Commdore PC 20-II
I purchased this computer from its original owner as condition unknown / faulty. Although less well known than their 8-bit and Amiga line of computers, Commodore made quite a few PC compatibles. This specific model has an Intel 8088 CPU, 640 KB of RAM and a 20 MB hard drive, giving its model name.
Work done:
- Battery replaced with CR2032
- Cleaned and fully inspected
Exterior inspection:
The exterior was pretty dirty, but in fair condition:
To my surprise, the warranty sticker was still intact:
Interior inspection:
I forgot to take a picture of the board before I removed the battery:
I'm not entirely sure, but it looks like the clock for this computer is on a small daughter board:
On the back of the motherboard there were several bodges:
Here is the floppy drive model:
And the power supply was also inspected, but was in perfect condition:
Battery repair
The major issue with these computers is a leaky Varta battery on the motherboard, and this computer was no exception:
Luckily, the actual damage to the board was minimal:
I installed a removable connector for the new battery:
And placed the new battery in a more accessible place:
Hard drive
Initially the hard drive wouldn't run at all, but after some physical persuasion it started turning and the computer actually booted normally. But when I dug a bit deeper, I found that the drive has a lot of bad sectors.
Since this a so called IDE-XT drive, which isn't compatible with regular 16-bit IDE drives, it will be difficult to source a replacement, and I'll likely get a XT-IDE card as a replacement.