Vic 20 color strangeness

[Groovydrifter]

Well guys... repair report:

After and amazing two day travel from UK to Spain, I received Spirantho's VIC-I's (amazingly short, I mean). I checked before other possible suspects but after testing the chips in the Willem programmer all passed OK, so I replaced both VIC-I and tada! both VIC-20's worked with flying colours (and never best said this that in this case... hehehehehe).

There was left the Serial port issue (not working) in one of the units, but as I had not any VIA's to replace (bought two from a guy in Germany but they are still in the post) I checked the little 7406 6-NOT gate, and two of the gates failed, so I socketed it and put a new one. It worked, The VIC recognized the SD2IEC and loaded a pair of programs.

And then I went to sleep, because it was 5 AM.

I'm just now adding heatsinks to both VIC-20's. I've put two on each, one in the VIC-1 and one in the 6502? should I protect any other chips? I make them from a small E-shaped aluminium profile that I cut to the right length (I bought also U shaped for the narrow IC's and 3mm plate to use where height is limited). I use high quality silver thermal grease in the middle 60% of the IC and two small drops of contact glue in the rest. This way the heat transfer is good and the heatsinks can be removed easily if needed.

[Spirantho]

Glad to be of help.

I'm not sure the chips in a VIC-20 need heatsink.... even the VIC chip itself doesn't get that hot.... but given its rarity that's the one I'd heatsink if I were you.

I have 100 6522 chips coming in this week, by the way, along with another 100 VIC-II chips... Should keep more Commodores running for a while!