fadedpaper

Ah ha! Now I feel kinda sheepish, but I should've checked the schematic a little closer. Turns out the two 74HC595s are supposed to be inserted in opposite directions. Thanks for the tips my friends! Glad it was something simple.

Hey thanks midiboxxer, I just determined that it only stops working when I put IC2 in its socket. With just the 6581 or IC3 in place everything still works. So I guess that narrows it down. A visual inspection of my soldering doesn't show any signs of trouble, so what could be the problem? note: I also double checked to make sure it's not the chip itself by stuffing both of the 74HC595s in the IC2 socket. neither chip worked in that socket, yet they both worked in IC3. It's obviously not the chip that's bad.

Hey all, first time poster here. So I built the Core and SID, built the basic little PSU circuit for reusing the C64 PSU (not the "optimized" one, but the other one), tested all voltages, connected a 2x20 lcd, stuffed the ICs, and powered it on. Everything seemed fine up to that point. My only concern before moving on is that when I power it up with the sid chip and ICs unstuffed, the lcd turns on just fine and gives me two rows of blocks. But, when I put the sid chip and ICs back in and fire it back up, the lcd does not even turn on and my 7805 gets crazy hot! So hot that it starts to smell like burning. Is that normal? It seems like the lcd should still turn on with the sid's connected, right?