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!