Commodore PC 1 Part 1/3 : Overview, repairs and first boot
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- čas přidán 10. 02. 2019
- In this video I'm going to cover the Commodore PC-1. Kindly offered to me by a viewer for review. Unfortunately it doesn't start, so it will need some repairs as well.
We'll go over the specs, the internals, and see if we can get it up and running again
For the second part where I will install the new final PSU and playing some games see • Commodore PC 1 Part 2/... - Věda a technologie
One interesting thing about the PC-1 is that it has an expansion port on the back that carries all of the necessary ISA bus signals. There is a pinout diagram available online for it. A person could make a cable to connect the expansion port to an external ISA backplane for expansion. Of course, that would not have been a popular procedure back in the 80s (for most people).
I dig the 1571-esque styling.
More like 128D
As someone who was raised with Amiga pc's in the house the brings back memories
Loved this video...very nice approach to these fix it videos
Excellent video, great narration and editing, subscribed. Looking forward to seeing more retro tech from this channel!
Thanks ... feel free to check out the other videos and spread the word .... lots of more cool stuff to come ... some more IBM stuff (XT / 286 / 486), 286 / 386 / 486 generic PC stuff, lots of commodore / amiga stuff , repairs and product reviews to go through.... :)
@@RetroSpector78 any Mac color classics 😇
You remind me of a girl I worked with at a lab once. We used a multi-meter to check resistances on a semi conductive surface, somehow we ended up talking about the multi meter and I showed her how to check AC voltage, so I set it to AC, put the probes in an outlet, and showed her the voltage display.
She just looked at me and said, "You're nuts", lol.
The only PC voltage that really scares me is the inside of CRT monitors.
That's a very good looking machine. Also a surprisingly clean layout on the inside, compared to the usual cable chaos that most machines of that era had.
My first ever pc computer. Tnx man! Love your videos!
mine too :)
mine also..
I have the PC10. Thanks for the review. This has motivated me to pull mine out and check it over.
hehe cool.... Glad you enjoyed it and great that you might get it out and up and running it again ! Have a Commodore PC-20 here as well that I also need to take a look at ... so many things to do and so little time....
Nice compact machine, very commodore like in a lot ways. The exteriour sytling, the somewhat custom way of doing things and not to forget the C64 cardboard RF shielding.
Never had one of these, but I DID have an Amstrad PC1512DD! It was my first PC clone. I had all three slots populated with a 1200 baud modem (later 2400), ThunderBoard, and a 40 meg IDE hard card with one of those Conner hard drives that all made that unique sound when they'd start up. I THINK I remember the Base Exchange selling some Commodore PC clones alongside the Packard Bell 286s and 386s.
Real nostalgia, that was my first PC, with the exact same mouse... I "upgraded" it with a NEC V20 CPU before moving on to a 286... 😊
very nice video ..
There seems to be an AMD CPU on the board as it's taken out of the case (e.g. at 8:26), but the Siemens CPU before (8:14) and after (9:32) that.
Wow ... somebody was paying attention... came with the siemens cpu but during filming I also wanted to test with this AMD. Continuity error :)
Ive got a couple of those. The one i bought back in the day and worked on, had its psu failing. so i hooked it onto another psu many years ago.
Bought another one for my collection end 90ies i think.
Just got them out of the collection, bc ive got to sell most. The speaker is normally glued on the bottom, front left.
I removed that psu from the first one, sometime, so couldnt test it at this time.
The other one booted, but didnt want to read my bootdisks.
There's usually something not all that great after 30 years in storage.
I have one, it has 1 extension to a (say) 800 K external (small) floppy drive, that communicated well with the motherboard.
The 8-bit guy needs to borrow one of these for his history of commodore series. You should get in touch with him.
He’s welcome to get in touch with me ! :)
i believe that changing all( fraco) capacitors will bring it to life again!
Nice video and nice machine. Shame Commodore couldn't have added one ISA slot on a riser so a card could fit over the motherboard. There seems to be plenty of vacant space in the case.
thank you for posting. w/o a psu fan, must be a quiet rascal, a stealth pc. if memory serves, it's pretty easy to back the individual female pins [sockets ?] out of the psu connector to the mobo, so you could temporarily rearrange the pins w/o cutting the wires, etc. take care & stay safe.
or cut an ATX extender instead of actual PSU... :-)
Keyboard is exact same as IBM Model F AT but reverse colors). It seems on Mitsumi KPQ switches, Model M 101 also was.
