Building a VIC-20 in 2021

hi it's jan beta and today we are going to  turn these parcels into something like this   at the very least i'm going to try to achieve that  goal today we're going to see how it turns out as   you probably know if you're following this stuff  rob taylor who made the commodore 64 sixtyclone   boards as well and i built one of those in  a previous video has made a replica board   that means a new pcb according to the  specifications of the commodore vic-20   or vc-20 as it's called here in germany for  peculiar reasons and he was kind enough to send me   one and then also martijn of the run stop re-store  now sells full kits to populate these boards   and yeah he sent me a full kit we should be fine  we should have all the components to build our   own vic-20 today so i'm pretty excited about this  building the sixtyclone board was incredibly fun   and as you've maybe seen in the video it worked  in the end so i hope for the best for this one   and yeah first of all let's see what we  got and this is obviously going to be   quite some soldering so if you are not up  for that i'm going to try to make it as   entertaining and informative as possible but  yeah it's going to be me soldering the board   and then connecting it up and trying it out i  guess so yeah let's see what's in the boxes or   flat boxes and by the way obviously i'm going to  link the stuff you see in the video description   oh that's a 1541 board that rob also  made okay that's a commodore 1541   disk drive replica board that's pretty neat and  it's yellow nice okay thank you for that bonus   and here it is the main attraction so this  is the vicky twenty. it's a replica of the   second revision of the vic-20 i don't know  if there were any more revisions i just think   there were two the initial revision had some  large voltage regulators on the board and the   power supply was just a 9 volts ac power supply  and the voltages that provide the board with   the dc were generated on board and this uses  the commodore 64 power supply so it has 5   volts from the power supply 5 volts dc and  9 volts ac and the ac is rectified on here   as well and used for some bits similar to what  the commodore 64 does this also has some chips   cost reduced away but overall this is the better  version of the vic-20 because you don't have the   huge voltage regulators on board that generate  a lot of heat naturally so yeah pretty cool that   rob replicated this board revision not the other  one also this has less components less to solder   and it's easier to build this should also be a bit  easier to build than the commodore 64 one because   yeah basically the vic-20 is a more basic  computer so there's less stuff going on here   and then i got two from martjin from  the netherlands who provides kits for   the clone boards of all kinds in the meantime  oh and i got some sweets in there nice yeah that's cool okay and i think this is the  whole kit it should be the whole kit with all the   stuff we need and we have a bill of materials that  tells us where the components go so i'm going to   go by that i guess and just mark whenever i solder  something in which should be relatively easy   unfortunately there's no parts finder website  or anything like that for the vicky twenty yet   maybe somebody is going to make one eventually  but yeah this looks pretty neat and in the other   package there's something that martijn he's  still always looking for better components   and things like that oh and there's some there's some bonus i think chewing gum commodore  branded chewing gum not everything we sell is mint   and this is a rectifier that fits the board better  that martijn sent he didn't have these when he   sent the other one and there should be one in here  that fits but this one fits better so we're going   to use this one let me interrupt this briefly  to thank the sponsor for today's video which is   pcbway my favorite manufacturer of prototype pcbs  of all kinds they have their fourth pcb design   contest going on currently where you can send in  your pcb designs and win some very generous prices   they have some categories this time around which  include iot, robotics and there's of course always   a free category where you can just do whatever you  like and send in your designs i highly recommend   checking out the website whether you want to  participate in the contest or not you can still   order your pcbs there and they have excellent  quality obviously so check out the link in the   video description and we are going to return to  building the vic-20 now i am just turning on my   soldering iron i guess and we don't need too many  tools for this i have my trusty side cutters here   and a good soldering iron my trusty old soldering  iron that is and we have all the parts in the kit   and we need some good ventilation so i have a  little fan here with a carbon filter in it that is   my soldering fume extractor my self-made diy model  just an old pc fan and i also am going to keep   the window open which is always a good idea and  have another fan blowing air out of the windows   so the ventilation should be pretty good which  is always a good idea if you are soldering a lot   and i tend to use these whenever i have  like something like this like a whole board   to build i'm using good ventilation so apologies  for any background noises you might hear   that's because i don't want to die in the  solder fumes it's always a good idea to start   with the lowest components so i think what  i want to do is to start with the resistors   and then go on to the components that have a  taller that protrude taller because it's easier to   get them in place after you solder the  lower components yeah and thankfully   martijn also provided the color codes because i  don't know them yeah i always have to look those   up for the resistor values they are coded with  colored rings obviously and they are all listed   on the bill of materials here so it  shouldn't be a big issue to find the   resistors we need the position is the board id  which is signified by the silk screen on the board   so these should be easy to find not quite as  easy as with the parts locator you saw me using   in the commodore 64 build video but yeah this is  going to be reasonably fine i guess so let's go so there's our r14 and as you can maybe  see