Rubenerd

It’s small, simple to operate, boils water fast, and you get to watch it bubble away through its clear walls. We got one for our little kitchen to match our appliances, and it’s been delightful.

This is part two in my my Commodore 128 series. I originally intended to post about some device history and explain why it’s my favourite 8-bit computer of all time, but I got my unit booting again last night and wanted to share!

Josh Nunn of The Geekorium sent me this Commodore 128 back in 2018 in working order, though occasionally it would take a few power cycles to turn on. But since our last house move the power LED failed to glow, and it outputted no video signals at all. So I finally sat down last night to try and figure out why.

Easy tests

The easiest way to tell if a Commodore is working is by plugging in a disk drive, and seeing if the drive seeks when the computer starts. I had my trusty Commodore 1541 I got for my 18th birthday from eBay, but plugging it and booting the C128 showed no activity on the drive’s LED. I know the drive and serial cable are good from using them with my Plus/4 and C16.

Another easy check is to see if the C128 is supplying 5V to the second pin from the right of the datasette port. When I bought a replacement power supply for the C128, I also got a handy passive volt meter with pass-through that you can plug into the datasette port. The meter’s segment display didn’t turn on when the computer booted. Just in case the detector was faulty, I probed with my multimeter directly and got a measly 0.38 V (this number would also come back in other places). I was relieved the board was at least getting power.

(I forgot to take a photo of the meter when it wasn’t showing any power on the second pin. This was taken after fixing the machine).

Probing for power

I watched a bit of a YouTube video where the gentleman was troubleshooting video issues (I think it was the imitable Jan Beta) when he reminded me of the Commodore diagnostic manual! Archive.org has high quality scans of all the pages, so I loaded them up on my iPad. I set my multimeter to 20 V DC mode, connected the black probe to ground on the board, and started checking.

Section 2 described some basic preliminary checks:

1. Measure the voltage on pin 25 (+ 5VDC) of the 6581 SID. I counted from the bottom-right in an anti-clockwise direction. Pin 25 was forth from the bottom on the left. I only read 3.58 V again, which was wrong.

2. Measure the signal on pin 28 (+ 12VDC) of the 6581 SID. I counted this as the bottom-left pin. I read 11.91 V which was fine.

The manual said if any result was incorrect to refer to Section 2.2, “System Power Supply”. This could either be a very hairy problem, or something simple, so I crossed my fingers for the latter! I had a defective 5V supply, so I checked Section 2.2.1:

1. Measure the voltage on the (+ LEG) of Capacitor C107. This is one of the small caps next to the power plug. It dropped further to 0.38 V, which was clearly wrong.

2. Measure the voltage on the (+ LEG) of Capacitor C99. I read 5.23 V which was fine!

The manual suggested the issue was a defective Switch S1. This the rocking switch next to the power plug for turning the C128 on and off. GGLabs sold replacements, but I was hoping I could fix this one first. I flicked it a few times and it seemed mechanically fine, though I noticed after doing that the voltage on the datasette port and the SID chip had dropped further! This confirmed my suspicions that this switch was dodgy.

Checking and fixing the power switch

I unplugged the computer from mains and tried to get a closer look. I used the torch from my phone and noticed a large clump of fluff inside the mechanism when the switch was turned off. I used a small can of compressed air and was shocked by the amount of crud that flew out in either direction from a tiny burst, in addition to the aforementioned dust bunny. The second burst dislodged a further mist of dust. I didn’t have anything to compare it to before, so I assumed this switch was supposed to be stiff. But it moved with ease now, so it was immediately obvious that it was gummed up before.

(I suppose this switch is a primary point of ingress into the case, and is basically the only mechanical component of the whole computer).

My favourite Hi-Fi YouTuber Techmoan clued me into using contact cleaner on crackly volume dials to make them smooth and quiet, so I figured it was also worth a shot. I sprayed a small amount into the switch mechanism, and switched it on and off a dozen times to work it in. It now had a reassuring click in addition to taking less physical force. It felt like an entirely new mechanism, just as the drive rails did on my 1541 after cleaning and giving them new lithium grease. Who’d have thunk it?!

The alcohol seemed to evaporate in seconds, but I let the machine dry for an hour, then plugged it back in and turned it on. The sight nearly made me cry; one of my favourite machines was working again! I was getting the right voltages on the datasette port and the SID chip, and the power LED worked! The switch is also infinitely-more satisfying to use now, which is entirely pointless but fun in a tactile way.

