Recently, an Amiga 500 in generally good condition found its way to me. It’s my first Amiga ever, because back in the day I was loyal to Commodore’s 8-bitters for a long time. So I missed the heyday of the Amiga and then directly switched to a PC. That’s why I know next to nothing about the Amiga so far.
I got myself an Amiga 500 for Christmas!
As I mentioned a while ago, I had the opportunity to repair a bunch of broken boards for Commodore C16 and Plus/4 computers. This led to a couple of new projects, the ROMulator and the PLA264. To help with the actual repairs, I built myself a Diag264 test harness.
All I wanted was a housing for my Diag264 cartridge, but it took me a few detours.
So, I also needed a cartridge to hold the diagnostic ROM. The Diag264 page suggests either modifying an original cartridge or using the OpenC16Cart. Destroying an original cartridge didn’t feel right, so I went with the latter option.
Recently I had the opportunity to buy a Commodore SX-64 for a very reasonable price. Back when I had my Breadbox C64 as a kid, I was fascinated by this portable version and dreamed of owning one myself to take on our family vacations. In short, I couldn’t resist and bought it now.
My newly arrived SX-64.
The refurbishment and repair of the C16 and Plus/4 motherboards is largely complete. Next up is a small stack of C128 boards. Recently I received a C128 diagnostic cartridge with harness as a donation, which was also only slightly tattered.
The C-128 Diagnostic Test cartridge that was donated
It was a “C-128 Diagnostic Rev 1.4” with harness “ASSY NO. 325093-01”, which I had never heard of before. Information on this cartridge seems sparse, but I found it mentioned on Jani’s page on diagnostic carts and in an older forum thread (German).