Hello, and welcome back to The 8-Bit Guy. This is an unplanned episode, and let me tell
you how this began. So, my friend Rob, you know him as The Obsolete
Geek, was traveling in Canton, TX. Now, Canton is a good bit away from the Dallas/Ft.Worth
area, I consider it to be in the middle of nowhere. But they are well known for their flea markets
that they have on a regular basis. And, so Rob goes out there and he looks for
vintage computer equipment, most of the time he doesn’t find anything, but you know,
sometimes he does. And he came across this VIC-20 and I mean,
as you can see, it is in horrible condition and the seller only wanted 5 dollars for it
and so he decided to pick it up and see if maybe I would consider trying to restore it. So, here it is, it is, ugh. Man it’s gross just to touch this thing. This is absolutely without a doubt the worst
condition VIC-20 I have ever seen. But, I’m going to go further than that and
say it might actually be the worst condition computer period, that I’ve ever seen. And that says a lot because I used to work
in an industrial environment in the IT department and I would have to go out into the shop all
of the time and work on these computers. And the dust, the atmosphere in the shop would
just be full of I would call it shop dust, or metal dust, it’s basically just dust
that comes from welding or grinding and its mostly iron, I think, but it would just collect
all over everything and get inside of the computers and just settle on the motherboards,
it was terrible. But, you could usually just blow it off with
some compressed air and it would be more or less fine. This is different. And while yes, it does have a lot of dust
on it, if you look at the back of this thing and you look in through like the cartridge
and the user port and you see the actual motherboard inside, it is, it has got like some kind of
nasty black oil or grease or something and just all over it and I haven’t even taken
this thing apart yet and so I am not sure what I’m going to find when I open this
thing up. But, and I’ll tell you right now, I’m
not even sure if it’s repairable. I have not even tried powering this thing
on and I’m not even going to dare try to power it on until I’ve at least taken it
apart and examined it and maybe cleaned it a little bit. So, anyway, let’s dig in. Let’s see what we can find. OK, so I want you to take a good look at this
thing. Sure, it’s dirty. We’ve all seen that before. But this is beyond dirty, because it is covered
in a thin layer of oil. And that’s what’s holding the dirt in
place. I’m guessing this was used to operate industrial
machinery during most of its life. One interesting thing about industrial machines
is that whatever computer operates it, must also co-exist with the machine for the lifetime
of that machine. So this VIC-20 could have been working for
15 or 20 years perhaps, probably until the machine was replaced, or until the computer
broke and was replaced with another VIC-20. And, as gross as this oil is, it shouldn’t
actually hurt the electronics. In fact, it may actually protect them against
corrosion from moisture. That’s why I think I can save this thing. Well, I guess I’ll turn this thing over
and start unscrewing it. Normally I’d use a towel to help protect
the top from scratches, but honestly, I don’t want this thing touching any of my towels
right now. It’s worth pointing out. I noticed that we’re actually missing 3
of the the 4 feet. But, that’s no problem. Well, here goes. OK, it’s pretty bad in here, but honestly
not as bad as I was expecting. This is the later revision VIC-20 board that
is shorter and doesn’t fill the entire bottom of the computer. I’m going to go ahead and take the board
out. The board is attached to an RF shield. eww. This is just nasty. Looks like there is some corrosion after all,
its all over the RF shield. Hopefully it’s just the shield and not the
actual board. In all my years, I’ve only ever seen corrosion
on par with this one time. And that was a musical keyboard I restored
for 8-Bit Keys. That one was caused by leaking batteries. I’m not sure what caused this. I have to wonder if this was in a flood or
something. Well, we’re going to need to remove this
RF shield in order to see how bad the damage is. However, the shield is soldered to the board
in several places. Its tempting to want to cut these, but I’m
going to try to desolder it. As I heat up the solder, I can immediately
smell burning oil, which is an unusual thing to smell working on electronics. Unfortunately, I was not able to get it free
this way. So after a few minutes I decided to try a
different approach. And even though that one was free, it turns
out there are 6 more on the other side of the board that will require similar work. So I did get the board free. But then I got a look at the cardboard that
