๐บ๐ธ Commodore VIC-20 for the Ham Shack: Part 1 (First Look) [TCE #0445]
29A quick look at this NTSC Commodore VIC-20 (serial V238324) that may have been used in someone's Ham Shack. It came with "HAMSOFT for the VIC-20" cartridge (by Kantronics), 24KBytes of RAM expansion, a 3-way cartridge expansion board plus an additional mystery ROM (see below).
Unfortunately it doesn't seem to boot at the moment - black screen.
There has been some work done internally:
[1] one of the 6522s has been replaced,
[2] another IC has been socketed (so likely replaced),
[3] an external reset switch has been installed,
[4] oh ... and it looks like the fuse has been shorted with some wire ...mmm-kay.
At 9VDC it was drawing about 1.3A ... seems a little high.
The machine is a prime candidate for some refurbishing - giving the case and keyboard a good scrub 'n' clean, as well as tidying up and modernising the board.
Update 10-May-2024:
I've dumped the unmarked EPROM - it's a 2716 containing "VIC Rabbit: A High-Speed Cassette Interface"
https://zimmers.net/anonftp/pub/cbm/vic20/roms/tools/4k/Rabbit.txt
https://www.atarimagazines.com/compute/issue34/043_1_VIC_RABBIT_A_HIGH-SPEED_CASSETTE_INTERFACE.php
Update 11-May-2024:
Dumped the HAMSOFT cartridge ROM here:
https://github.com/0ddjob/Commodore_VIC20/tree/main/HAMSOFT