the values for the components are also   printed on the circuit board so that's  really handy if you don't get a kit you can   just choose the correct resistors and  capacitors and stuff like that from your   parts bin maybe and no worries i'm not going to  bother you for every little resistor i'm bending   the legs outward so it so it holds in place  obviously there are holders for these things and better ways of doing this but this is  the way i'm used to doing things like   this so that's the way i'm going to  progress through this build hopefully i think it would make sense to populate more than  one resistor at a time for this to save some time   just wanted to show this for the first one  and now i'm going to do all the other ones   and probably it's a good idea to  tick these whenever i put one in some of these have a smaller  footprint than you would usually have   for a resistor that is in an axial  orientation so you have to put them in   something like this like standing  upright just bending the leg over there and for the most part the numbering of  the little components is they are very   close together if they have similar  numbers in the similar number range   so it is not that difficult to find them  usually so we're going to see about that okay here's a bit of a soldering tutorial  basically you heat the component leg   and the circuit board and then you add the  solder and you leave it on for a second or two   so it can flow through the via there and  make contact on the other side as well hmm okay that's all the resistors done on to some of the ceramic capacitors i guess   so here's a little bag with 26 ceramic capacitors  that have 104 printed on them which means 100   nanofarad so yeah these are going to go  all over the board so i'm just going to go   with these first and then the other ceramic  capacitors also that's going to be fun okay that's all the 104 ceramic capacitors  done all 26 of them and they are also   marked on the silk screen with a little 104  and some rounded corners around the component   footprint printed on the silk screen there for  these little ceramic capacitors you can also see   the values listed here including the numbers  that are actually printed on the capacitors   and yeah basically it's a three three-digit number  with the last digit signifying the number of zeros   basically so 10 is 0.1 microfarad or nanofarad 103  is 10 nanofarads 102 is one nanofarad 224 would be   0.22 microfarad and these don't have a polarity so  you can put them either way too like the resistors i encountered a peculiar thing there is  one optional little ceramic capacitor   that is to be placed over r5 this resistor here  in case the machine doesn't start up everybody   on the forums and such thinks that it has to do  with ub9 different types of this 7402 chip require   this but we are going to leave it out for now  and we are going to go on with soldering this 220   picofarad i believe axial ceramic  which is c13 here so this is going   like this then we have two higher  voltage film capacitors that are 220   nanofarad or 0.22 microfarad each these are  rated for 100 volts so they go into c35 and c36   you probably don't want to get these confused  with ceramic capacitors or something like that so tantalum capacitors although they look nearly  the same sometimes as the ceramic ones they have   a polarity and in contrast to the electrolytic  capacitors that some of you might be very familiar   with these have the positive side marked the  electrolytic capacitors have the negative side   marked so there's a little i don't know if you  can see it on camera very well but there's a   little marking and the leg is longer that's the  positive side you can mostly go by the rule long   leg positive for these components for  electrolytic capacitors that's also true   but yeah these are just these are the opposite  polarity marked than for electrolytic capacitors   yeah i just wanted to point that out  quickly so we're going to put these in   and we have four of those i think  that's not too many and the the markings   are the same as on the ceramic capacitors so   225 means 2.2 microfarad okay so this two legged  capacitor is going into this three hole position   c4 and the outer holes are both positive  while the center hole is negative   so i'm going to put the long leg in one of those  outer holes and the short leg goes in the center   there we go and we are going to do the  other tantalum capacitors accordingly and for c5 which is this one  the c5 designator is not really   printed on the board it's just half printed  because there's the exposed golden contact   there so yeah that's c5 that's where that goes  and that's the same story with the three holes   two of which are positive okay now for the  electrolytic capacitors we have three very   tiny ones which are 10 microfarad ones 16 volts  and yeah as i said these have the negative side   marked but the long leg is still the positive  one so yeah the marking is the negative side   and the long leg is the positive side so keep  that in mind and there should be a little plus   on each little location where one  of those goes so let's put them in and we have a huge radial electrolytic that goes  in this position 2200 microfarads and that is   the direction of the arrow here  points at the negative end and yeah   the other one is the positive end obviously and we have a little trimmer capacitor  that goes in the c48 position which is   here and a variable resistor that  goes into the r10 position here   which has three holes and these are  for setting the video timings i believe   so if everything looks good you  don't have to fiddle with these   now for the next bag which is the socket kit these  are dual leaf that means these have these leaf   contacts that grab the pin of the chips from both  sides i actually prefer the turned pin sockets the   round ones because in my experience they make  even they make a tighter connection there and   the chips don't necessarily fall out on their  own ever again however if you want to replace   chips a couple of times these are the better  choice in my opinion commodore famously used   the very cheap ones which only have one  side grabbing so it's single leaf sockets   and those famously don't make good contact and  lead to a lot of errors and faults that are   pretty