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Troubleshooting and Repairing your Commodore 64

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Troubleshooting & Repairing Your Commodore 64 by Art Margolis is a 377-page repair book published by TAB Books Inc., Blue Ridge Summit, Pennsylvania, first edition, first printing, 1985. ISBN 0-8306-0889-3 (hardback) and 0-8306-1889-9 (paperback); Library of Congress TK7887.M374 1985, catalogue card 85-4640. Cover price $22.95.

It is the largest third-party Commodore 64 repair book in this collection, and unlike the programming books here it does carry hardware data.

What it contains

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Twenty chapters and an appendix. The structure, from the book's own contents:

  • Test Point Charts — the front matter opens with the list of them. The book carries 21 test point charts, beginning in chapter 6, each giving expected readings at named points so a logic probe or meter reading can be compared against a chart rather than guessed at.
  • 1. Interpreting the symptoms — dead computer, garbage display, empty display block, no colour, no video with sound OK, no sound, external device troubles; PEEK and POKE diagnostics; the CIA, microprocessor, VIC and SID; troubleshooting charts.
  • 2. Disassembly — removing the top and the circuit board, visual inspection for ground-plane shorts and board defects, cleaning, static precautions and wrist straps.
  • 3. Chip location guide — drawing a guide, a chip survey covering the microprocessor, CIAs, VIC, SID, RAM, BASIC ROM, Kernal ROM, character ROM, colour RAM and other board landmarks; sockets.
  • 4. Chip changing techniques — TTL, DTL and RTL; three-state TTL; MOS chips; DIP packages; socketed chips; chip removal and replacement.
  • Later chapters cover the 82S100 PLA pinout and PLA inputs, pinouts generally, and chapter 20, the power supply.
  • Appendix: Master Schematic — a full schematic of the machine with, in the author's words, the part numbers on it, and the capacitors and resistors identified.

Why it is worth having

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The test point charts and the master schematic are the two things a repair reader wants and a programming book does not have. The chip location guide and the chapter on chip-changing technique are period-accurate practical advice on a machine that is almost entirely socketed.

How to use this book on this wiki

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It is a third-party book, not manufacturer documentation, and this wiki treats it as a secondary source. Where it disagrees with Commodore's own service manual or technical manual, those are primary and this is not. No component value on this wiki has been taken from it, and none should be without checking the figure against a Commodore parts list first.

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Download Troubleshooting and Repairing your Commodore 64 here: TabBooksInc Troubleshooting and Repairing your Commodore 64 -600dpi-.pdf

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