Today on Triple Freedom, they’re diving deep into some retro tech troubleshooting with a faulty Commodore 64. The team walks through what’s happening under the hood, starting with powering on the system.
Both the 5 volts and 12 volts are present, which is a good sign. However, there’s no signal on pin 1 of the CPU. After opening the case, they discovered that the clock signal to the CPU isn’t being generated. Using an oscilloscope to check pin 17, where the clock signal should appear, it turned out to be completely flat. The issue seems to be originating from the VIC-II chip, which controls the graphics and timing of the system…
