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Old 05-02-2019, 09:02 PM
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MIPS MIPS is offline
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Join Date: Jun 2014
Location: West Canadia
Posts: 1,007
I have the 8K model identical to the unit you have pictured.
I hate it.



Linear power supply, slightly bizarre analog video circuitry (but for us it's not TOO complicated ) and many of the IC's are from a time when MOS was not...perfect at chip fabbing. They run hot (see the FLIR above), the nonstandard socket ROMs (and the sockets themselves) fail and the long out of production ram is no better for longetivity. Not long after this they revised the logic board with components that are still a bit more easy to source, otherwise I've found that even one bad RAM chip leaves you either hunting for a hopefully good replacement, or installing one small but expensive PCB that replaces two dozen other parts with a modern substitute.
They do however look pretty, but that's about it. No sound and no graphics outside from PETSCII art. I ended up getting mine nice and clean and working up until literally one or two ROM steps before the system initialized into CBM BASIC and gave up because without another machine to test parts in I was effectively stuck.
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