Muzz73

Had I been thinking clearly in 1992, I'd have stocked up!

Off topic here, but have you upgraded it to 4MB RAM? Handy for System 7.1, especially for caching and a RAM disk...

Yes, I read on the web site that others were helping to run it after Rick's passing, I just wasn't sure of the current status. I'll be patient and wait. I'm looking forward to putting a REX into my Model 102 as well! Thanks, all!

Does anyone know if club100.org is still in operation? Their web site is up, but I'm not sure when it was updated last. I sent an e-mail asking if they were still in operation and expressed an interest in making a purchase or two, but never received any response. Any info. you might have will be appreciated. Thanks to all!

Thanks! It's in nice condition, too. My favorite A8! Granted, most of the wear & tear goes on my 800XL... but once the Incognito goes in, it's never leaving my desk again!

OK, my turn... NTSC unit, freshly rebuilt, awaiting installation of my Incognito.

I especially like the idea of shoehorning one into my 600XL...

A VERY used (when I first got it) C=64 w/datasette drive, a 9" or 10" B&W TV and (a few months later) a 1650 MoDem (300 BAUD). Regardless what type of setup I may have at any given moment, I still miss that thing and the days of 40 column ASCII text BBSes in the Santa Cruz, CA area. Then I realize that it's not 1987 anymore...

Yes! I love 68K Macs! I've had, well... too many of them to count, but... On the floppy issue, I have something unrelated that you may need to think about. If you are going to be using a lot of older disks (like if you inherited someone's old library or something to that effect) and have a Superdrive (the 1.44MB DSHD 3.5"), you will probably want to grab a DSDD 880K drive as well, or at least borrow one until you have backed up all of the disks onto more modern media. Superdrives sometimes spat older disks out (especially MFS-formatted), so you needed an older drive to read them properly. It doesn't happen often, but it can be frustrating when it does.

Between my dad, my son and myself, we've owned 6-7 VIC-20's and probably 25-30 C=64's over the last 29 years. We have a habit of rescuing them from swap meets, yard sales and Goodwill's Bargain Barn in Santa Cruz, CA. We can, of course, go into the ups and downs of both of them and come to the determination that, despite their respective quirks, they are both wonderful machines, but... I'm for calling the VIC-20 more robust than the C=64, just based on my own (personal) experience... especially the two-prongers! It also helps that there are modernized, drop-in replacements for both the 6502 & 6522 (both used in the VIC-20) that are still produced today (those account for 3 of the 4 chips in VIC-20's that fail most often), while there are no drop-in replacements for either the 6510 or 6526 (used in the C=64) currently produced. You have to resort to new, 25-30+ year old stock or used pulls. Just some observations from a guy with 4 VIC-20's that still run and 7 C=64's with various combinations of bad PLA's & faulty 6526's.

Oh, wow... Just take my money... NOW!!! Yes, very interested in one. Keep us posted!

Yep! If you can get a Servant 128 chip to drop into the empty ROM socket (if yours is still empty), it has some convenient utility-type features. One of them is a BAM copier that uses the extra VRAM for caching, IIRC. You can do disk-to-disk copying in considerably less time, especially if you only have one floppy drive (fewer disk swaps).

Flat 128's and 128DCRs have somewhat different chipsets. Being that some of the chips are different, I wouldn't cannibalize either one to save the other... I would keep the flat 128 (maybe store it somewhere else) in case the DCR goes kaboom. At least you'd have a backup machine that way. You can always upgrade the VRAM on the flat 128 to 64K and have software compatibility to the DCR. I can sympathize; I have a "short board" 64C that uses some of the newer, 9v chips that the 128DCR uses and I can't find replacements anywhere.

It's already been said (in essence), but my opinion on stock Commodore PSU's: hold the ends of both cords, swing it around like the hammer throw in the Summer Olympics and let go. This provides some physical exercise, it helps with the hand/eye coordination and is more amusing than plugging it in and watching your SID chip slag.

