Fake chips (6532AP)

The 6532AP RAM I/O chip in my Fluke 8080 pod failed and finding a replacement isn't easy as they've been out of production for years. I would borrow one from an Atari 2600 but those aren't the A or AP (2mhz) version required for the pod.

Buying anything from China is risky but usually what you get is used pulls cleaned up and sold as new old stock, I don't mind this if the chip actually works and it is cheap enough. In this case the chip was fake, what they obviously did is take any old chip with the same number of pins / package and print what ever they like on it.

 The chip they showed in the auction looks legit

 However this is what I actually received.

Huge shock it didn't work. I took another gamble and ordered some from utsource in Hong Kong this time, their feedback wasn't quite as bad as the other sellers and they looked to sell pulls rather than fakes. This paid off as the five I received from utsource all worked. 

In future I think I'll bite the bullet and buy locally though, even if they do want £11 a chip!

Amstrad CPC 464 repair

I bought this CPC computer in a job lot a while ago but only just got around to looking at it. The main reason I dug it out was to play with my new toy, a ABI Chipmaster Compact not to be confused with the newer but pretty much the same Professional model. This thing will test TTL logic, the majority of old RAM chips and certain CPUs, very handy.

First thing I had to do was find a suitable power brick in my stash, the CPC464 requires 5v 2amp regulated since there's no regulation on motherboard itself.

All I got was a black screen, after inspecting the motherboard I could see the video output socket had some cracked / dry solder joints. Reflowed and retested, still a black screen but the TV was picking up a signal this time. The Z80 cpu is socketed so I pulled it and put it in the chipmaster.

It failed so I replaced the CPU, now I was getting a blue / green screen with vertical lines. I forgot to photograph this but I suspected the ram as it looked to be running as the lines on screen were changing and moving a little.

The first ram I pulled tested fine but the second one did not.

A fully working CPC 464, and now time to test Rainbow Islands as it's the only game I have for it.