C64C Rare Case Restoration and Future Proofing

hi it's Jan Beta And as this year comes to  an end I'm going to do a kind of end of year   special this is going to be a relatively  low effort video because it has been a   tough year for me and I think for many others  too again like the last couple of years I had   some really close friends and family suffering  from some health issues which wasn't really good   for my own mental health and uh that showed  also in the frequency of videos I released   this year I didn't really manage to release  more videos I'm really sorry but uh there's   a lot of personal reasons for that one of them  being that my mental health was not in the best   place this year so I decided to end this year  with something that is a wholesome experience   for me I hope this is wholesome for you  too I'm going to convert one of the c64 C   boards that I repaired recently into a whole  system and give myself a Commodore 64 for Christmas so this is one of the boards I repaired  in one of the previous videos this had a Ram fault   it is a 250469 shortboard Commodore 64 revision  A which is the most recent revision I own at the   moment I actually noticed that while I own a lot  of c64s at this point I don't have a commodore   64C with a shortboard and the newer key caps that  have the graphical symbols printed on top instead   of the front I have an early c64c with a longboard  in it but I don't have one of these the last one I   refurbished was actually for a friend so I don't  own a classic shortboard c64 and I think I have   all the parts I need to put one together for me  as a little present and I hope this video is going   to be enjoyable as I said it's going to be pretty  low effort for me hopefully we don't know yet and   uh it's going to be a fun experience for me at  least I hope you have some fun so of course I'm   going to do something that I did several times on  this channel and I also did it a couple of times   off screen recapping this board future proofing  it as I like to say putting uh heat sinks on all   the chips that get warm and I also have a really  nice Commodore 64c keyboard that I acquired from   eBay for I think €30 or thereabouts just recently  because I don't have one of these in my collection   and I have a really nice c64c case that's not even  really yellowed to any extent that uh would be   visible distracting and this is actually a special  case we're going to take a look at that in a   second so this looks like your standard c64C case  it has the cutouts here there was also a version   where you needed the little Shield here on the  side of the c64 PCB this is one of the newer ones   looks quite similar to all the ones we've seen  on this channel but this is actually a very late   revision of this case it doesn't have any screws  it just Clips together which is very unusual these   are pretty rare I think as far as I know I've not  seen many of these this came from eBay with a very   broken c64c board in it and a keyboard that was  really a c16 keyboard bought this ages ago and now   is the time to put it into use and uh yeah the  way this works is just using a spudger tool or   something like that to remove these clips and it  also still has the warranty seal on it because you   don't really need to remove that to get it open  there we go that's all that's to it and also this   case has has Clips to hold the keyboard in place  so no screws on this they even cost reduced away   the screws in Commodore typical fashion this  has a date code on it and it says uh 87 5 1 87   probably not sure if these were really produced in  87 already so I'm not sure if this is a date code   I think these were one of the later revisions of  these cases but I might be mistaken and this was   an in between thing yeah at the very least these  are pretty rare this is a bit dirty so we're going   to wash it and while it dries we are going to take  a look at the PCB I'm also going to have to remove   the key caps here because some of them have quite  a bit of dirt on the sides and uh yeah I want to   clean them completely before I put this whole  machine back together it's going to be a nice   looking c64 first step is going to be removing the  LED from this case just pulling on it basically   while bending the clips here this is going to stay  on my workbench and this whole plastic is going to   be washed yeah I'm going to take the keyboard  apart at least removing the key caps I think   the rest of it is in relatively Nice condition  haven't tested this yet I just bought it from eBay   just arrived yesterday I think so using a key cap  puller here and I'm separating the keys from the   springs that are underneath want this to be really  nice yeah and there is some dirt underneath so we   are going to give the whole keyboard assembly a  good clean but yeah first things first [Music]   M doesn't look as good as it looked from  the outside so there is some dirt on this   keyboard assembly I am going to clean that off  on the surface here don't think we really need   to take this apart any further but uh  first step is going to be cleaning the   Parts these are going to be cleaned with  alcohol the metal parts and then uh I like   to spray them with WD40 to prevent further  rusting and these things just going to get   some soapy water so in the bathroom now as you  can probably hear and see and I'm going to give   these a soak in water and some Cillit bang  this is uh for floors really but it's really   