I voted 400/800 line in the poll before actually reading your post. Oops... Since you are only planning on one, I think the 800XL is your best bet. Minimal tweaking, runs just about everything and more robust than the XE line (though the XE's look pretty slick).

That 16K module was brought in by someone in our user group, but I do have a Commodore 8K, an aftermarket 16K (Cardco, I think?) and a 32K PCB that Eslapion over on Denial built. Gosh, I haven't logged in to the Denial forum in over a year... I need to snap to it! What are you looking for specifically, aside from the parts you listed above?

Nice! While I haven't done any component level restoration or preventative maintenance, myself (I always tell people that my soldering ability is akin to giving a Stradivarius to an orangutan), I had Ray Carlsen go through all of my VIC-20's and replace any weak/defective parts while I did up the case. I went out of my way to get the ugliest, yellowest, most horribly sunburned VIC-20 I could find from our user group cache, broke it down to individual pieces and got to work. I pulled the decal with the serial number and all of the rotting, black rubber feet off of the bottom, masked off the badges on the top of the case (I didn't want to damage them by bending them while prying them off) and scrubbed it squeaky clean in the kitchen sink. After it air dried, I took a can of red spray paint (the kind that is designed to stick to plastic patio furniture without primer) and went to it - inside, outside, through the vents... I then reapplied the decal on the bottom and put new feet on while the paint was still tacky, for extra hold (I used clear silicone feet instead of black rubber, for better longevity). After the paint dried, I put a spare 64C keyboard in it (it looked nicer with the red case than chocolate brown did) and voila! Here are a couple of (years old) pictures of my son and I with it at a user group meeting. Since my son doesn't want to put wear & tear on his nice, PET key VIC-20 system with all matching peripherals, we use this one as our daily driver VIC. I am thinking of putting the peanut butter colored function keys on it, just so something remains classic VIC about it, but I'm pretty happy with it the way it is.

The REX 100/102 is a small flash RAM unit that fits into the Option ROM socket behind the little hatch on the under side of the TRS-80 Model 100/102. It has 1MB flash RAM. If I understand it correctly, it has 256K reserved for the DOS functions needed to address the other 768K as a drive. Check it out here: http://www.club100.org/index.html 768K is minuscule by today's standards, but it should be fine for an 8-bit machine. It's still more than two DSDD 5.25" floppy disks and being that the file size for the Model 100/102 is so small, it should be decent storage for portability's sake. They also have units called "NADSBoxes" that attach to one of the ports on the back and have much more storage, but I'd rather have a smaller unit, tucked up inside (I'm picky that way).

I've had a couple Tweety Boards in my time and yes, they were phenomenally easy to install - solderless! The board had some double-faced tape on the under side and you piggy-backed it onto the YM. Apart from being cheap and easy enough for a baboon to install, the board really had no redeeming qualities, IMHO... all it did was take a sub-par sound chip and split the channels out. It was fun to mess around with, though.

I was thinking of experimenting with random number generation in BASIC and intended to use my microcassette recorder for bulk storage on the 102. I am now thinking of investing in one of those REX storage units, instead. I'd still need a cassette cable to pipe everything out to my PC's sound system (for backup), but I guess I could try the one from my CoCo 2... I just wanted to make sure I wasn't going to fry anything! Thanks!

Hahahahaha!!! These are great!

I wrote the above post when I was trying to get a Model 100 off of ebay, but got sniped (3 times in the same week). A week and a half ago, a nice guy gave me a Model 102 for free and I'm pretty stoked... it runs like a top and I take it with me just about everywhere! I still need a cassette cable, though. Any ideas? Thanks in advance!

Get both of them, put the 800 away until you can get your hands on an Incognito (if ever) and use the 800XL as your "daily beater". Just an idea.

I have three black & silver units, myself (my son has one as well). It doesn't hurt to have a few for parts, especially if you're saving them from being recycled/thrown out. I may have to to pick up a few more off of fleabay, if the price is right...

Ultimas 5 & 6, darn it!