Conclusion

Lesson learned: always troubleshoot basic mechanical things first if you can!

The next step is to source some more thermal paste so I can reattach the shield; the original 36 year-old paste had dried out and wasn’t making contact at all. I’m also retr0brighting the keys and thoroughly cleaning the keyboard switch mechanisms which over the years had become stuck under a few keys. But that’s for the next post :).

I also noticed that only one of the two LEDs light up on the power status light. I’m fine as long as one is working, but I’d like to see if I could replace this at some point too.

I’m always bemused by how much of a networking conversation I end up having with people using almost nothing but abbreviations; people without industry experience would think we’re daft or speaking in tongues. I just realised non-weebs would see the post title here likely think the same thing.

Good Smile Company have done such a great job making anime figure collecting a more approachable hobby with their Pop Up Parade line, both in cost and in the smaller scale of their sculpts, while still maintaining decent quality. Their figs are much closer to premium figure manufacturers than so-called game prize companies like Sega, which is impressive considering even the latter have hugely improved over the last few years.

I’ve only seen Nakano Itsuki (left) and Nakano Yotsuba (right) be announced so far from the Quintessential Quintuplets franchise, but they’re adorable! The sculptors and painters captured the personalities of the characters so well with their expressions and poses. Itsuki’s blatant lack of glasses is my only minor quibble.

This is problematic for us, considering I’ve amassed even more Commodore hardware to write my C128 series and therefore have even less apartment space. Maybe Itsuki could stand on my 1541 shifty eyes.

Speaking of the SS Martin Mullen, I saw that Wikipedia recently featured an article about the SS Golden Eagle, launched as the SS Mauna Loa in 1919. This photo by Walter E. Frost was taken in 1932.

This little ship had a long career spanning troop activities to the Philippines during World War I, to shipping pineapples. It’s worth a read.

This post about my favourite 8-bit computer has been three years in the making, but I kept putting off over fears I can best describe as inadequacy. It’s strange and difficult to describe.

There are so many video creators, podcasters, and bloggers who have done incredible work at assembling information and presenting fascinating takes on 8-bit computers. Combine that with my own long journey to learn about this machine, and the feeling of guilt that I hadn’t done The Geekorium’s generosity justice by blogging sooner, and I ended up not posting about it at all. It’s like self-doubt-informed procrastination, which I suppose are usually interrelated.

It’s incredibly silly in retrospect. My blog has always been about the process, and thinking out loud. The steps involved in cleaning, upgrading, refurbishing, kitting out, programming, and learning about this new (to me) machine could have been an entire blog post series, but instead I kept plodding along, amassing thoughts and ideas for a big reveal blog post that ended up being too ambitious to be practical. Or became too big to write, in other words. I’ve only stumbled like this a few times in the history of my personal projects and writing, but when it happens it hits hard. So much so that I lose the ability to write cohesive metaphors.

Photo by Evan-Amos.

But there’s another reason why this feeling of defeat is so silly. This machine has been so much fun! Researching the intricacies of VDC memory for 80-column output, comparing the performance of 1541 and 1571 disk drives, how to load applications from cassette, and the process of physical restoration have been a source of deep fascination and joy, and a welcome distraction during These Times™.

Over the coming months I’m going to pick up and write what I should have done from the start, and write about this fun old computer. It’s unique dual-CPU, quad-OS architecture, surprisingly contemporary design, and the interesting moment in history it occupied between the 64 and the Amiga. I’ll write about the hardware upgrades I’ve given it, how I’ve transferred current software to it and added it to my home network, what it’s meant for a guy who grew up in the 16bit DOS era, how it relates to the Commodore Plus/4 and 16 that I also have, how I built an IKEA desk around it, and potentially more.

Isn’t it weird that we convince ourselves with these concocted narratives, when we should have just written what was on our mind from the start?

Facebook have begun blocking news in Australia in response to some poorly-conceived, bipartisan legislation. My views of the company, and the politics that lead to this, are beyond the scope of this post. Instead I want to help people who might have relied upon Facebook for news, and offer a far superior alternative.

RSS is a decades-old technology built into most news sites and blogs. You subscribe to these in an aggregator, which let you read news as you would have on a social media platform. You can think of it as email for news, though other ways of presenting the information exists.