difficult to diagnose at times because yeah  it's just a wonky contact on one pin on a chip and   you are there alone with your oscilloscope or  your multimeter and oh yeah it gets me every time   but these are all new parts so we shouldn't run  into any issues and also these are the dual leaf   variants which are much less likely to fail at all  if ever and i'm just going to do these one by one   to make sure that they sit flush with the board  you obviously want to put these in in the correct   orientation so you can see without seeing the silk  screen which direction the chips go and these have   usually there are several different models of  these obviously these usually have a little notch   on one end where pin one is located and there's  also a little notch indicated on the silk screen   so this should go in here like so and yeah  you're good to go of course you can put these   in the wrong way round but that's going to be  more confusing when you put in the chips later   i'm always holding the socket from the flip side  of the board in this case the front side really   and then i'm soldering one pin this side and the  diagonal pin on this side so it stays in place   i'm just using some solder that i got on my soldering iron here and then i go  in and solder all the other pins properly just so it stays in place and flush with the  board correctly and you could of course do   the sockets as your first step  because these are really low profile   you can just put all the sockets in  basically turn it around and solder   because they are going to be you  can just lay it flat on the table   and the sockets are all going to stay in place  so it's probably a good idea to do that first   by the way i've set the soldering iron to  around 370 degrees celsius that's my preferred   temperature uh yeah probably you have  your own preferred temperature it varies   a bit from person to person i  like to solder pretty quickly   sometimes leads to rather sloppy solar joints  but i found that this temperature is ideal for me so i think that's all the sockets in now for  some of the other components there's a couple of   small components left like these ferrite beads and  some transistors and we also have a rectifier and then we have the connectors these are going to  go in last i think but yeah and then after that   we are going to populate the sockets and see  if it actually works so now for the smaller   components i'm not going to go into much  detail about these they are all basically   the locations are all listed here and on the board  so there's not going to be much trouble i hope and some of these in this compartment are standing  upright just like the resistors we did before   so nothing same same procedure basically  but at this point we've done that seen it   and maybe we got good at it and the last one goes here it doesn't have  the designator printed here but i double   checked with a vic-20 and this where the final  ferrite bead goes right next to the vic chip   next up we have these inductors they actually  look a lot like resistors but have a green package   usually these are just small inductors and they go  in the positions that say l1 and l2 on the board   and the color codes are also listed in the bill  of materials so we won't run into any issues there and these don't have a polarity next up we have cr1 which is a 6.8 volts zener  diode and yeah the peculiar thing about zener   diodes is that they only let a certain voltage  pass so they are used for voltage regulation   usually and that's what this is for in the  vic-20 as well so we are going to put this in and   go on this goes here and the polarity is  marked by a little ring on the diode itself   and by a little stripe on the circuit  board here so it should go in like so   all in all this is quite some effort but it's  pretty easy if you have your bill of materials and   all the components in the kit you can of course  source the components yourself most of these are   really common parts so you shouldn't run into many  issues and there are like the bill of materials   is available so this is the crystal oscillator it  says the frequency on there and of course you need   different ones in case you want to run this in  pal or ntsc mode this is a pal crystal with four   point four three three six one nine megahertz  frequency and these are just generating like a   sine wave kind of close to a sine wave to provide  the system with a general clock and in case of the   vic-20 and also the commodore 64 the clock is  very closely related to the video standard and   pal and ntsc have slightly different clocks  so you need a different crystal for each one   this is a choke and basically it's an inductor  and it's a dual choke it has four legs and yeah   this doesn't go in like so it goes in like this  or the other way around but it doesn't matter   because it's the same inductance on both  sides i believe hopefully i think so so this is the i think the final  component apart from the connectors this   is a bridge rectifier and it goes here in these  four holes and the positive which is marked on the   bridge rectifier goes this way so the  square marked thingy there hole via is where   the positive goes and i'm going to stand  this off slightly from the board because   it provides a tiny bit of airflow because  these components can get rather warm in use   okay let's get to the connectors i'm going to  start with the keyboard and led connectors which   are just these pin headers because i think they  have the lowest profile and then i'm going to   gradually work my way up this is not particularly  difficult because each connector only fits   in a particular spot also of course we have  an on off switch i'm not going to talk about   this that much just going to solder in  the components and show you the results and i think that's actually all the soldering  done neat okay so we now have a spanking new   vic-20 circuit board with all the passive  components populated and some transistors and   we are going to populate all the chip sockets and  we don't want to forget the fuse because otherwise   we won't have much fun with this populating the  chips if you have a full set provided like i do   shouldn't be it's just a matter of picking and  placing the correct chips for each socket here   and i'm just going to do that there's all the  