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The Commodore 64 is the one computer that I have kept with me over the years and multiple moves across the country. It has been turned on in 20 years and would
by mleo 5y ago
The Commodore 64 is the one computer that I have kept with me over the years and multiple moves across the country. It has been turned on in 20 years and would likely fail in countless ways if I tried, but it has some truly nostalgic vibes.
- 300bps 5y agoIf you want to try it, don’t use the original power supply. They have a common failure where a voltage regulator will fail and feed high voltage on what should be a five volt line. Buy a recently made replacement power supply - there are tons of them. There are common failure points on most Commodore 64s. PLA chips and memory chips are common and good news is there are modern replacements! 6526 and VIC-II chips are a little less common failures that don’t have modern replacements. They probably would if not for the recent chip shortage that killed some promising FPGA projects. I got my first Commodore 64 in 1982 and my first modem (300 bps Mitey Mo) in 1985. In the past year I’ve gotten into component level repair of Commodore 64s in general but I’ll be tackling a non-working 1541 drive and a non-working 1702 monitor next. The Commodore 64 motherboard is actually pretty easy to repair using a Dead Test cartridge. Fire it up! SD2IEC, pi1541 and Ultimate II+ are good 1541 drive replacements to use with a real Commodore 64 in ascending order of quality/price.