goes in between the board and the RF shield. It’s totally soaked in oil. I’ve never seen anything like this before. Well let’s have a look at the board itself. On the bright side, I don’t see any corrosion
on the back of the board, which is something I was worried about. Now I’ll go ahead and pop off this RF Shield
for the video chip. I was hoping things would be cleaner in there
since it was more protected, but it’s just as nasty. Next I’m going to remove the keyboard mechanism
out of the top case. Both of theses pieces will need to be separated
to clean them properly. And here we go. My first thought was to blast these case pieces
with the water hose. However, as I feared, it made very little
difference overall. There were a few places that improved maybe
20%, but that’s all. Well, now instead of having just an oily computer,
I have a wet and oily computer. So, lovely. As usual, my first attempt to clean this was
with glass cleaner, as it’s one of the most benign things I can use. However, it wasn’t even making a dent. Next, I tried alcohol. And I could see that it was making a dent,
but that’s about all it was doing. You can definitely see some oil on this paper
towel. But it seemed to be just smearing it around
more than anything else. So, my next approach was WD-40. Which is ironic because it contains petroleum
as well. However, as you can see, it made quite a big
dent in the little test area that I tried it on. So that’s certainly one candidate for cleaning
this up. But, before I went any further I wanted to
try baking soda to see if perhaps it would work better. And it did actually work, but I think WD-40
was working faster. So, I just coated the entire computer in WD-40. The plan was, I would just rub it all over
every surface and let it sit for a few minutes. I also put it on this corrosion inside, but
I wasn’t sure it would have any effect on that. After a few minutes, I came back and started
scrubbing it. This was clearly going to improve the condition
of the case, but I wasn’t sure if this would be the only thing it needed. As always, I had to pay close attention to
the little air vents up top. As I feared, the WD-40 had no effect on this
nasty corrosion. But, skipping ahead almost an hour, here’s
what we’ve got. The case is at least 50% improved, but a long
way from where I want it to be. However, at least I can actually touch it
now without having to wash my hands afterwords. If you look closely you can see lots of fine
details that are going to need more work. And I still need to get off whatever this
gunk is, and clean up this corrosion. My next attempt was baking soda to clean the
corrosion. I scrubbed and scrubbed for several minutes,
but it really had no effect. So, next I thought I’d try vinegar. I thought I’d pour some on and let it sit
there for a few minutes. I thought I’d start with one of the lighter
areas to see if it had any effect there. However, the best I can tell, it had no effect. It’s possible if I left it submerged for
a few days in vinegar, it might eat this stuff away, but I don’t have time for that. Next, I tried some de-oxit. As you might have guessed, no effect. Next I tried a magic eraser sponge. After all, if I didn’t, I know people in
the comments would be constantly asking why I didn’t try one. Anyway, as you can see, it didn’t really
help any. Eventually, I decided that mechanical removal
was likely going to be the only way to get this stuff off. And since it was on the inside of the case
anyway, I wasn’t too worried about possibly scratching the plastic. On the bright side, at least it appeared to
be working. So let’s clean up this little test area. Yeah, that’s going to work. And I don’t even see any scratches in the
plastic. I also had some success using an SOS pad to
clean off some of the smaller remnants. Believe it or not, this is after about 2 hours
of work on this corrosion. And to be honest, I had worn myself out on
it, and decided it wasn’t worth messing with anymore since it was on the inside of
the computer anyway. Next, I wanted to turn my attention to this
gunk on top here. I suspected this was going to also require
some mechanical removal. I worked on it for a few minutes with a screw
driver, and after the bulk of it was gone, I was able to follow up with some alcohol
and that cleared it up. Then I worked these vents for a while with
a tooth brush. Next I wanted to see if I could clear up the
black residue from this case, so I thought I’d follow up with some baking soda and
water over here in this corner. And yeah, it looks like it’s going to work. I’ll branch out to a larger area. OK, so you can see the test area I’ve been
working on over here. Now, these are burn marks and I may try to
