RAKJAB RetroChallenge

Retro Challenge 2017/04 Day 24 - FINAL DAY This is my finial entry for the 2017/04 Retro Cjallenge. My goal was to completely set up a working VIC-20 system and I have done that. My system includes a working VIC-20, MPS 803 printer, CN2 tape drive, 1541 floppy drive, 1541-II floppy drive, and a SD2IEC drive.   I recapped all the electrolytic caps in the VIC and 1541s. I worked out a great video display option.   I have retrieved all the files that were salvageable from 45 cassette tapes and 20 floppies. I am able to download files from the Internet and use them on the VIC-20 and I can run files from the VIC-20 on my home PC via VICE. I have leaned how to blog and share my experience. I am very happy I took on this challenge and look forward to years of reliving the past and discovering new uses in the future!  

Retro Challenge 2017/04 Day21-23 Time for a better monitor! My neck was taking a toll having the TV on top of my desk.  There is no room to have it lower so another option was needed.  I had an under the counter LCD TV/DVD in the kitchen that we no longer used so I re-purposed it to the computer room..  It is awesome!  The screen is sharp and clear.  The position is perfect!  I am very pleased with this change! The disk copying was not going well.  In desperation I tried changing my 1541 to the "UI-" setting and instantly unreadable disks were coming over without any issues!  The "UI-" speeds the drive up a bit to match a 1540 and it has made all the difference in the world!  Now I can copy over entire disks to the SD2IEC with virtually no errors.  The few files that seem to be problem files copy fine when I move them separately. I had to @0: save the files but there were only a few to copy. I was able to get through all the disks and now on the SD2IE

Retro Challenge 2017/04 Day20 The Printer Prints! The ribbon went in like a champ and now I have the beautiful sound of dot matrix filling the house! I am amazed at the hoops needed to just print a listing but back in the day I would have LOVED a printer like this!  I used an old Teletype Model 33 as my printer.  It had only upper case and sounded like gun shots.  The smell from the oil is still in my memory.  I don't miss that machine but I wish I still had it for the paper tape.  I could have saved my programs to tape and reloaded them.  Real off line storage! I now have my storage tower built.  I still have to switch between the SC2IEC and the CN2 but if I really wanted access to both I could modify the CN2 cable.  I thought about adding a 5Vpower jack to the 1541s and CN2 but for now it works just fine.  I am very happy with the setup I am continuing the slow process of extracting the files from my old floppies.  I might add JiffyDos to one of the drives someday

Retro Challenge 2017/04 Day 19 Time for a cable mod... I was not happy with the short cable supplied with the SD2IEC.  The serial cable had to be added as the last device in the chain.  I have two disk drive and a printer but they all were too far away from my cassette port.  I added about 36 inches to the power cable.  This will allow me to have the SD2IEC with the 1541s and dress the cable area better..  I think the set up will be nice.  I did not care for the SD2IEC just sitting on top of the VIC.  The flow is better.. Now if there was only some way to replace the TV with a small LCD display...

Retro Challenge 2017/04 Day 18 Oh My ... oh my ... OH MY! (Chatter chatter grind grind Thump Thump!) Well, my hope to be able to just COPY/ALL the floppies to the SD2IEC has faded away.  These floppies are old - 1984/85.  They have not been stored in the most ideal conditions for the past few decades.  The COPY/ALL or UNI-COPY works great when it is able to read a newly formatted floppy but time has taken its toll on my collection. Some files copied just fine but others caused the drive to chatter and reset.  When it was done with the copy process, there was no listing of what made it and what did not.  I can't trust that anything really copied error free so I will have to resort to a one-by-one LOAD-VERIFY-SAVE.  There are both custom files we created as well as magazines programs so I really want  to save these.  There are many. I will look into the VIC-WEDGE to see if that will cut down on the OPEN-PRINT# hoops.  Also, I need to get the printer ribbons installed so I

Retro Challenge 2017/04 Day 17 The Art of Moving Files I would have been at a loss without this disk.  There is a program on it, UNI-COPY, that seems to be  a far but slow way to copy files from a floppy to the SC2IEC.  I could have loaded and saved each file but that would be very labor intensive.  I did see a reference in a 1541 manual about COPY/ALL and UNI-COPY seemed to be about the same thing.  It allowed me to copy from my 1541-II on #9 to my SD2IEC on #10 and select each file that I wanted to copy.  The real trick was jumping through the hoops to make directories on the SD2IEC.  I can really see why I was so excited with the IBM-PC and their DOS after living with 1541s.  I am getting a hang of it again but oh my the speed is really that slow! The ribbons have come in for the printer so that will be on the list as soon as the floppies are transferred to the SD2IEC.

