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1+ GHz Commodore SX-64 Mod
Spider[DAC] writes "I just found this site, about a person who modified a Commodore SX-64 to contain a 1.2 GHz PIII system. It appears to be a really cool system, and apparantly requires some specially made hardware to make it all interoperate properly. A well-documented read, and definitely something to dream about doing yourself."
... a beowulf cluster of these
But hey, if it works for you.
All my previous sigs now look like this one, I wish they were permanetly recorded when used.
If I should un-mothball my old Commodore!
COOL STUFF!
Heh, let's put it to the test with the /. effect.
Think your Commodore 64's pretty neat?
Put in a P3 and it'll be l33t!
"Anonymous Coward" is for whistleblowers, not unpopular opinions.
"...and definitely something to dream about doing yourself."
Finally!! I get to dream about doing myself!!
I love you Slashdot!
ZERO
> A well-documented read, and definitely something to dream about doing yourself.
Keep dreaming.
True hardware enthusiasts value the electronics, not the plastic that encloses them. That VIC-20 processor is a lot more interesting than a small form factor PC.
I'm attempting to move the innards of a C64 into a Dell case. Wish me luck!
That's very impressive. I mean the most I did was get a 14.4 modem into a normal Commodore 64. And I've seen guys who took Apple][gs machines and installed hard drives, cd burners, nics, and got everything from wolf3d and down to run on them. Even web browsing and AIM.
Even though it's not practical or useful for the average person I think it's good that there is proof that unless you are playing games or doing other high powered tasks like encoding video, that you don't need a new powerful machine.
Radio Shack Coco 2 in the house
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
This is pathetic. 16 comments and slashdotted? Mirrors anyone?
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Destroying the rarest C64 ever made to change it in to a PC?
People that do this don't deserve to have old computers. (IMHO).
This is like taking a Model-T Ford and "converting" it into a Toyota Corolla.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
What makes this stuff interesting is that you can do any of this stuff (if you limit your slachdot reading and tv watching)
"And I must admit I was quite impressed too. Despite being cumbersome and heavy, it certainly has charm, and it looks a lot less dated and ugly than some of it's temporaries."
Statment not true. Spectrum was more charming, and lot less cumbersome. SOME of it's contemporaries is the key work here.
It took 15 years, but I can finally play my C64 copy of "Bad Dudes" at more than 5 frames per second - hoorah!
I really wonder how the hell the guy got the idea for this. I would have spent my time and knowledge trying to build something usefull like a portable ogg/mp3 player. I give him credit though, it's a really cool mod to a retro computer.
----
Go canucks, habs, and sens!
a duratec is actually a ford produced engine. Due to the fact the Taurus weighs near 2 tons, the engine had to be designed to be powerful. The generation 3 taurus was the first to equip the Duratec, and the generation 3 SHO's had a Yamaha Duratec hybrid v8 producing 235HP. The car was Zippy. I love my Taurus. I have two. Why dont you?
That's nothin'... I have the original UNIVAC in my spare house that I modified to use AMD 2.2 GHz Athlon XPs. Of course, the blinkenlights flash on and off so fast they burn out in just a few seconds. Then again, the original wiring was only run at 2.2 MEGAhz, so trying to get all the timing right was a nightmare.
And have you ever tried searching PriceWatch for a PGA to vacuum tube converter? Sheeeeesh... You'd think people had never heard of retrocomputing.
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
If you're at all into the C64, you've got to check out the song "C64 Convention" by mindfusion, available for free on mp3.com.
Cool old school electronica that rocks.
Andy
Frodo is a crossplatform C64 emulator for windows, macos, beos, riscos, and many more. Take the system you have now and use it as a C64, or emulate a million other systems as well.
I'm really sorry, but this is yet another case of shoddy journalism and actual fact checking before publishing. I know slashdot is far from a "professional" grade news source, but I would like to think that there is at least a small bit of integrity in there somewhere. Speaking of integrity, whatch this get modded down, -1 Troll, -1 Offtopic, -1 Redundant, -1 Overrated, -1 too many mod points for editors.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
Hopefully the website's server isn't this guy's shiny ...er, new SX-64. It just melted.
:]).
The page:
this page is dedicated to my efforts to skillfully implant a 1+GHZ system inside of my Commodore SX-64 portable computer. this modification will be completely stealth. in fact, when my C64 emulator is running, it should be completely indistinguishable from the original system. however, when the emulator is not running, i will be able to watch DVDs, play MP3s, surf the internet, and play games from anywhere through windows XP. a truly portable system, complete with integrated monitor, keyboard, and handle! lan parties here i come!