good grease remover and it worked really well  on plastic parts for me in the past so I'm   using warm water here and these are just going  to soak for a while and so are the case parts [Music] so the case parts are just going to sit  in the top for a while and then I'm going   to scrub them afterwards the keyboard  assembly I'm just going to clean with a   vacuum cleaner and some window cleaner and  isoprenol afterwards just going to remove   the dust with one of these PC case cleaning  kit brushes and that is attached to a regular   vacuum cleaner this works really well for  cleaning these up usually let's see [Music]   yeah that's much better already and now some  window cleaner on a microfiber cloth and some   IPA after that I guess you don't want to spray  these uh directly with anything basically because   you might get something into the contacts up  but if you spray cloth that's usually fine   in my experience might also  want to go in there with the toothbrush and of course you can take these  fully apart by just removing all these screws   and you can take out the PCB you have to desolder  the shift lock key that's this mechanical thing   here and uh yeah you can take these apart as  I've done previously but I don't think it's   necessary on this one because it looked rather  clean and also as I said this is meant to be a   bit of a low effort video so I'm doing some  more cleaning with the toothbrush alcohol is   usually fine to spray on these because uh  it just evaporates after the fact and then   I'm going to give it another wipe and we should  be good to go while the plastic parts soak I'm   going to replace the electrolytic capacitors on  this board usually not something that is strict   necessary especially on the newer c64 boards like  this uh the capacitors are probably still working   fine but uh this is kind of preventative  maintenance and also it has the effect of   meditation for me I really really enjoy doing  it first step is going to be adding new solar   to all the capacitors from the bottom side of the  board so it's easier to desolo them because these   shortboards are actually very good quality pcbs  and it's not so easy to desolder stuff from these   usually so uh yeah I'm just going to do that  and then we're going to desolder everything   one by one and replacing the capacitors with  new good brand ones and the fresh solder just   adds some flux to these some fresh flocks which  makes things considerably easier and especially   the ground planes on these have quite a lot  of meat so that makes it non-trivial to dool   these these capacitors because all the heat is  going to be Wicked away yeah that should be all   of the capacitors refloat now for replacing them  and as I said I'm going to go one by one I have   my air filter running I have another air filter  under the table actually running here so no solar   fumes for me I'm going to have to take a look at  my desoldering station because it started making   quite some noise recently I think  the fan is probably broken [Music] [Music] I sometimes use an all to carefully free  the holds up which uh usually works pretty   well not sure if I would recommend that but  uh it's a quick and somewhat dirty way of   getting the holes to be big enough to take a new  capacitor or whatever component you're working on I'm also very often heating up the  solar while I pull on these slightly   from the other side which also helps a  lot on these boards on the older c64s   these just fall out most of the times after  desoldering not so much on these [Music] [Music] [Music]   and while I'm at it I'm also going to add my  crude over voltage protection that I've put   into many c64 boards and that works really well  a transient voltage suppression diode these are   meant to be used with power supplies and they  start conducting when they surpass a certain   voltage in this case 6.8 volts these are p6k  6.8a diodes TVS diodes a type of zener diode   and that starts conducting only after a certain  voltage and then shorts out basically the input 5   volts to ground in case that surpasses 6.8 volts  which is a voltage that the chips can withstand   for a certain amount of time not recommended  but usually they survive that in case the power   supply you connect to this goes berserk and uh  outputs over voltage which is pretty common for   the original commodore 64 power supplies which  I don't use very often anymore because of that   uh little Quirk that they have so I'm going to try  to free these vs here and put the P6KE diode in uh   with the ring the negative side facing towards  the cartridge Port here I've explained that in   more detail in another full refurbishment of a  c64c board that I'm going to link in the video   description in case you're interested in more  detailed information about that worked really   well for me so far so I'm just going to do  it through this one for completeness sake   and also I have like four diodes of this type  left over here yep that one went surprisingly well and so did that one and I'm  going to clean up the flux residue   of course after I'm done soling on this one   you always want to remember that because even the  no clean flux can become conductive after a while   so this is our p6ke and I like to stand these off  from the board slightly because they get quite   warm in case they actually short out usually the  power supply won't survive these diodes shorting   out but if they produce over voltage they are  broken