Faulty VIC-II Kawari board?

[Beatfox]

I purchased a VIC-II Kawari mini for my 250407 Rev. B breadbin and got it installed, but it’s giving a weird graphical issue. The character bitmaps look correct, but each character on the screen appears in a different, random color. Pulled out the board and reseated it firmly a few times (making sure to check the onboard LED each time), but always with the same result. Could I have received a faulty board? I tried going back to the original VIC-II just to make sure I hadn’t somehow damaged another component in the process, and everything appeared fine again when I did, so it definitely seems like it has to do with the board and not something else in the C64. Should I request a replacement?

 

[nick3092]

I have the large board and two 407s. One of my 407s does the same thing. I swapped out the usual suspects of ICs that would normally cause this issue to no avail. The board does not do this in my other 407 though. So unlikely the board is faulty, rather some borderline part in the c64 itself.

[Beatfox]

Interesting... well, glad to at least hear from someone else who's encountered the same problem. That's definitely a bummer if it is some obscure issue with the C64 hardware that doesn't show up when the original chip is used, though. I see that there's a Discord server for the Kawari, so I'll ask there and find out if anyone might have additional insight. Thanks for the info!

[eightbit]

Submit the issue here:

 

https://github.com/randyrossi/vicii-kawari/issues

 

Randy is very good with answering issues.

 

I doubt this is your issue, but remember that these ship default PAL. I had to move a jumper (tiny jumpers at that!) to move it to NTSC when I received it and then save that setting using the Kawari config util.

Edited July 5 by eightbit