wowbobwow
Experienced Member
Hi all,
I've been spelunking in my storage locker and found two C64 "breadbin" machines. One of them is in excellent condition and works beautifully - hooray!
The other one is exhibiting an odd behavior I've not encountered before in my (admittedly somewhat limited) C64 usage. In short, when I power it on, it appears to boot to BASIC and displays the usual power-on text... except all the 'letters' are little checkerboard patterns that repeat. It does seem responsive - hitting random keys on the keyboard causes more checkerboard blocks to appear. Here's a pic of what I'm seeing:
I also powered it up with my Dead Test cartridge inserted, but all I see is a white screen surrounded by a blue border - here's a pic:
I did hear the audio test after leaving the Dead Test running for a while, so maybe that's a good sign? I've also browsed through the various images over at https://www.pictorial64.com, but none of them are an exact match for the odd checkerboard I'm seeing.
I'd be grateful for any tips - I'm assuming that it's likely to be something like a failed CIA or Character ROM maybe, but I'd rather not just start buying new parts and spamming them into the machine without some feedback from more knowledgeable folks than me!
Thanks :D
I've been spelunking in my storage locker and found two C64 "breadbin" machines. One of them is in excellent condition and works beautifully - hooray!
The other one is exhibiting an odd behavior I've not encountered before in my (admittedly somewhat limited) C64 usage. In short, when I power it on, it appears to boot to BASIC and displays the usual power-on text... except all the 'letters' are little checkerboard patterns that repeat. It does seem responsive - hitting random keys on the keyboard causes more checkerboard blocks to appear. Here's a pic of what I'm seeing:
I also powered it up with my Dead Test cartridge inserted, but all I see is a white screen surrounded by a blue border - here's a pic:
I did hear the audio test after leaving the Dead Test running for a while, so maybe that's a good sign? I've also browsed through the various images over at https://www.pictorial64.com, but none of them are an exact match for the odd checkerboard I'm seeing.
I'd be grateful for any tips - I'm assuming that it's likely to be something like a failed CIA or Character ROM maybe, but I'd rather not just start buying new parts and spamming them into the machine without some feedback from more knowledgeable folks than me!
Thanks :D