Rare PET-style VIC-20 restoration

[Music] [Music] hello and welcome back to the 8-bit guy so i've got a little bit of funny story for you on this one about once a month somebody emails me that they've got some kind of donation and you know my typical policy the last two or three years has been i don't have any more room for any donations so the answer is usually no but every now and then somebody will say well look i've got this thing and it's some kind of desirable thing right we're not talking about some piece of junk right something that's something that somebody would want and they're like look i don't know what to do with this so david if you don't want it i'm going to give it to goodwill or worse throw it away right and so when somebody says something like that to me i'm usually like oh hold on hold on okay don't give it to goodwill don't throw it away if you really want to make sure it goes to a good home you can send it to me but the catch is i'm not going to show it on the youtube channel and i'm not going to keep it but i know a lot of people here in the dallas area who are collectors of different things i know a collector of trcd stuff i know a collector of commodore stuff apple stuff amiga stuff etc and so depending on what it is i'll just call up that person and say hey i got a new thing for your collection and they usually come right over and pick it up and so that's been my procedure on that sort of thing for a while and so when richard blyth emailed me that a kind of similar story about this vic-20 um you know it was the same conversation so i told him look i'll i'll find it at home if you'll send it to me so there were a couple of thumbnail pictures in the email which i did not click on because you know i've seen a million vic-20s or whatever and you know i just saw on the thumbnail oh yeah yeah that's a vic-20 now if i'd bothered to click on the thumbnail and look at a little closer i would have realized oh this isn't an ordinary vic-20 so when i pulled this thing out of the box i was getting ready to call up a friend of mine to come pick this up and then i got to looking at it and i'm like whoa whoa wait a minute this isn't just any ordinary vic-20 this is actually something that's been on my want list on my website actually on the donation page is actually a place that said i'm looking for a vic-20 with pet keys well by golly here it is so i wrote it richard an email back said hey turns out change of plans i'm not actually going to give this away i'm going to do a restoration on it and so that's what we're gonna do so uh let's get started and so here it is i was told this came from a storage closet at a radio station that was being cleaned out besides being dirty and yellowed it's actually in really good condition it also came with this data set which for some bizarre reason has old crusty double-sided tape on the bottom oh and uh there's a tape inside which has been labeled the all-new k-life talk show prompter program used at your own discretion we'll try that out later and see if it still loads let's compare this with my second generation vic-20 so you can see some of the differences the main thing that makes this unit unique is the style of keys as compared to the newer ones now these are called pet style keys because they resemble the key shape and font used on the commodore pet computers but also notice that the badges are very different as well although some vic-20s do have the older style badge but not the pet keyboard also looking at the side you'll notice that the power switch and power plug are different the later vic-20s use the same power plug as the c64 speaking of that i actually didn't have a first generation power supply so i had to order one on ebay and i don't even know if this one works either but this particular model hardly ever failed since it just contains a basic step down transformer so i'm going to plug this thing in and find out if it works so i flipped the switch and at first glance it appears dead however i've worked on hundreds of vic-20s and i've learned to be patient on the first power-up these old capacitors can come back to life once they're exposed to power again but it can take a while and 15 seconds later after i was just about to give up it came back to life not only is it working but the picture and colors look really good this actually looks better than my second generation models so watch this i'm gonna power it off and then back on and look at that it only takes two seconds now as opposed to 15 so i started trying to type on it and i realized some of the keys aren't working okay i take that back some of the keys aren't working very well if you press them enough times they seem to work indeed it seems there are five or six keys that aren't working very well i'll have to look into that well i guess the next thing to do is attach this data set and see if it's working the tape is moving and the computer is searching but i'd let it run this way for about five minutes and it never found anything so i stopped it rewound the tape and tried again and on the second time it found a program with no file name and that's why it just says found i've searched for k life talk show on google but i haven't come up with any great matches i'm sure k life is an abbreviation of something but i haven't figured out what just yet and to my amazement it did in fact finish loading the program without any errors so let's start it up hmm set time i don't know if it's asking me a question or wanting me to type in the time okay that didn't work let's try again and i'll put in the time countdown clock time hmm okay fascinating i'm wondering if this was some sort of interface to the phone system or something i can stop and list the program and i'll have to look through this more carefully maybe by the end of the episode i'll have some answers okay so now it's time to disassemble it so we can check out the inside and eventually get it cleaned up i do not know why but there is crusty double-sided tape around the feet on this thing i'll have to deal with that later anyway here's the inside and i tell you what i am kind of surprised how clean it is i mean this is one of the cleanest vic-20 boards i've ever seen now i guess that's what happens when something is stored inside in a climate-controlled closet for 40 years anyway let's go ahead and take the motherboard out there we go and let's take a close-up look uh keep in mind i haven't even so much as dusted this off it's amazing so for a little fun i thought i'd give you a comparison with a second generation vic-20 board now besides the fact that most of the components are in a different place you can see it has this metal plate on the bottom and the most likely reason for this is so that the screw holes line up with the existing case mold anyway here's the keyboard