anyway so not much of a loss there yeah   let's see whether this still works or not with  the new capacitors and the voltage suppression diode yep that is really nice just going to  let this run for some time to see if any of the   capacitors get warm that would mean uh I put them  in in the wrong polarity but there's markings on   the board and on these boards they are correct  so you can always see a little plus sign where   the positive side of the capacitors is supposed  to go and I think I put them in the correct way   otherwise they would get very hot very quickly  yeah c64 still seems to be working fine that   is really nice so now I'm going to clean up the  board uh which I am going to use a PCB cleaner for   a spray can and I'm also going to clean the  ports after that and some alcohol probably   and a little ESD safe brush that I'm not sure if  it's really ESD safe but at least it claimed so   when I bought it so this stuff here is contact  H contact LR Leiterplattenreiniger PCB cleaner   and this works really well for uh after you  remove the safety cap this works really well   for removing flux residue and all kinds of Gunk  from pcbs and you don't need a lot of this just   so we remove the flux that we caused here and  some of the flux that was on here from Factory   because they didn't clean it up nicely there  are some parts that are hand soled usually on these and commodore didn't bother with removing  the flux too much back in the day and of course   we want this to evaporate fully afterwards and I  forgot about the ones in the RF modulator can uh   there's two electrolytic capacitors in there as  well I think I want to desolder that and replace   those as well just for completeness sake and  this is really not super necessary but I want   to make this nice for myself and of course  I'm going to have to do more cleaning after   that I'm also going to add some fresh solder  here that's always a good idea and these are   a pain in the bot to uh the solder of course  because they're a large metal can much of the   heat you apply is going to be taken away by  that and yeah there are these tabs that you   have to desolder and the connectors the actual  connections to the board just going to remove the   solder I can remove with the desoldering station  [Music] here and then go in with some solder [Music] wig okay looks like we're halfway there  let's see if we can bend these tabs already yep oh it's sold it to the board as well  that sucks sometimes they sold them to   the board like in this case from the top  side here and I think they only solded   one corner [Music] here yeah the Taps are  actually free now I'm heating up the solar   this corner here to be able to hopefully  remove the whole thing from the board eventually there we go now this is going to  suck to get open because it's also solar shot   on here the lid on top here is also solded  shot as was the lid on the bottom uh yeah   we're going to remove that now that I'm this  far we are going to go through all of that there we go that's [Music] open  this is the most difficult part   so far for me I'm just going  to go full temperature 450° C and that works a bit better as you can probably see yeah  I think we can get it off now yay there we are and there's only  two capacitors in here as you can see   let's replace these remaining  two electrolytic capacitors in   this Commodore 64 I didn't film that last  part accidentally I'm sorry about that I   got the capacitors out and got new ones  in one 220 microfarad 10 Vols and one   10 microfarad 16 Volts and I cleaned the board  and the quality control sticker fell off quite fittingly so I'm going to remove some  of the solder residue from here as [Music] well the whole thing is back together  and then we're going to sort it back to the   board which should be much much easier than  removing it maybe it looked easy to you but   it wasn't and uh I won't recommend this this  is not really necessary so want be careful   with those connections there yeah looks  good and we're going to bend the Taps back there we go I'm going to clean that up yep looking good quick function  test after replacing the RF modulator   capacitors and it's still powers on  thankfully okay time for the scrubbing [Music]   and the key caps I'm going to scrub individually  with the toothbrush [water noise] [Music]   and these keys are really really nice after  cleaning no yellowing whatsoever at least there's   no gradients to be seen no color differences  in these they might be slightly yellowed but   they are pretty much as good as new I think from  what I can see at this point which is very nice   of course several little things I want to do to  this board before we put it all back together and   there's also some more things I want to do to  the plastic and the Springs before we can wrap   this up uh this Board needs some heat sinks on  the chips and it also needs some cleaning of the   ports here uh as you can see these fingers here  gold plated contacts on the user port and the   cassette Port are a bit dull and dirtied up and  usually I just use a pencil eraser to clean off   the dirt and then clean off the debris from the  pencil eraser with some alcohol and some Q-tips   and that turned out to work really well for me  uh this is mildly abrasive and that's enough   to clean these gold contacts I wouldn't recommend  using anything more abrasive unless you absolutely   have to because you are going to wear away the  gold plating