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One of the parts that fails a lot on a Commodore 64 is the power switch.
After 40 years the contacts of those switches seems to get oxidated or dirty.
The correct switch is hard to find, or sold for to much money.

One solution is to open the switch, careful bend the metal shield away of the plastic housing.
Then clean the contacts and reassemble.
Only disadvantage of this is that the plastic can crack and reassembly of the switch can be a hassle.

There is another trick…

You can order a switch almost the same as used in the Commodore 64, and swap the black knob.
when you search on the internet for a TR-80 switch, you see that those switches are very common, but the knob is to large.
The knob does have the same mounting as the Commodore power switch, so when you can swap the knobs, so you have a “new” switch with correct knob.

I wish everyone a very merry Christmas and a very good new year.
I hope that everyone will have a nice new year with lot of Commodore fun, in good health.

I’ll be unpacking a lot of great presents this year 😊
My plans for this year will be a lot of Commodore repairing and projects.

I’m saving to buy a new digital oscilloscoop, so I decided to sell so stuff that I don’t use anymore.
So last weekend I put my Blizzard 1220/4 and 2 old (to big for my desk) oscilloscopes for sale.

The Blizzard was one of two cards that came with my A1200, and I never use it as the other card is a GVP 68030 at 40 MHz and contains 16 Mb fast memory.

  
So if you are interested in a 68020 running at 28MHz and 4Mb fast memory expansion card for the A1200 go to Amibay.  SOLD

I created a small guide on how to flash a Gotek drive Without the use of a USB to RS232 converter.
You can find it here

last week I received 2 prototype boards called “64 Tuning Board”.
This is a design of Matthias that he showed on Forum64.de.
This board is designed to use an Arduino or teensy and has several other “expansions” like the option to use sram over dram which does not show the VSP bug.

I wish everybody a good and healthy 2020.
I hope you may all spend a lot of time with your retro computer (and your family of course).

 

The Commodore Club of the Netherlands published an impression of the last meeting.

Next meeting will be on December 21th in Maarssen (near Utrecht)

Last couple of months I’m very busy with all kinds of little projects.

I’m looking through my stuff, collected over the last 20 years, My son is getting older and needs more space so I need to move my computers and other equipment to another room.

I also received a broken ZX81 (dead ULA and broken keyboard membrane), I already got another main board to check if it has a working ULA.

Another thing I received is a broken 1551, I think the TIA (6525) in the drive is broken, as this chip is rare, I need to find another way to replace it (CPLD ?).

I created about 15 pieces of the JoySwap to be sold, but currently I’m still writing a little installation manual.

I ordered some PI1541 boards and currently I’m waiting for the parts, the PI1541 looks very promising.

Last week I finished my Vic 20 Diagnostic kit.
The cartridge can also be used to expand the memory with a total of 35Kb.
I made this cartridge on request of a fellow club member.

More about this Diagnostic kit kan be found here.