and this is by far the most rare and unusual part of this particular vic-20 now we'll come back to this shortly but for the moment i'm gonna get this case ready to clean up and unfortunately it's a bit of a pain to get the led out [Music] and uh let's get to cleaning [Music] [Music] and there we go it cleaned up really nicely um all it needs now is some retrobrite but before we get to that let's look at this data set now i don't need to do a full restoration on this as i already have one but i want to at least clean it up and this crusty double-sided tape is very annoying i'm guessing somebody at some point wanted this thing to be attached to a desk or something [Music] and there we go it cleaned up pretty good at both top and bottom uh the worst problem this thing has is all of the chemical burns from the cables that were pressed up against it for years on end i could file those down a bit but if i do then the whiter plastic would show through and then i'd have to retrobrite it too anyway let's get started on the process it's about 10 o'clock in the morning and with any luck i can complete this process in a single day today is very well suited for this and there we go we'll come back and check on it later while that is going let's have a look at this keyboard um it's really not all that dirty in fact it's mostly just dusty so i'll start with some compressed air and then i'll come back with a little brush to get all the spots in between the keys then i'll give it a spray down with windex and i'll do my best to work in between the keys well here we go this keyboard looks absolutely flawless and all we have here is some windex that hasn't evaporated yet well even though it may look flawless it doesn't work flawless so i'm gonna take it apart [Music] and here we go interesting uh the plungers look exactly like the ones used in the pet and i guess that shouldn't be surprising being the keyboard already resembled the pet anyway however what i'm afraid of is these may suffer the same problem as the pet if you recall several years ago i did a restoration on a pet and the problem was the little pads were not conductive anymore so i had to paint this special coating on them to make them work again but i don't even have any of that stuff on hand however looking closely at these pads they seem kind of dusty and so does this pcb so i think for the moment i'm just going to use some alcohol and clean up the pcb real good and then do the same for the little pads and um i guess i should test it so i'll put in a few screws to hold everything in place and then i'll just connect it to the motherboard and will uh to my relief and amazement that actually fixed it every single key is now working properly i'm going out to check on the retrobrite and since the temperature is 108 degrees today i thought i'd try a little experiment i've always wanted to do this so the frying pan is 86 degrees at the moment and i'll come back in a few minutes sure enough about five minutes later it was up to 129 and a few hours later at the hottest part of the day i read 153 degrees which is just 5 degrees short of 158 degrees needed to cook an egg but i thought i'd go ahead and give it a try anyway of course it helps when i don't accidentally drop the egg so let's try that again now the reason i'm doing this is just to poke a little fun at the europeans uh specifically uh because when i showed the winter storm we had here back in 2021 there were literally hundreds of highly critical comments from people who live in colder climates who couldn't understand why we couldn't deal with what for them was just a normal winter day and as i'm making this video i see in the news how parts of europe are crumbling under an intense heat wave and i just wanted to point out that the temperature there isn't even as hot as it is here in texas which is what i would consider a normal summer day for us and so the idea being uh you know we're prepared for what's normal for us and europe is prepared for what's normal for them i mean people shouldn't be so judgmental anyway i'm back to my egg experiment it really wasn't cooking so i thought i'd scramble it up a bit that's how i usually cook my eggs anyway but uh interestingly enough the temperature of the eggs was 107. that's way lower than i was expecting and i think the reason is because the liquid is evaporating and that's causing the surface to cool it did eventually rise to 112 but never got anywhere near as hot as the pan was without the egg eventually it started to just dry up and i think there was tiny spots of cooked egg but this was just not going to work of course i could have probably cooked it on the dash of my car but i don't want to risk damaging my car's dash by placing a metal pan there anyway aside from the egg the retrobrite process continues and i can tell it has made progress anyway we'll skip ahead to near sunset time to pull this thing out and rinse it off and here it is i'll dry it off but i don't think it is done no it is definitely not done it does look a lot better but this is going to have to spend another day retrobriting so i'm just a bit concerned with some minor splotches i'm seeing here which i've never really seen when using submersion and peroxide before so just to make sure that the surface is super clean i'm gonna give it a good scrub with baking soda and then here we go with day number two fast forward to the evening and i've got a bad feeling about this so unfortunately a second and even third day out in the sun failed to get rid of the last bit of yellowing on this computer and um you know i just had this feeling that this restoration project had been going too easy like everything was just working in my favor and i figured something's got to go wrong well this is it so i've talked to some other people in the retrobriting community and i've had some other people tell me that early vic-20 cases can be very stubborn for retrobriting and there must just be something different with the plastic but anyway bottom line is there may not be anything i can do about it the way i see it there are three options going forward the first option is to swap the case so that sounds pretty simple since i do have some other vic-20s and the cases are actually identical but in order to preserve this unit historically i need to also remove and swap the badges both on the top and the one on the bottom with the serial number i'm not saying i can't do that but it is risky as i could wind up damaging those so option number two would be to spray paint the case i don't normally like spray paint for a computer because if you handle the computer a lot the paint will eventually rub off or turn colors where the oils of your skin are left on it but in the case of this computer it's more or less going to be a museum piece that will rarely be used so uh that