Color Classic Mystic VGA Mod - no picture after board mods!

wottle

Active Tinkerer
Oct 30, 2021
527
274
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47
Fort Mill, SC
(Edit: adding disclaimer: I should make it clear this is not due to lack of information on JDW's video. He covered it at 7:15 of the video, but I'm an idiot and even though I watched the whole video when it first came out, I skipped ahead to the action when I went to go watch the steps today when I went to modify the board. It's mainly a cautionary tale to not be an idiot and to fully understand a mod before performing it. )

Unfortunately, I may have flown a little too close to the sun with my modding of my color classic. I followed JDW's video for doing the mod. I had no jumper at J78 (Maybe because I have a Rev D board?). But I followed all the other steps in his walk through. I confirmed the isolation of pin 25. Added jumper between 20 and 24. I also did the horizontal deflection voltage by isolating one pin (pin 8?), then adding a jumper to the other pin (pin 12?).

Well, when I went to power on the machine, I get no picture. The boot process works properly - start up chime, beep for bad date/time, responds to volume up/down, etc. Unfortunately, screen is black. I can hear the CRT fire up on boot, but no image. I checked the connections to the analog board. CRT anode cable is in there securely.

Then I thought back to the fact that I have no jumper at J78. And I realized my mistake. Hoping that I hadn't fried anything on the analog board, I did a quick search and realized, on boards with no J78 jumper, you have to isolate pin 20 differently (see https://colourclassicfaq.com/general/vga.html)

So, I took everything apart, cut the trace connecting pin 20 to the common trace that goes along the edge of the board (and used to be connected to pin 25, before we isolated it). Fortunately, since these are for the sense lines, I was hopeful nothing was permanently damaged. I put some solder mask on the cut and reassembled.

Powered up after isolating pin 20 and I have an image again! And a 640x480 one at that.

So, word of caution - if you have a color classic Rev D board with no jumper at J78, make sure you isolate pin 20!!!

I'll drop a comment with this info in JDW's video to hopefully spare others the momentary heartache I felt when I thought I had destroyed my Color Classic.
 
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Kay K.M.Mods

Active Tinkerer
Sep 23, 2021
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Tokyo
www.kerosmm.com
I'm not sure. I bet @Kay K.M.Mods would know, though.
I can say it yes in the basic part.
Since Takky requires -12V, it is necessary to generate a negative power supply with an analog board. It's actually impossible to generate -12V, but this doesn't mean that Takky is actually using -12V. What that means is that it is used by dropping from -12V to -5V on the logic board. Therefore, there is no problem if the voltage input to the regulator is -7V or less. The Imai's traditional method for Takky Mods is to generate -10V.

- Remove Jumper line "J19" *Near speaker cable
- Connect the input terminal of the IP8 3-terminal regulator (L7905) to one side of the jumper line J19.
*I can upload a pic if there is a request.


Also, I will upload my Takky in the near future.
 
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Nixontheknight

Tinkerer
Nov 3, 2021
130
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I can say it yes in the basic part.
Since Takky requires -12V, it is necessary to generate a negative power supply with an analog board. It's actually impossible to generate -12V, but this doesn't mean that Takky is actually using -12V. What that means is that it is used by dropping from -12V to -5V on the logic board. Therefore, there is no problem if the voltage input to the regulator is -7V or less. The Imai's traditional method for Takky Mods is to generate -10V.

- Remove Jumper line "J19" *Near speaker cable
- Connect the input terminal of the IP8 3-terminal regulator (L7905) to one side of the jumper line J19.
*I can upload a pic if there is a request.


Also, I will upload my Takky in the near future.
I'm actually going to be using a 62xx desktop board in a color classic, and I know, at the very least, there's a 3.3V regulator on the board, so would a stock analog board work?
 

wottle

Active Tinkerer
Oct 30, 2021
527
274
63
47
Fort Mill, SC
I'm actually going to be using a 62xx desktop board in a color classic, and I know, at the very least, there's a 3.3V regulator on the board, so would a stock analog board work?
From my understanding, this mod will work with the Takky mod, although I wonder if the additional strain on the analog board from the VGA mod, combined with the additional power needs for the PowerPC chip will shorten the life of the analog board.

Also, with the Takky mod, you're already redoing the harness, so it feels like the harness modification for the VGA mod would be better than cutting into the analog board. This method is for people who don't want to mess with the harness wiring.
 

Nixontheknight

Tinkerer
Nov 3, 2021
130
22
18
From my understanding, this mod will work with the Takky mod, although I wonder if the additional strain on the analog board from the VGA mod, combined with the additional power needs for the PowerPC chip will shorten the life of the analog board.

Also, with the Takky mod, you're already redoing the harness, so it feels like the harness modification for the VGA mod would be better than cutting into the analog board. This method is for people who don't want to mess with the harness wiring.
it should probably draw the same amount of power as an 030 because it's just a standard 603, but I may be completely wrong