Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!uw-entropy!quick!amc-gw!marty
From: marty@amc-gw.UUCP (Marty Akerman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.cbm
Subject: Sick C64
Message-ID: <936@amc-gw.UUCP>
Date: 3 Oct 89 17:47:01 GMT
Reply-To: marty@amc-gw.UUCP (Marty Akerman)
Organization: Applied Microsystems Corporation, Redmond, WA.
Lines: 50



I have a C64 that I recently purchased second-hand.  While it seemed fine
at first, it quickly developed a couple of problems that I don't understand.
I'm hoping you more experienced people could help me out.

The unit apparently had been shelved for several years before I bought it.

The problems:

  1:  It seems to have trouble running canned (purchased) programs from
      disk.  Sometimes the program will never start up correctly, sometimes
      it will spontaneously crap out, even when the program is in an idle
      state.  Looks like a disk drive problem to me.  I bought a cleaning
      disk (Allsop) and tried that, but no change.  Programs I have written
      and stored to disk load and run fine, but they are all (so far) in
      basic, and much smaller than the canned programs.

  2:  Picture quality is generally lousy.  The antenna cable (C64 to TV)
      is VERY sensitive to orientation, coiling, what it's near, me touching
      it, cats, weather, what I had for lunch, etc.  Generally what I see is
      sinusoidal waves across the picture, sometimes the screen is covered
      with snow.  It can get so bad that I can't even read those big basic
      characters.

What I've done:

  1:  I've read here recently about power supply problems.  Mine measures
      4.97 with 0.001 ripple.  This does seem to be an older unit, with
      no ground at the wall outlet.

  2:  I've connected my unit to someone else's TV.  Picture is MUCH better
      there.  I can't remember now if I was using my power supply or his,
      but I'm led to believe that my unit is fine and the problem is in
      the connection or my TV.  My TV set has a locked digital tuner, so
      I can't "tweak the tuning"


Unrelated questions:

  1:  I've read and heard about the "fast load cartridge".  I gather this
      is a cartridge that plugs into the cartridge port on the back and
      speeds up disk accesses enormously.  Sounds like a terrific idea.
      Where can I get one?  How does it work?

  2:  I would be interested in doing some assembly language programming.
      Are there assemblers available or do I have to hand assemble (yuk)?
      Where can I get one?

  3:  Any other words of wisdom you could offer a novice C64 hack?