Retro Challenge 2017/04 Day 14-16 The Struggle Is REAL! The long weekend has come and gone and I have made it to the end of the cassette tapes that I have.  After many hours of rewinding, reading, and fast forwarding, I have a total of 24 tapes with VIC programs now recovered.  Some of the tapes not included were saves from the Scott Adams games.  Other tapes had data that might have been old checkbook info or address book data.  I had some trouble, as shown above, but many of the cassettes of that day were made with screws and the ability to take apart, repair, and reassemble.  Usually, the data was still retrievable.  I have a good cassette cleaner that helped keep the CN2 happy.  I listened to some of the tapes to verify if they had any data on them.  They were very old tapes that must have been a part of a business dictation course.  In between the different saves, I could hear the course instructor dictating letters.  Interesting. Several of the tapes had recordings of da

Retro Challenge 2017/04 Day 13 Oh My ... All the tapes ... So today's adventure in reliving the past has brought me back to why we invested  $214 for out 1541 I have disconnected my SD2IEC from the cassette port and put my tape drive back in.  I still have a special cassette for cleaning and demagnetizing that I am using to clean the drive from the 35+year old tapes.  I can read some writing on the labels but it is really unknown if these tapes have anything readable on them or not.  I did dig up a cassette/CD portable mini boom box to rewind the tapes so the wear and tear did not hit the CN2.  This also allows me to hear if the tape had data recorded on it. The process is very slow but rewarding.  These are files we recorded back in the early 80s.  Some of the recovered files are programs that Judy wrote herself in the early days of her programming career.  She is still working for the same software company now as she was back then!  She is retro too! I am load

Retro Challenge 2017/04 Day 12 The Joy of Joysticks! Today, I pulled out Omega Race and tested my joysticks and paddles.  I have original Commodore accessories plus a bunch of Atari compatible knock offs.  All the joysticks worked great.  The fire buttons and mechanisms all were in good shape and worked fine.  The paddles on the other had were  in very bad shape.  The fire buttons worked by the rotation control was either poor or non-existent with all of them. I used my   DeoxIT®, #D100L-2DB   on the connectors.  These have not been plugged in for decades and looked bad. That took care of the connector end. I removed the two screws from the back of the paddle and had easy access to the 1 Meg-Ohm variable resistors/potentiometer they used inside.  I the sprayed a bit of  RadioShack® Anti-Corrosive Lubricant Spray   right into the inner-workings of the pot.  This should eliminate the corrosion and oxidation in the pots.  I tried this on my generic paddles first and it worked

Retro Challenge 2017/04 Day 11 SD2IEC - WOW! A Micro-SD in a SD Adapter in a SD2IEC on a VIC-20 DIGITAL  TURDUCKIN I have added this incredible modern day device to my system.  The SD2IEC is made from recycled VIC-20 cases. I got it from   www.thefuturewas8bit.com/ I was able to set it up and change the device from 8 to 10 so now I have a 1541 on 8, a 1541-II on 9, and the SD2IEC on 10.  Everything plays very well with each other.  The cable is a bit short on the SD2IEC so I will have to get an extender or Y-cable so it will daisy chain in better.  For now the printer is turned sideways and that works. I like the CBM FileBrowser from   www.vic20.it/cbmfilebrowser/     I will try it on the 1541. I am getting better with the command channel.  I functioned back in the pre-PC days without even thinking about it. The single disk drive was such an improvement over the cassette that any hoops that needed to be jumped through was so much easier than counters and tape loaders!  H

