C64 Repair: Bad Color RAM

We already had a C64G on the channel, which was working fine, but was missing some keys and came „only“ with a SwinSID. This time we get a regular brown breadbin C64 with a fault: It’s showing flickery colors. This might be due to two things: Either the 1K color SRAM or the PLA might be broken. One way to find out: open up and replace some chips!

The Queen of Soundcards: Roland LAPC I

The Roland MT-32 and its brethren CM-32 and CM64 were external MIDI synthesizers that were very much a gold standard for MS DOS gaming. There was one more obscure device though, which was compatible for the most part, namely the LAPC-I. It was a CM-32 and a MPU-401 rolled into one. It’s a big whopping 8-bit ISA card. Today we will have a close look and listen to some samples.