which you don't want because that's   the contacts so in this case these are not too  dirty but I think you should still be able to see   the difference you can see some Marks here from  cartridges being inserted and plugs and usually   just scrubbing it slightly it makes these look as  good as new in a very non-destructive way and of   course we want to do both sides of the piece PCB  because these are double-sided yeah look at that   this always works surprisingly well for the simple  approach that it is and the same on the other side yeah and then I'm using IPA  from my spray bottle to get the   residue from the pencil Eraser off  here and that usually does the trick there we go looks really shiny and now I want  to add heat sinks to all the chips that get   remotely warm I'm going to do the CIA chips and  the processor the vicu and the sit chip on this   one the ROMs and the super pla chip usually don't  get warm on these newer boards the ones you really   want to put heat s on and the chips that get  the warmest are the vic2 and the sit chip so   I would recommend putting heat sinks on these  the other stuff is optional basically I'm using   uh aluminum heat sinks here or aluminium and I'm  cleaning the chips with IPA before I put them on   with some silicon based heat sink plaster that's  a silicon based heat conductive adhesive made for   this purpose purpose and I literally just used the  cheapest stuff I found online my experience with   the cheap stuff is has been really reliable so far  so I'm just using that again this is the stuff I   use it's literally just called heat sink plaster  the brand name seems to be stars but this is   probably uh available from a number of different  manufacturers the heat sinks look something like   this just aluminum slabs that have the correct  size for ic's dip packages these are available   in a number of different sizes uh for different  sizes of chips I'm going to link the source for   these in the video description where I bought them  uh yeah and you just use a little bit of this glue   on the chips put the heat sinks on somewhat  centered and then wait for the glue to cure okay looking good or relatively they all seem  to be relatively straight I'm going to set   this aside and let it cure so the case turned  out rather nicely it needs some finishing up   with some Q-tips and some corners and such but  it's way way cleaner than it was unfortunately   though one of the little post that the circuit  board is screwed to broke off because of course   this plastic is super brittle there's also  a piece that broke off here but I think that   was broken off when I got it I am going to glue  this piece here back with some plastic adhesive   I thankfully caught it before it could go down  the drain and we need some new rubber feed for   here as well so here's the little piece that  broke off just broke clean off here and usually   you can find the position it was in sticking it  on there and rotating it yeah I think that's how   it's supposed to go on here I'm using uhu plus  special which is a plastic adhesive model making glue just putting some of it on  here this basically welds the   plastic together ideally yeah it already  sticks and I'm using a lot more than I   would need so that a little Trent forms  there and that usually helps a lot with   the grip for little Parts like these uh this  usually works pretty well we're going to see just realized that they also did cost ruce  the standoffs that the keyboards in these   c64 C cases usually NE by just uh clipping  it to the top part of the equation here that   is probably the the larger sum of money that  was saved there for the Springs I'm just going   to spray them with alcohol and uh put them  on a cloth here kitchen Tower or something   and wipe them a bit and then I'm going to  spray WD40 into them and soak them a bit   some of these are a bit rusted but all in all  they look pretty good I'm still going to wipe   them a bit before I do the WD40 treatment to uh  kind of preserve them a bit longer and yeah you   want to you want to let this stuff evaporate  of course before you put the keyboard back   together but a thin layer of WD40 on metal even  in this case I found that it doesn't hurt uh the   Plastics usually I wouldn't use WD40 on Plastics  because it can ruin them but yeah this usually   works pretty well I've done that ah I don't know  dozens of times at least at this point for c64 keyboards there's not a lot of WD40 left in this  but it's going to be enough for these I think okay   now there's not even any gas left in here so this  can go to the trash compactor just rolling them   around here a bit so every little spot gets a bit  of WD40 then I'm going to wash my hands and wait   for everything to evaporate and dry and then  finally we can put this cob 64 back together   okay at this point I want to put the keyboard back  together as the first thing we actually reassemble   uh because I want to test that before I put it  in the case in case something breaks and while   I'm looking at the keys I realized that there's  some markings on some of them hope I can remove   these there's some red marker on there some dots  I'm going to try to remove that with a cotton Swap   and some alcohol not even sure if you can see that  but there is a tiny little dot there let's see we   can get that to disappear fully okay it already  looks better nice okay so that works don't want   to leave the alcohol on there for too long now  for