Retro Challenge 2017/04 Day 10 Well, here it is. My complete VIC-20 system. I hooked the CN2 cassette drive to the VIC and was able to save and load to it without any issues.  I have so many cassettes! I wonder what could be on them.  Each is like a small time capsule just waiting to be opened.  I was able to read one of these old cassettes and retrieve the working program. Next, I setup the daisy chain from the VIC to the 1541 to the 1541-II and then finally to the MPS803 printer.  I set the 1541-II to #9 via the dip switches in the back.  I was able to read and write to a diskette using both drives but seem to have some issue with properly closing the saved file with the 1541-II as drive#9.  I was able to properly set the 1541 and close the drive allowing all files to be saved correctly.  It has been a very long time since I jumped through the hoops of operating Commodore drives so it will take a bit of getting use to again.  They say it is like riding a bike but it sure has

Retro Challenge 2017/04 Day 08 and 09 Now that the recap of all the critical units is complete it is time to power up! The first VIC I tried was the newer of the two.  This one was Judy's father's VIC and it has not been used since the 90s.  The power light came on but no video.  After checking to make sure the TV was working, I set aside that VIC and went for my original.  It came right up! The first thing I noticed was many keys were not working very well.  Research showed that sometimes a complete disassembly and isopropyl alcohol cleaning helped but others reported the conductive pads on each plunger may need resurfacing.  There are many screws and much care needed to remove the key caps. This many be my next project.  For now, I want to see if it is a simple fix for the other VIC. I opened the case and carefully re-seated the socketed chips.  Everything seemed fine but still no video.  I got one of the spare VICs that I had not cleaned up and after a quick in

Retro Challenge 2017/04 Day 07 1541  --  Take Two... Well, I didn't realize just how tight the space was inside the 1541 case.  The solution to my 6800uF cap problem failed.  I could not get the case top back on.  The caps were much too high. So back to the shop.  This time I kept a lower profile and was able to still fit the caps into the avaiable space.  I decided to encase the three caps in heat shrink tubeing to be on the safe side.  I didn't like the exposed leads of my previous attempt.  This looks much better.

Retro Challenge 2017/04 Day 06 Today I tackle my 1541 Disk Drive. I opened the unit up and it looked very clean inside.  I decided to only transport the circuit board to recap the unit instead of bringing the complete unit in to the shop.  I did not want to run the risk of knocking something out of alignment. This is one solid case! Cover off   These two big caps are hot glued to the board. The drive assembly on the right and the power transformer on the left. This is what they used before switching power supplies.  The transformer is the heaviest part in the whole drive. A normal drive section - very clean. I discovered that the 6800uF that I had was not the correct voltage.  This is the filter cap for the 12Vdc side right after the bridge rectifier.  The cap I had was 16V but I needed a 25V.  I did have a bunch of 2200uF 25V caps so I installed three of them in parallel to give me 6600uF.  That is well in range for filter caps.

Retro Challenge 2017/04 Day 05 Today's project is to recap my original VIC-20. I opened it up and found it to be extremely clean inside.  There was no evidence of any corrosion on the caps. Being this unit is about 35 years old and I am already inside it, I will changed the caps. I made a mode to this unit in 1983 to hook it up to a Model 33 ASR Teletype machine and used that as our printer for many years. Not the best looking mod but I was only 20 at the time. I noticed the joystick connector seemed very loose.  There was no hardware holding it in place.  I added a couple 4-40 screws and hardware that will make it feel solid. Over all this was a simple recap but I am glad I did it!

Retro Challenge 2017/04 Day 04 On My - Bad Caps. I have the 2-pin style of VIC-20.  There is a large 4700uF cap that has leaked and corroded.  There are also two 100uF 16V caps and a 22uF 16V that also have gone bad. I was able to clean up the board and install all new caps.  There were 4 other caps (1uF 16V and 10uF 16V) that I changes that seemed to still be good. I used the information form Console5 Tech Wiki. https://console5.com/wiki/Commodore_VIC-20 The screws attaching the heat sink to the board were all loose so I tightened them as well.  The system seemed very clean with little to no bug evidence.  Obviously this system has been stored in doors and should provide many more years of use and enjoyment! Well this is the inside. Not to dirty inside. RF cover removed. Yep - Bad Cap. I am sure the FCC was pleased. Back side of the board with the shield removed. Minor corrosion under a 100uF 16V cap Replaced caps in the video section.