sand or file those away later. But I think overall the texture of the computer
is going to be saved. I just have to do all the rest of it now. I also wanted to do something about this label. It’s half falling off and is no longer even
centered in the place it’s supposed to go. So, I’m hoping I can save the label and
clean it up and re-apply it later. Eww. There’s even oil under there. I’ll just clean the adhesive off the other
side of the label. OK, so here’s the case after more or less
an entire day of working on it. It looks tremendously better, and the corrosion
is in a place that nobody will ever see. However, if you look on the bottom, I would
point out that under the label you can see the original color of this case, so it will
definitely need some retrobrite. But before I do that, I wanted to turn my
attention to these burned spots. They’re really, you can feel them, they’re
really deep and kind of ugly. And, I know I can’t fix them, but I’m
going to try using a little file here and see if I can improve the condition some. I worked on it very carefully for a few minutes
and you can see this made quite a dramatic improvement. So, I went to work on the other spots as well. OK, so here we go. It’s not perfect of course, but I’d call
that a 90% improvement, and I’ll take it! Also the original color of the plastic is
showing through here, so hopefully after the retrobrite, it will all match. The next morning I set out my usual black
crate and filled it with water. I had been letting the water warm up some
before starting. However, it looks like I had a few inches
too much water. So I dumped some out. You only want as much water as is needed to
submerge, that way you will need less hydrogen peroxide. OK, that looks about right. I’ll pour in about half of this container,
I’ll save the other half for the bottom side of the VIC-20. To get the maximum greenhouse effect, I always
try to cover it with something, in the case I’m just going to use cling wrap as it is
what I have on hand at the moment. Being that it’s about 90 degrees Fahrenheit
today, the water temperature should rise to around 130 degrees like this, which is just
about perfect. And while that is in progress, I thought I’d
turn my attention to this keyboard. This is probably one of the nastiest keyboards
I’ve ever had to work on. This restoration project has not gone exactly
to plan. It has actually been considerably more difficult
to do than I originally anticipated. I thought the case would be the easiest thing
to do and that the keyboard and the motherboard would be the challenging things to do. But so far the case, you know I spent 3 hours
yesterday working on that case, and I’m still sore up here in my arms from, I feel
like I’m the Karate Kid from all the wax on and wax off, you know, scrubbing that I
did. Anyway, so if it’s been that hard, then
I hope the rest of it isn’t more difficult than I was imagining too. But you know, there’s something else I wanted
to say. So, you know, if you had have brought me this
computer 10 years ago and said “David, Restore this thing.” I would have said, “Dude, throw that in
the garbage, put that poor thing out of its misery.” And I knew people online who would say they’ve
rescued their 45th Commodore 64 from the dumpster and they’ve got all of these stored in their
attic. And I would say, “Why? Why are you wasting your time, you know, trying
to rescue all of these old computers? Because, you know, when you die your children
or grandchildren are going to go through your house and they’re going to throw all of
that junk away and it’s going to wind up in a landfill anyway, so why waste your time?” Well, that was 10 years ago or more. I’ve obviously changed my opinion very much
today. And that’s because I can see that these
computers have become collectible. So, they’re worth saving now. And it’s not that I have changed my opinion
about these machines. I’ve always loved them. It’s just that I knew you know from a practicality
standpoint at the time, it seemed like nobody else cared about them.” So I’m glad that public perception on that
has changed. Now I do think it is worthwhile to not only
rescue old computers, but when you find one that’s in poor shape like this, try to fix
it up. I mean, all of these deserve to be restored,
the ones that remain. So, we’re done removing the keys and, as
I feared, there’s like this nasty, it’s not just dirt, that’s actually like oil
and dirt. And so it’s really gross. Plus, we’ve got the problem of this guy. This is a broken off stalk and I’ve got
a spare I’m going to be getting from another system to fix that. But before I even try to clean this, because
I’m going to need to take it apart, I’m going to go ahead and unscrew all of these
little screws and take the board out. So, I’m actually curious how these are going