What an interesting PC - when I was in school most of the PC clones we had were made by Everex and Dell - I've never seen a Commodore PC in real life.
I have 3 Commodores so far: a 286 and 2x486
Because of the quality! This commodore looks more like a toy than a real pc
Very cool!
Thanks ... busy with part 2. Got a new internal PSU, going to hook it up and see what she can do. It's a nice little machine.
Looks like an AT keyboard to me (the XTs did not support keyboards with lock lights). This one is the same layout as the AT version of the Model F
I can understand your wanting to avoid working on SMPS's but it is nice to try and keep original parts when possible. If shipping were cost effective I would be more then happy to repair them for you free of charge. Sadly the shipping alone to North America would probably outweigh the value of the power supply itself.
Hmm... charactOr. Must be the same dude who labeled kernAls.
What was the new power supply? Where did you get it?
Boy, I thought my Epson Apex 1 from 1988 was minimalist, with its 10 MHz processor, two 360 kB. floppy drives, no hard drive (no room for one), parallel port, no serial port, and monochrome video. This Commodore PC 1 outdoes it in minimalism. At least the Apex 1 has four 8-bit expansion slots!
Oh Lord, it looks like Commodore went with the pizza box aesthetic inside the case.
Damn, ROE capacitors.... We audiophile DIY people in Asia paid through the nose for these. They sound beautiful and warm when used in the right spot...
No expansion is incorrect ... the backside even has a cover labeled "expansion slot" - that slot is basically ISA without all voltages being forwarded and some signals shuffled. Spent a bit of time trying to get "disk on chip" modules running on the PC-1 - while it generally worked it was sadly to unreliable for mass production (IIRC formating never worked reliable). Still have the prototype lying around if you wanna give it a spin.
EDIT: i.imgur.com/ihjHcEb.jpg That's how it looks
🥳
I love to get this computer I gress they are hard to fine now
that commodore looks like c64 floppy drive but bigger
I think that 4.77Mhz 8088 is a bit underpowered for 1987. I would expect some 8Mhz 8086 for XT clone at that time.
Everything in that machine has been engineered to keep the cost down, including the choice of CPU. Several home computer manufacturers came out with PCs like these, including Atari ("Atari PC", 1987, 8088 @ 4.77 or 8 MHz) and Schneider ("Euro PC", 1988, 8088 @ 4.77 or 9.54 MHz).
I bought this today for 100 euro's, the monitor and the PC-1 were both in box, although damaged. Did I pay too much? I wonder how much this is worth but cant find them on ebay
Ultimately the buyer determines the value of something. They are pretty rare. I would you take care of it. Fix what needs to be fixed and enjoy the machine !
Hi, i have a complete and working set (cmd pc1 desktop, commodore monitor, keyboard and original mouse i want to sell.
Where should i go.
yea, damn clips...
Didn't Commodore only sell these in Europe?
@NPC #34254334 Response: I know
No surprise, as they are made from ROE and they always fail. You have to change the caps (capacitors). Most Made in Germany PSUs have them in PC series, A2000, C128, C128D maybe too.
Caps seem to be fine as I measured a couple of them using my ESR meter. However I'm not that comfortable working on these switch mode power supplies and different people (far more experienced then myself) made it clear that they are not only dangerous but also difficult to debug in case of failure. And given the prices of new embedded SMPS units, I'm going to go for that option I think and prolonge its life that way.
@@RetroSpector78 The ROE (or Roederstein) Capacitors normally fail shorted, so an ESR measurement might look okay (of cource a short has low resistance). Try measuring if there is a short across them with a normal multimeter. This can also be done in circuit, as there exists no circuit which intentionally shorts a cap.
Speaker was an option for extra cash.
You never told what the expansion port was all about...
my first pc... oooooohhhhh
You sound a lot like the 8bit show and tell guy..
So a bog standard Amiga 500+ is better.