Category: Repair & Tutorials
Written at the bench. Tested before it’s published.
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Fixing a ZX Spectrum 48K black screen: power, RAM and ULA checks
A black screen on a 48K Spectrum is rarely a mystery. A power rail has gone missing, a…
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Fitting a composite or S-Video cable to a Commodore 64
You don’t need to open the computer. The Commodore 64’s picture comes out of its A/V port, and…
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Diagnosing a dead C64 with no picture: power, clocks and chips
Start with the power supply. It is the cheapest thing to test and the likeliest thing to be…
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Cleaning an Amiga 500 floppy drive, and replacing the belt if it has one
Clean the heads, clean and lightly grease the rails, and find out whether your drive has a belt…
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Recapping a breadbin C64 without lifting a pad
Recapping a breadbin Commodore 64 means replacing every aluminium electrolytic capacitor on the motherboard with a new one…
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Rebuilding a Commodore brick PSU so it stops killing RAM
The original Commodore 64 power supply can fail by sending more than 5 V into the computer, and…
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Replacing the Spectrum’s dead-flesh keyboard membrane
A ZX Spectrum with dead keys usually has a damaged keyboard membrane or a broken ribbon tail, not…
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Recapping an Amiga 500 before it eats its own traces
An Amiga 500 needs two separate checks: the capacitors and the battery. On Rev 5, 6 and 6A…
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Telling CTIA and GTIA apart on an Atari 800XL
CTIA and GTIA are the two graphics chips used in Atari’s 8-bit computers. The GTIA replaced the CTIA…