reassembling you just need to put a spring   under the key cap and then put put the key cap  on and I have my Aldi c64 for reference here so   I find the correct positions for all the keys  long story short I'm just going to reassemble   this keyboard now and I hope it looks nearly as  good as new when I'm finished and there's some   more dots that I have to remove as well thankfully  these seem to come off rather easily there's one   spring that has a slightly different shape than  the others it's more springy that's the one for   the space bar so you want to set that aside when  you find it and the other ones are all the same [Music]   that's all back together let's test it all the keys seem to work nice this can now  go back into the case which is going to be a bit   unusual because of the clipping nature of the case  and also we are going to have to put some new feet   on the case some new rubber feet and I'm going  with these clear ones I think they are not quite   accurate uh originally they used beige ones or  white ones or black ones I think but these clear   ones match a c64c pretty nicely I think these  are 3M bump on SJ 5312, 12.7 by 3.5 mm and these   are the exact size the original rubber feet have  just general purpose device rubber bumper stickers   with adhesive so our little glued in standoff  seems to be Rock Solid I hope it stays in there   when I put a screw in I'm going to use a Q-tip  and uh some brute force and some spudger tools   think to get the remaining glue residue out of  these and whatever dirt accumulated here doesn't   look very great it's kind of a yellowy gunky mess  but uh yeah some alcohol should get rid of that   and the new adhesive should stick really nicely to  this hopefully maybe I should use the black ones   I probably should to to hide the crimes beneath  yeah I'm going with the black ones this is still a   bit yellow down there so the black ones are going  to hide that better exact same bump on 3M things   just in Black I think they might might have used  other ones on these cases these are a bit deeper   in there than usual but yeah it seems to be the  correct height sits here nicely maybe they change   the mold for the case in that regard too okay  let's put the circuit board in here and try to   screw it down I don't have any screws for this so  I'm just going to use some from my collection of   screws that hopefully are going to fit I actually  found a little drawer that says c64 screws and   there are some really promising small self tappers  in there and I'm just going to try to use these   they are really not that long half a centimeter  or so this should fit in here really nicely and   snugly because this is the same size as all the  c64 boards the short boards that is okay let's see   about these screws just going to be really careful  with the post yeah that we glued on that's holding   so far I'm also going to be really careful with  all the other posts because uh they are probably   just as brittle as the one that I had to glue  and that one uh yeah literally just came off   when I scrubbed it and now here comes the actual  interesting bit because the keyboard clips into   this of course and uh yeah we're going to have to  see if uh we get this in there without breaking   or case I'm going to try to be super super careful  I think this bottom one here needs to go in first   there we go wow this is scary I'm just us going  to use something to slightly Bend these I guess   wow okay these are of course designed to hold  this really Snuggly in place which yeah it's qu   not quite as good as the standoffs but it's  in there look at that and we need the power   which we should have gotten in before the keyboard  because it's uh kind of hidden under there this   should be manageable and now I am going to give  the connectors a bit of contact cleaner just so   we don't have to open and close this all the  time in case something doesn't make contact anymore and then we connect  it up keyboard goes here yeah that's nicely on there and the LED which  also comes with a very short cable also a bit   unusual for c64s but not so much for the  c64C's so this now should clip together   somehow ah it's quite scary with these old  Plastics but that's a Commodore 64c with the   clipped cost reduced case and it turned out  quite nicely I guess yeah this moment always   makes me smile this is nearly as good as  new it has some scratches in places here's   a little scratch one of the keys is a  bit scratched the T of all things for   whatever reason somebody really had it with  the T it should be fully usable Commodore 64 again space bar was not quite in place there what happened there we go that's much better kind of  knock that off yeah that's it for today and uh   for this year apparently so I hope that 2025 is  going to be a joyful year for all of us despite   everything that's going on in the world and I wish  you a happy Christmas in case you're celebrating   that and hope to see you on the other side  thank you so much for your support through   this very weird at least for me 2024 and special  thanks to everybody who donated money on patreon   or Kofi or the YouTube channel memberships  page I am super grateful for your support and   without you this wouldn't be possible spread  some love be kind hope to see you again on   this channel sometime I'm Yan beta thanks for  watching see you next year apparently peace out

2024-12-30 03:12

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