Phil C’s C128D, repair, upgrade etc

[PhilC]

I’ve had a few minutes this afternoon after finishing my work, so I decided I’d have a go at starting up the C128D.

I’ve wanted one of these for a few years now but with a keyboard and in good condition they go for silly money, circa £500 - £700 a go.

This one doesn’t come with a keyboard but was shown as booting to desktop on eBay. It’s a little damaged with one of the cable holders being snapped off and as I said, no keyboard.

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I’ve ordered a Lumafix for it as there are some quite pronounced banding and ghosting present. It’s actually a different Lumafix than the ones I fit yo my 64s, so will post an update when I got it.

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Being a C128D it’s only got 16K VDC ram, so that’s another upgrade that I’ll do. This time it’s a case of swapping the two ram chips got some 41464 chips.

And whilst all that’s being done I’ll check out the caps in the PSU and on the motherboard. The fan has got to go too, it’s far too noisy.

[BennehBoy]

What are your plans for a keyboard? There are a few projects on github to add ps/2 support, I was considering writing some stm32 HID code to do a USB conversion when I was looking about for a 128, but got a pizza box one with external 1571 in the end so that never even got started.

[PhilC]

What are your plans for a keyboard? There are a few projects on github to add ps/2 support, I was considering writing some stm32 HID code to do a USB conversion when I was looking about for a 128, but got a pizza box one with external 1571 in the end so that never even got started.

I’m hoping to get it make some kind of ps/2 solution eventually but to get it up and running I’m going to use a c64 keyboard and make an adaptor.

What ps/2 solution would you recommend?

[BennehBoy]

I don't really have a recommendation to be honest as I never got around to trying the ones that I found.

[PhilC]

First order of the day was getting the c64 keyboard adaptor fitted and seeing if that works, the good news is that the computer responds well to the keyboard, the bad news, the space bar needs fixing on the keyboard, bl**dy typical.

So I’ve fixed the keyboard and dug out some floppies and you’ve guessed it. The floppy drive didn’t work.

The door latch lever or whatever you call it was broken, so fixed that with a bit of plastic welding and tried again. Now the drive doesn’t think there is a disk present. I would love to say it just needed a quick clean……. And actually yes, it looks like that’s the case. I cleaned the heads and then reinserted all of the cables that run to and from the floppy and the drive board and now it’s formatted just fine. I think there was also an issue with the disk detection (write disable) switch but that’s fixed itself with a little exercising.

Next up is the Lumafix, VDC upgrade and then to give it a bit of TLC.

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[rubber_jonnie]

Neat, I do fancy a C128 but undecided at present as they are a bit pricey. I like the look of the D over the standard model that looks like a C64C.

[BennehBoy]

I forgot that the plastic 128D had the full separate 1571 internals - nice.

[PhilC]

@BennehBoy the drive is about the easiest bit to remove and as you say, it’s a 1571 but with the pcb behind it in an L shape.

I got the Lumafix 128 fitted as well. It’s a pain to fit to this 128D. I’ve had to cut a whole in the top of the shield that covered the vic and also the outer shield as well. I also fitted a heat sink into the chip which then makes it touch the bottom of the drive pcb holder which is metal so may help with cooling.

I wanted to leave the rest of the shields in place as they also act as heat sinks for the other chips in the 128.

Scroll up for the before pics in 128 mode and here are the improved 128 and 64 screen, a definite improvement.

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[PhilC]

I'm thinking about giving the C128 a dual SID setup ready for Cyber Legends V2.0 but have never done this before and there are a few options available, from adding in a second SID chip, of which I have a couple spare, adding an ARM2SID or getting a Sidekick C64, which apparently can emulate up to 8 SIDs using a Raspberry Pi.

Does anyone have any experience doing this?

[rubber_jonnie]

I really have the green eye for this machine, it's a bit of a unicorn, I'd even take a normal C128. Looking forward to seeing it finished.