I could not miss in my Collection another failure of Commodore ; the Commodore 64 Game System (64 GS)

Practically a Commodore 64C (PCB ASSY NO. 250469) castrated, without keyboard or possibility of connecting external peripherals, the only ports available besides the Cartridge port are the Video (Composite/S-Video/RF) port, 2 Joystick ports and Power supply.

NOTE: The Narco Police cartridge is not included in the original package.

Gallery:

source: wikipedia

This is a very old article from 2016 that i never published on my blog.

Summarizes the purchase, shipping, cleaning and simple repair of a Commodore 4064 with a very low serial number.

Since i had not talked about the repair, i begin to tell that only the VIC-II 6569 Video Chip in Ceramic format was broken.

In the photos there is also a comparison between the Commodore 4064 (PAL) and the Commodore Educator 64 (NTSC)

Below the old article.

The title of this post is: I want it at all costs.

But what? a computer! which model? an old one that I missed to complete a part of my collection.

This computer is really unusable, as are all of them, but this one beats them all.

It’s a Commodore 64 in a PET case produced in 1982, with a green phosphor monitor, stripped of the sound chip (SID 6581) and colour RAM (2114), with a modified kernel that doesn’t use any colour, and a keyboard with different 1..8 keycaps (no colour code on the front).

What’s left? An useless computer with no sound and no green-scale colours; it just uses black and green, while the Commodore Educator 64 has sound and can show colours in shades of green.

After getting the Educator 64 I wanted to complete the pair with a Commodore 4064, and I started to look for it.

I saw a few 4064s that sold for bizarre prices – I can’t say that they were high, because if you want something you are willing to buy it whatever the price, but anyway…

Here begins my adventure :-D

At one time a 4064 pops up in a well known auction site – take note that I don’t use artificial intelligence search engines to look for items, I don’t give a shit… if I find something when I look for it, that’s fine, otherwise it’s not a big deal.

That one was located in Germany, the price was low (at least for me – someone considered it very high), but was the seller willing ship? No he wasn’t.

I wrote to him, no reply, I sent the same message translated in German (thanks google), he responded in German telling me that the item was too big and he didn’t know how to deal with it.

I wrote him again in google German, telling him that I could send him some shipping and packaging instructions – I have them ready in many languages. His reply: I don’t ship.

I was sad and discouraged, because even if the unit wasn’t working, it was in an excellent aesthetic condition and with no missing parts.

I asked for help to my friend Andrea, who asked Ciro, who told me that I could ask his German contact Ralf Schmitz if he could lend me a hand.

Meanwhile the auction was getting near the end… still at a low price.

I wrote to Ralf – a very kind person – and he explained to me that he lives 530Km far from the place where the computer was located. Things got complicated.

I asked Ralf to contact the seller, who maybe preferred to talk with a compatriot :-D

The seller didn’t reply, the auction was ending, what should I have done? I love to risk, and while in chat with Ralf I told him the maximum amount to bid.

I won the item at the right price, in the right moment.

Then what? The seller didn’t have many feedbacks but Ralf suggested to pay right away with Paypal which offers buyer’s protection without the risk of losing the money.

I sent the money to Ralf with Paypal, and he paid the seller.

Ralf wrote him. No reply. The Easter weekend went by, still no reply.

And then one day… the guy replied! Ralf could contact him by phone and they chatted for more than one hour. The man seemed good; old but fair.

The seller told Ralf that he didn’t want to ship because he didn’t know how to properly package, he didn’t have packaging material and he didn’t want to look for it… then he told that he should have to buy some tape, and petrol for the post office, and so on…

I talked with Ralf, and one of the ideas we ditched was to ask someone to go to the seller’s place to help him to pack the 4064 and have it sent to Ralf with some kind of hitch-hiking.

I was suffering.

New solution: simplify the shipping.

I explained Ralf how to separate the monitor from the base: it’s a matter of unscrewing 5 screws, detaching a connector from the motherboard, and cutting two wires (I didn’t even think about explaining how to unsolder them).

The seller was was fine with the idea.

Ralf had to send a huge package containing the packaging material – boxes, foam and bubblewrap – and written instructions from me and Ralf.

The seller shipped the packages with DHL, which in Italy delivers using SDA (one of the cheapest and lower quality couriers). Panic.

The seller is old so he shipped one box at a time: the monitor first, that arrived in 5 days, then the base, that took much longer and made my anxiety skyrocket – Ralf told me that DHL had a few problems in Germany but the package should have crossed the border.

While he was writing to me, the second package arrived at destination.

The computer is now complete and in excellent condition, and with a slightly low serial number :-D

My thanks to Ralf Schmitz because without him this wouldn’t have been possible, and to Andrea for putting up with my anxiety during the last 20 days.

And my thanks to Giacomo Vernoni for translating this report, otherwise I would have written just a paragraph of text – and that would have been a pity :-D

Gallery:

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The Japanese Commodore 64 was introduced in the 1983.

