The Commodore PLA is one of the most problematic ICs in the Commodore 64. Even in the early 1990s, Commodore parts dealer The Grapevine Group estimated 50% of dead C-64s were due to a bad PLA. In this blog post, we will explore what the PLA was, and we’ll investigate the gremlin that lurks inside some PLAs but not others.

David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.










