Some Commie questions

From: TJPlajer <cerebral_at_michianatoday.com>
Date: Tue Jul 15 00:14:06 1997

At 02:11 PM 7/13/97 -0800, you wrote:


>My main question is on the C= 128, along with all the other stuff I picked
>up, I got a Commodore 1702 monitor, and a couple 1541 drives. I've got the
>drive attached, and the monitor hooked up via a RF cable (I guess that's
>what it's called) through the front connection (This works for the Amiga
>500 I also got yesterday). Anyway, I power the thing on, it "buzzes" the
>drive like it's expecting to find something, and I don't get anything on
>the display.

The C=128 does not need any kind of bootfloppy, it will start up in C=128
mode. if you type GO64, it reverts to a C=64 kernal. and if you want to run
CPM, then you need a CPM boot disk, however it is not required to run the
machine. this is what I liked about the 128, 3 mahcines in 1! :)

for your monitor, the 128 has RF output accessable from the RCA jack, a 5
pin DIN video connector that provides composite, or seperated video plus
sound. also there is a RGB 9 pin DSUB connector so you can use ANY CGA
monitor for 80 col. for the 1702, you need a video cable(looks like you have
this), and use the separated mode for sharper graphics. the buzzing you hear
is because you have connected the video out RCA jack to the audio in. You
should have 5 phono plugs on the end of the video cable, and a din plug on
the other. just experament with all the plugs till it works. the video plug
colors usually (but not always)
YELLOW - sound
RED Video chroma
WHITE video Luminace
BLACK SOUND
GRAY Composite video

each manufacturer used different color chemes, and this might be wrong for
other cables than mine.
also the 1702 has a front panel switch that has 3 positions:

1- monochrome this just makes everything green used for composite video
2- Composite video this is just the standard video in, you can hook your VCR
to it for a nice sharp TV!!

3- seperated - this uses seperate lines to feed the video, and this has the
best quality
>I remember that the C64's like the VIC-20 would drop you at the prompt even
>if you had nothing attached, and didn't need any kind of boot floppies. Do
>I need some kind of boot disk for this beast?
 
Nope. unless you want to run CPM
>I gather a CGA monitor will work, so I guess I should dig out one of the
>old Mono-CGA monitors I've got in storage.

 shore will.
>
>The next question would be, is it worth trying to repair a C64's power
>supply? I got two of them yesterday, both powersupplies are dead. It
>looks like the 5V line is shorted to ground. I did get a copy of the Old &

if it is potted, NOPE. some are unpotted and can be fixed.

>New style users manuals, and a copy of "Troubleshooting and Repairing your
>Commodore 64" yesterday (I love Powells Technical Books!) so I've got some
>documentation. It's been too many years since I worked as an Electrician,
>so my skill level is pretty low (wasn't very high to begin with, which is
>why I switched to computers).
>

I have these manuals too and I must say that it leaves no tern left unstoned.
Received on Tue Jul 15 1997 - 00:14:06 BST