Retro Commodore 64 Broken

I recently got two c64s from someone, one worked fine, but the other just shows scrambled screen, and text changes slightly when buttons are pressed.

Can anything be done or anything? Or is it pointless?

Jules_Theone said:

I recently got two c64s from someone, one worked fine, but the other just shows scrambled screen, and text changes slightly when buttons are pressed.

Can anything be done or anything? Or is it pointless?

Click to expand...

Sounds like a ram failure...when it's on, very carefully use the back of a sensitive finger and touch the top of each ram chip in turn, usually the hottest one is the culprit...
I would suggest, if you plan on changing the chip yourself, that you snip the leads off the chip and remove the body first, then remove the pins and clean the board.
If you're not good with a soldering iron, take it to your local games machine repair tech or find one on a market somewhere...
The question of is it worth it?...well only you can decide that...it's all repairable, it's the time involved, effort put into it, and cost that makes things uneconomical to repair.


rgds

Either RAM, as stated or some of the 74 series glue. Its been a while since I looked at one of these , but I think they tended to have issues with 74LS138 chips which caused problems like the one you describe. Dry solder joints were also a common issue, due to poor manufacturing. Look for the hot bits as previously described, and look on the solder side of the board for crusty looking solder joints, or entire chip legs broken free from their solder.

On EBay, at any given time, Commodore 64s run about $5.00 for WORKING units...is it worth the time/money?