could be an acceptable option and of course option number three would be to simply do nothing and leave it the way it is the reality is i know how the internet is and no matter which option i choose there will be some group of people that are angry no matter what path i choose so this is one of those situations where i might as well pick the option i prefer since i won't be able to make everyone happy regardless so i decided to try the paint option and um i found a color i think matches well it's called heirloom white and in fact let's compare the lid to the vic-20 hey yeah i think that's a good match but i'd really like to test it on something first and i have the perfect thing remember when i went to the recycle shop in oklahoma and i brought all this stuff home well i still have that box of old yellow vic-20 case parts in storage so i dug one out and they're all very yellow and dirty like this and most are missing keys and here's the color it will be painted now i need to take the keyboard out and of course i'll need to clean this thing up as well as the other system in order for the test to be accurate and here it is took me about 20 minutes to get it cleaned up and let's compare it with the one i'm restoring dang it actually looks really good when compared to this one now i'll need to mask off these badges if anything this will be as much of a test to see if i can do this correctly as it is about the paint itself and here we go with the paint so first coat was going on pretty nice and i was very optimistic about it however i didn't film putting the second coat on and that's where things went wrong okay so i have good news and bad news uh the good news is i think the color is perfect i mean of course there's probably a range of different shades of colors when these things were new so it's hard to say exactly what the color should have been but the big problem is up here around these vents if you look close you'll see this really coarse texture and i know exactly when this happened i noticed that the vents were still looking very yellow down in the crevices and so i pointed the can straight down like this in order to get more coverage there and i guess that's a big amateur mistake to make so the can started spitting out paint like this well after that experiment i found myself back at the three doors again wondering if i was going down the right path and after a while i decided that i would just pick option three i mean the computer works now and while it may not look factory perfect it is certainly a lot better than it was so um let's just get it all reassembled [Music] okay now that we're done let's just compare how it looked before how it looks now i may revisit the spray paint idea in the future once i've gotten a little bit more practice in doing a proper job i just don't feel i'm qualified at the moment to do this machine justice and now for my favorite part about doing a restoration final testing i'll use the penultimate cartridge first [Music] and of course i'll need to test it with a disk drive and a ram expansion so i'll play a little pesky robots and while we're talking about games i wanted to mention a number of new vic-20 games have come out recently such as chucky egg and then there's this one get more diamonds [Music] and my personal favorite although i'm not fond of the name and not even sure how to pronounce it i think it's help vodge [Music] okay so i know many of you are curious about the radio station program and i've spent some time looking at the program listing and playing around with it because you know i don't have a manual for this obviously and i think i figured out kind of sorta how it works so obviously you start it up and you're going to put in like the time and the countdown clock time is a number of seconds uh before the talk show would be over now i don't know i'm just going to put in like 10 000 seconds or something like that okay so this doesn't actually interface with the telephone system at all the way this works is there would be somebody in a booth that's running the talk show like actually doing the speaking and there would be another person outside of the sound booth who would have the vic-20 and be answering calls and then this monitor there would either be two monitors one or one big monitor i don't know but either way around the person inside the booth would be able to see what's on the screen and so um basically the person taking calls would uh they would type in i don't know i can't figure out if it's supposed to be like a name like i could type in frank johnson and then you have to pick a line number between one and five so i'll say three all right so now it says frank johnson on line three now i suppose you know you could do it another way around you could say something like uh alien abduction like maybe there's somebody on line two saying they were abducted by an alien or something right it's a talk show right you know so anyway and so i'll put that online too and so you know again i'm not sure whether they were wanting names or kind of like little descriptions or whatever but that's kind of the idea and then they can clear these off and that way the person inside the booth can answer whatever line they want and they kind of know you know what's waiting there for them i notice there's also instructions to do like commercial break warnings and stuff like that and then you can push the pound key and it will tell you like how many seconds are remaining on the show i guess and i can't remember how i'm supposed to get out of that but uh but anyway you get the idea so this is basically what it was used for back um like 40 years ago [Music] you

Channel: The 8-Bit Guy

Views: 280,702

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Id: EHzazhKIbzk

Length: 21min 18sec (1278 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 25 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/FoxGaming]

So glad he didn't go with the paint method. It honestly looks fine the way it is, though I've noticed yellowing can sometimes look less severe on camera than in person.

[u/mcaDiscoVision]

I have an early vic 20 with the old power supply and tan function keys, but it has a gold version of this silver label and the newer style keys. Does anyone know anything about that model?

[u/picosecond86]

The best content in recent memory, sadly spoiled by petty whining about a previous video's comments.

[u/Good_Loaf]

Great video.

It’s in surprisingly good condition. Looks almost like it wasn’t used very much before being stored away.

Glad David went with option 3 though, I think preserving the originality of the piece is way better than making it look artificially factory fresh.

[u/matt95110]

His comments about the heat wave in Europe are a bit out of line in my opinion, but otherwise an interesting video.