Commodore 64 repaired ASSY 250425 (1 of 3)
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Commodore 64 repaired ASSY 250425 (2 of 3)
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Commodore 64 repaired ASSY 250407 (3 of 3)
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Repair:
Hoxs64 written by David Horrocks is a Commodore 64 emulator for Microsoft Windows 2K/XP/Vista/Seven (DirectX 9+)
The emulator substantially reproduces this legacy machine in minute detail.
Changelog (v1.0.21.2):
Download:
source: hoxs64.net
What is DiagROM?
DiagROM is a diagnostic tool for the amiga computers.
And it is to be used on defective machines, trying to help no-boot situations etc.
You simply replace the Kickstart roms in the Amiga with the DiagROM. and when poweron. your Amiga will start a diagnostic software. It will try to dump info on the serialport (and actual menus etc aswell) while also trying on the screen.
Changelog:
Download: DiagoROM v1.2 Stable (961)
source: diagrom.com
Plugs directly into IEEE of your PET / CBM Series Computer.
TFW8b and Tynemouth Software have once again brought the best of both worlds together, this time giving PET owners a high quality SD Card storage solution.
SD2PET Future:
Supported Machines:
Untested:
Unsupported (Due to different connectors):
Designed by Tynemouth Software & produced by TFW8b.
Gallery:
Video:
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:
DirMaster is a Windows-based GUI application designed to help Commodore enthusiasts explore and manage their disk image collections.
DirMaster supports common (and uncommon) emulator disk image formats (such as .d64, .d81, .d2m, etc), almost every native Commodore archival format (such as .arc, .sda, .lnx, etc), and many native graphic formats (such as koala, doodle, amica, etc).
DirMaster was designed to give users a perfect blend of familiar appearance (e.g. natural looking disk image contents using the PETSCII character set) and modern GUI functionality (e.g. drag and drop, opening multiple disk images at once). The first version of DirMaster was released in 2006
Issues reported by users that were resolved in v3.1.3:
Thanks to all who made an effort to submit bug reports. If you sent a bug report and don’t see it addressed here, don’t worry, it’s in the queue.
Other issues resolved in v3.1.3:
Belated thanks to Bacchus/FLT who sent most of the issues that were addressed in 3.1.2.
Download: DirMaster v3.1.3 (795)
source: style64.org/dirmaster
NEW TAG: C64 BIG GAME PACK
Some new games or tools (Cracked / Trained or Unrealeased) for Commodore 64 have been released from your favorites groups.
Titles:
Download: All Games in One Archive (6324)
source: csdb.dk
Some retro-things received from my friend Gerben.
Some RS-232 Gender Changer, Null Modem, RS-232 Tester and unknown cables.
The Frankenstein ZX-81 it works! the keyboard not but is not a problem of the keyboard but of the missing connections of the matrix, maybe an unfinished project ?
Gallery:
The High Voltage SID Collection (HVSC) is a freeware hobby project which organises Commodore 64 music (also known as SID music) into an archive for both musicians and fans alike.
The work on the collection is done completely in the Team and contributors’ spare time and is proudly one of the largest and most accurate computer music collections known.
This update features (all approximates):
Download:
source: www.hvsc.c64.org
ARM2SID SIDs (until 3) & SFX Sound Expander (OPL FM synthesis) emulator.
Nobomi still amazes us with the ARM2SID a new TWO or THREE SIDs and SFX Sound Expander (OPL FM synthesis) “emulator”.
The socket size of the ARMSID is DIP28 and is absolutely the same of the original chip and therefore fits perfectly in all situations.
The audio quality is really good for both; SFX Sound Expander (OPL FM) and the SID emulation.
It also possible add a second socket as the second SID if you have Stereo/U64/Reloaded adapter or connect wires directly to your Commodore computer.
More information can be found on the Nobomi website or RETROCOMP.cz
Gallery:
Video:
Hoxs64 written by David Horrocks is a Commodore 64 emulator for Microsoft Windows 2K/XP/Vista/Seven (DirectX 9+)
The emulator substantially reproduces this legacy machine in minute detail.
Changelog (v1.0.21.1):
Download:
source: hoxs64.net
Retro Things that was given to me before thrown away.
I thank Robert for the donation.
List of the Retro Things:
Gallery:
Commodore A501 (REV 6C) Expansion Memory Unit Kissed by luck.
Why “lucky”? because the battery used in this Expansion Ram Unit (A501) was not VARTA but GP, these batteries resist slightly to aging and release less acid.
Gallery:
NEW TAG: C64 BIG GAME PACK
Some new games or tools (Cracked / Trained or Unrealeased) for Commodore 64 have been released from your favorites groups.
Titles:
Download: All Games in One Archive (7152)
source: csdb.dk
I was very curious what ZeroPaige has written in the description of the Super Mario Bros 64 game, the game on the C64 DTV use the Turbo mode.
I have tried the game on my upgraded C64 DTV and in fact is much more fluid, i would say perfect except for a few graphics glitches.
Below what ZeroPaige writes about the Turbo mode:
Since the NES-processor is clocked (roughly 70%) faster than a stock C64 there can be slowdowns during gameplay. A pixel indicates this on the time-watch graphics in the status bar.
This port will try to detect and use any kind of turbo functionality, such as:
Gallery:
source: lemon64.com
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