPCs to work...

I know there is one on replacing the keyboard membrane and drive belt, but my 6128+ is definitely playing up (random crashes) and I'd like to know in what order I should try cleaning/fixing things to try and resolve the problem.

[Gryzor]

That would basically involve a troubleshooting guide leading to specific DIY guides... so when we have enough we can build one

[Sykobee (Briggsy)]

Doesn't the KC use a MOS 6545 instead of an MC6845?


edit: Read next thread, it's a Hitachi clone. Heh. /ignore me