designators are printed on the silk screen on the   board and we also have them on the list obviously  but this should be pretty straightforward and   we actually have two separate kits here for the  custom chips and for the ram and logic let's see   usually what i do is to bend these pins  slightly inwards using my esd mat here   and of course inserting the chips i'm  using my esd strap to not damage any   of the chips ram is pretty prone to failure if  you shock it and also some of the custom chips are   pretty sensitive of course of course they are  old chips and take your time with these steps   because basically you want to orient the chips in  the correct orientation there's always a notch or   at least a dot that indicates the orientation  where the notch is on the circuit board insert   them fully be very careful to not damage any  pins or bend them so they don't make contact   i'm going to try my best here i usually  end up inserting a chip the wrong way   at least if i do something like this but we're  going to see and of course i managed to bend a leg and obviously the board itself should be cleaned   before doing this i'm doing this now  because i forgot i'm a tad confused   and you should of course inspect the back side of  the board for like broken solder joints or bridges i'm just using isopropyl alcohol here to clean off the worst of the solder residue  and you want to look for stray solder blobs   trust me it's going to happen you are going  if you're doing so much soldering you often   get some little blobs there inside it and you  can usually if they are just sitting on the   solder mask you can usually just scratch them off  with your fingernail so i've inspected this board   thoroughly and obviously the last bit we have to  put in is the fuse and that's easier said than   done these fuse holders are a bit bendy so maybe  you have to bend them into shape a bit like i do   especially if you manage to solder them in at a  slight angle like i did but this should provide   contact and now we are ready to test this actually  i think i am going to hook up my commodore 64   five pin din monitor cable here and also my  commodore 64 self-made power supply which i trust   if you don't trust your power supply you want to  of course make sure that the voltages are correct   before you try to power this up because the power  supplies yeah we talked about that the commodore   64 and vic-20 power suppliers are basically  the same for this model the older models have   a different power supply like an ac power supply  and have all the voltage regulators on board   this one doesn't have any voltage regulation on  board except for that zener diode and the yeah if   you want to call it voltage regulation it's not  really regulated it's unregulated the voltage   coming from the bridge rectifier the rectification  here but yeah there's basically not too much that   can go wrong if the power supply is good with  this board so we're just going to give it a shot i   guess and see maybe this just works right off the  bat cross your fingers please maybe this blows up   maybe something worse happens i'm not sure  we're going to see i'm going to turn this on now yes it works right away that's kind of cool for  a change it works it just works and even the   picture looks pretty crisp actually i am however  going to try to tweak the little trimmer capacitor   and trimmer resistor so the little trimmer  resistor is for tuning the picture output level   and the capacitor is for adjusting  the sync so if you have color   issues you want to adjust the little capacitor  a little bit and if you have like a dim picture   or other issues you want to adjust the resistor a  bit but it looks pretty crisp already let me show   you a close-up of the picture while i twiddle with  these so i have no idea how well this translates   through the camera but i'm just going to trim  the little resistor a bit and as you can see yeah we even can make the picture a whole lot clearer actually  the like the jail bars are completely gone now   let's try and tweak the little capacitor a bit  that doesn't do nothing really yeah it's actually   looking really good this works right away which is  amazing and yeah i'm going to hook up a joystick   and a keyboard which actually is the same  keyboard matrix as the commodore 64. in fact   it's the very same keyboard they used for  both machines so yeah this is the keyboard   connector i'm just going to hook up a commodore  64 keyboard temporarily and i'm going to hook up   a standards atari style 9-pin joystick and see  if we can do some stuff with this and try it out yes it does work that's pretty nice so i'm now  going to connect my penultimate plus cartridge   from the future was 8-bit which i can highly  recommend nice online shop for all things   retro computery with a bit of a focus on  commodore stuff and also some spectrum stuff   and yeah it's really very well made products as  far as i can see and also nice people running   the shop penultimate plus cartridge is yeah  it's basically the best thing you can use with   your vic-20 in my opinion so it has plenty  of games on there all the memory expansions   that you would ever want are built in  very easy menu system you're going to see   yeah unfortunately i don't have a spare vic-20  case as you can see we have our cartridge here   and we can just play some games i  guess let's play some gorf maybe this just seems to work very very well actually yeah that's it for this video i got a working  vic-20 that i just built myself it certainly took   a couple of hours so if you want to do something  like this set aside some time but it's well worth   the effort just to build a working system and with  the kits that are available and the nice circuit   boards that are available this is just it's not  that difficult to build actually and as you've   seen it worked right away even if i usually don't  manage to pull that off i hope this was helpful i   hope to see you again on this channel thank you to  everybody who supports me and also big thanks to   everybody who subscribes to this channel i'm jan  beta thanks for watching see you next time bye

Channel: Jan Beta

Views: 15,478

Rating: 4.9639888 out of 5

Keywords: Jan Beta

Id: iXsxee7MsoY

Length: 43min 7sec (2587 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 19 2021