The Hardware somewhat different (and incompatible) Kernal and BASIC to accomodate Japanese katakana characters, 46 total (plus punctuation, diacritics, etc.); many graphic characters replaced in the Char ROM with the new Japanese characters.

Breadbox case and original brown keycaps; SHIFT-LOCK replaced with C= LOCK for the purpose of getting at the katakana; modified keycaps to show the new characters with the colour keys no longer present and the remaining graphic characters significantly rearranged.

Machine started up in English but different colour scheme and only 36863 bytes free; see screenshot. Both Markus and On the Edge remember the original screen as black on pink, but the screenshot and corresponding ROM definitely aren’t.

Graphics and Sound Identical to the breadbox 64.

Gallery:

Directly from the collection of a dear friend “Andrea Pierdomenico” the Commodore 64 with the wrong key.

The factory was wrong to print the “8″ key but only the upper label and not the front label. I did not find any articles on the net that talks about this keyboard, the only one in the world?

Gallery:

A big disappointing this Commodore SX-64 USA purchased for spare parts to fix aesthetically one of my SX-64 PAL.

Why disappointing? because from the photo’s looked in a very bad shape, rust stains, various diseases and not working.

Conversely after removed the shit from the external case, replaced the booring PLA (906114), general cleaning + keyboard / Floppy Drive test and replaced one keyboard lock, the SX-64 is fully working and aesthetically in good condition.

Now i have for myself four SX-64 where the fourth is NTSC/USA, but honestly i was not looking for the USA version.

I am really unlucky :D

Gallery of the cleaning and repairing:

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The Commodore 64 Australian is an replacement case for the C64.

It’s an C64c look-a-like and was sold in Australia. This replacement case came on the market when Commodore introduced it’s new model, the C64C.

Gallery:

This is the latest version of C64c and was cost reduced even more.

Instead of a metal plate on the top there is the logo only engarved in plastic case itself.

The keyboard has been held on the upper housing part with brackets (not with screws as normal). In addition, the housing itself was only held together with clamps.

Gallery:

source: scacom.bplaced.net/Collection/64/

Gallery:

Commodore SX64 Keyboard Fixed.

Defect:

• Some keys works and some not.

Work done:

• Cleaning with a “Contact Cleaner” to remove the oxidation of gold contacts under the membrane.
• Cleaning all keys.
• Cleaning the keyboard case (inside/outside).

Gallery:

Commodore SX64 (USA/NTSC) Repair.

Defect:

• Black screen and then noise of a misaligned drive (don’t read anything).

Replaced parts:

• Replaced 1 x 906114 PLA (UE4)

Other things:

• Aligned the Floppy Drive using the original copy of the Free Spirit Software Drive Alignment.
• Removed the broken switch to disable the write protection and disconnected a LED on the front side of the SX64.
• Connected the sensor wires cut.
• Cleaning the Floppy Drive.

Gallery:

Commodore 64 Shiny Blue (Professional Painting). Many thanks to my friend Damiano Colombari (Manosoft)

Gallery:

Commodore 64 ASSY 250407 Empty PCB + some Working components.

Gallery:

Commodore 64 ASSY 250425 Empty PCB + some Working components.

Most people will remember the Commodore 64 as the classic breadox with the rainbow label (logo). However, when Commodore released the first C64s, they didn’t have this label (logo), but had a silver logo with the text “Commodore” and a silver “64″ next to the power LED.

The keyboard of this C64 Silver is pretty rare and is absolutely identical in the shape to that of Commodore’s PET computer (however, on the Commodore 64 side the PET’s number pad was replaced by four wide function keys, the remaining holes are covered with tape).

The motherboard used is the the original Rev.A ASSY 3262980 with the Video Chip (VIC II) ceramic and has also a 5-pin video connector instead of the 8-pin connector that later boards had. It means there’s not separate chroma signal available in a 5-pin video connector. In other words: no S-Video, only composite available via the video port.

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The Commodore 64, commonly called C64, C=64 (after the graphic logo on the case), occasionally CBM 64 (for Commodore Business Machines), or VIC-64, is an 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International.

Due to changes in the computing industry since its release, people claim it’s the highest selling computer of all time. This claim is disputed, because various changes were made to the “Commodore 64″, making the CP/M plug in cartridge incompatible with all but some 1982 production models, as well as the computer being revamped and placed into a new case, then its name changed to Commodore 64C, indicating that there were at least 3 different models in this range of computers.

Volume production started in early 1982, with machines being released on to the market in August at a price of US$ 595.[7][8] Preceded by the Commodore VIC-20 and Commodore PET, the C64 took its name from its 64 kilobytes (65,536 bytes) of RAM, and had favorable sound and graphical specifications when compared to contemporary systems such as the Apple II, at a price that was well below the circa US$1200 demanded by Apple, but the same couldn’t be said of the Tandy Color Computer, which was initially priced at $399.

source: wikipedia mos6502.com

Payed €12,50 a piece, that is the right price.

Practically, the price of a good pizza and a glass of water ;-D

Some Commodore 64 in bad state (not working) for Spare Parts.