to clean up and these are two of the more grimy ones. The control key actually looks pretty good. But the return key still looks a little dirty,
so I’ll follow it up with some alcohol. OK, so after the alcohol it looks pretty good
now. I’m happy with that. Turning my attention to the motherboard, I
wanted to try two products. So, in my experience working on cars, I’ve
found brake cleaner will pretty much instantly remove oil or grease from just about any surface. There’s only one catch! It tends to discolor or in some cases destroy
plastics or rubber. So before I go that route, I went to the auto
parts store to see if there was anything else that might work. I came across several cleaner products, such
as these that are for electronics. This one even says it is non-staining. So I took it outside and gave it a good spray
focusing on one area of the board for testing. Then I rinsed it off with the water hose. So looking at the result, I can see that it
worked some, and definitely loosened the grease, but it wasn’t going as well as I wanted. So I went back and tried the brake cleaner. I somehow lost the footage of the brake cleaner,
but it literally cleaned this board in a matter of seconds, then rinsed with the hose again. I used some compressed air to help get the
water out of the connectors. And this is what it looked like after the
brake cleaner. It looks almost new again. Putting that aside for the moment, I’m done
cleaning all of the keys and they look very nice. But, where am I going to get that extra key
from that I need? Well, I got this old Commodore 64 parts machine,
that’s already missing a couple of keys. And, it not only has the key I need, but I
can get the plunger from the keyboard as well. However, after pulling the key, I realized
when I compared it to a VIC-20 key that they are not the same after all. I knew the entire keyboards were compatible
between the VIC-20 and C64, so I assumed the construction would be the same as well. In fact, looking inside this Commodore 64,
I noticed some other differences here. See, the wires come out over here on the 64,
but they come out down here on the VIC-20. Also the shift-lock key mechanism is different. Nevertheless, I am going to open this up because
I’m hopeful maybe I can take the key and the matching plunger and it will work in the
VIC-20. So here’s the key and it’s matching plunger. I won’t know if these will work until I
disassemble the VIC-20 keyboard. And of course, in order to do that, I’m
going to need to desolder the shift-lock key. It’s relatively straight forward. And when the time comes I’ll put these wires
back in the same way I took them out. After unscrewing all of the tiny screws I
realized I was going to have to remove this tape because there are some screws hiding
underneath it. Well, here we go. And the bad news is that the plungers are
totally different. So this isn’t going to work. But check out the oil on the PCB here. It’s a perfect pattern showing the different
keys. Anyway, I’m going to use brake cleaner on
this as well. And since you didn’t get to see it work
on the motherboard, you can watch here and see how easily the oil just disappears off
of this thing. I’m also going to use brake cleaner on this
plastic piece, even though I know it may discolor it. OK, so it looks like it did discolor the plastic
a little bit. It’s kind of a faded white color now. But, I’m not really that worried about it
because ultimately, you’re not really going to be able to see this. And at least it is nice and clean now. So, I thought we might have a look at the
little plungers right quick. The one on the left is a fully operation plunger,
and the one on the right here of course is the one that is destroyed and you can see
how much of it is broken off. And, you know, it might be possible to super
glue the piece back on if you could find it. But its long gone. Who knows where that is. So, I do have an idea, though, as how to at
least get this keyboard temporarily operational so that you can type on it. So, let’s do that. So I put all of the little plungers back in
their holes. All right, and all of the screws are put back
in, I am going to leave these unsoldered for the moment simply because I’m going to be
taking this back apart eventually so, and the shift lock is not an essential key. Well guys, I hate to say it but I’m going
to have to leave you on a cliffhanger. This project has taken a lot longer than and
as you might have guessed, I ran into some problems with the motherboard. And so stick around in a few days for part
2 and and you’ll get to see some of the diagnostic work I did on the motherboard. And then also find out how the case turned
out after retrobriting. So, stick around for that and thanks for watching!