It’s simple to use. Sign up for a platform such as The Old Reader or Feedly, or download a program like NetNewsWire or Thunderbird. These tools will have an option to “add” an RSS feed. Most are smart enough to detect it if you give it a news site, such as:

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/

Another option is to look on pages for the word “Subscribe”, or for an icon similar to the one on the right. These contain a link you can paste directly into your aggregator. For example, the SBS News website has a subscribe page listing feeds for a number of different topics.

If you need help, here are the state government health departments that are publishing RSS feeds. Right-click these links and choose Copy to get the link you need:

• Australian Capital Territory
• Federal Government
• New South Wales
• Tasmania
• Victoria

(The Queensland, Northern Territory, South Australia and Western Australia health sites don’t publish RSS feeds that I can see, which to me is a clear breach of their accessibility guidelines. I’ve sent them feedback, but in the meantime you can read the news directly on their sites).

And here are some common news sites. If you don’t see the sites you read listed, you can probably still paste their home page URL into your feed reader.

• ABC News Latest
• The Age
• The Canberra Times
• Crikey
• The Guardian Australia
• Indepedent Australia
• Michael West
• NT News
• SBS News
• The Sydney Morning Herald

Please contact me on @Twitter or send me an email at me at rubenschade dot com (not spelled out) if you need help.

Cable TV never had the ubiquity in Australia like it did in Singapore or the United States. But I’m familiar enough with the concept of “cord cutters”, or people cancelling their services in an act of defiance against the machine.

I’ve heard a few cited reasons. Customers were frustrated with the steep cost, especially given you still had to sit through commercials like free-to-air. The business model didn’t permit à la carting specific channels, so you were stuck scrolling through junk you didn’t want. People were worried during the Mr Orange era that a portion of their subscription compensated news channels that disseminated misinformation lies. And then there’s the poor customer service that’s emotionally scarred enough people that it’s a trope itself.

Torrents were used as an early replacement—and are yet to be beaten for technical efficiency—but streaming services are now seen as the savior. There was a brief period of time when media companies and consumers seemed to be on the same page, which I’m sure the former took as a challenge.

Today there are dozens of steaming platforms, with more launching all the time with flashy ads and eyerolls from the public. These dilute the individual value and utility of any one platform, and drives people back to questionably-legal distribution. What’s the motivation for customers to subscribe to yet another service for a single show?

Dave Winer recently discovered that going back to cable saved him money compared to the multiple streaming services he had before. I’m not surprised.

Clara and I recently cancelled all but one of our services, because outside anime we only watch independent producers now. I say this instead of “YouTubers” because that just happens to be where they are at the moment. Whatever we paid for the other services now get funneled into Patreon, which I suppose is the à la carte option.

Magic: The Gathering cards are underappreciated as sources of funny and profound quips. Here’s one from a 2004 Chittering Rats card:

Bottom feeders sometimes rise to the top.

And Muck Rats from 1997:

The difference between a nuisance and a threat is often merely a matter of numbers.

Alongside the word punters (which sounds like a broken strawberry container), there are few things I dislike more than Crown in Australia. Their Melbourne casino is the largest in the country and, as you would expect, it’s been embroiled in some dodgy things, to use the legal term.

A few years ago the company built a $2.2 billion skyscraper in the Barangaroo precinct in Sydney that isn’t ugly as much as it’s pedestrian. And then this happened, as reported by Josh Bavas for the ABC:

Crown Resorts has officially been informed by the NSW gaming regulator it is no longer suitable to hold the licence for its new Sydney casino. [..] In an ASX statement released this morning, Crown said it had been informed of the decision and that it had also been found to have breached a clause of the state’s gaming regulations.

They’re appealing the state’s independent body, but it still made my week! I’m tired of specific industries expecting that they can steamroll through what they want to do, so even an inconvenience like this is a big win. It also raises the question about why Victoria allowed them to operate the largest casino in Melbourne, and continues to do so.

Why is this news on a nominally-technical blog? Aside from my own sense of joy, the CEO of Crown is Helen Coonan. If that name rings a bell, she was the former conservative MP and Australian telecommunications minister who pushed for mandatory Internet filtering. Eventually she oversaw the release of the multi-million dollar NetAlert system for ISPs, which a 16-year old cracked within thirty minutes. I love that that’s her legacy!

This was the first month where I didn’t have scheduled posts lined up. Sometimes I cheat and set up a dozen or so entries to be released over a period of days to prevent spam.

In the old days people used to joke that they could tell how busy I was based on the frequency and length of posts!