SX-64 History
this was my commodore sx-64 before it was modified. i got it for free from a friend at work back some time in january. this little machine was the world's first COLOR portable computer system. the keyboard doubles as a protective face for the case. the handle doubles as a tilting arm to make the monitor more viewable.
the original unmodified SX-64
the system has a built-in 5-inch color CRT monitor, a commodore 1541 disk drive, a 1mhz cpu, 64k of RAM, MOS6581 sound chip, and a VIC20 video chip (320x200 pixels, 4-bit color, 40x25 text mode). it also comes with a built-in speaker, a game cartridge slot on the top, an expansion port on the back, an RS232-C serial port, two gameports, and composite NTSC/PAL out (depending on where your SX-64 came from). the operating system is SX-64 BASIC (developed by microsoft!!). the system was released in 1983 and retailed for around $1000 USD.
some of the world's best games (IMO) were for this system. classics like the original PAC-MAN, donkey kong, maniac mansion, etc were well worth the price of the system back in the day. not to mention, the BASIC operating system was so easy to use, you could program your own game in no time. no microsoft APIs, DLLs, or bluescreens to deal with! just PEEK and POKE your graphics and sounds to memory, and you were on your way to being a professional programmer (aside from learning assembly, of course
from what i've read, the SX-64 was a flop because it was targeted towards the business market (it was called the "executive computer"). it competed with laptops like the Toshiba T-1000, but was heavier, had no batteries, and didn't fit in your lap. the sx-64 dissapeared as quickly as it arrived. today they remain a collector's item.
20 years later
given, the sx-64 kicked ass in the 1980's, but my current computer is literally 1600 times faster than this thing! i wouldn't use a 5-year old computer without complaining, let alone a 20 year old computer. computers need to be able to stream DVDs, movies, surf the internet, play 3d games, and store gigabytes worth of mp3's before they can be considered useful nowadays.
the only way to wedge a new motherboard in my C64 will be to go SMALL.
the latest computer craze (at least the latest craze i've been following) is the 'small form factor' (SFF) PC. these little systems work great for home theater PCs (HTPCs), internet terminals, and lan parties. i, for one, would hate to lug a full-size tower and monitor to a lan party and back. but my SX-64 above would be perfect for lan parties. it has a handle, it's rugged, and everything's built-in (even the monitor!).
SFF motherboards (the two big form factors now are Flex ATX and Mini ITX) are the perfect choice for my project because they have integrated sound, network, video, and tv out. the tv out is probably the most important since the c64's internal CRT takes an NTSC s-video input. without it, the screen would be useless. the only bad part is that the 3d graphics will suck pretty hard (s3 savage core) so lan parties will suck for me because i will probably get killed a lot since i'll probably be playing at a low resolution. (update: I'm running about 40fps in cstrike in 800x600. It's not as good as a Geforce4, but at least it's faster than the original c64's VIC chip!
Research
planning plays a big part in any big project. if i was just adding a window kit or something stupid like that, yea i could just go to town with a dremel and not expect any real problems. but if i cut too much away from the case, or just guessed on which wires to solder, this whole project would be over.
after searching around the internet, i found the original schematics for the seperate boards inside the sx-64. several circuit boards will have to be designed and etched to interface the sx-64 case to the newer hardware. (update: most of these boards can be found in the tech info section). many hours of dremeling the steel inside the case were required, because the original cards were mounted vertically, and my motherboard has to go in horizontally.
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
From his site:
in fact, when my C64 emulator is running, it should be completely indistinguishable from the original system
Your analogy was off the mark, its more like taking the body of a Model-T and replacing the engine with a nice V12.
also, to spread more duratec love, the next base model mustangs will come equiped with Duratec's pushing 250 horsepower, and several other vehicles, like the Ford Escape and maybe even a Mazda Miata, will come equiped with the awesome Duratec engine.
Vtec is a "performance" increaser, or so everyone says. Vtec is really just a method Honda uses to gain "power" in their "peice of shit" "rice rockets". Their 4-thumpers produce MAYBE 4hp below 3000rpm, but get a nice large MPG rating, but hit a larger rpm, your gas gets sucked, your car sounds like a bumble bee, and you get 11mpg.
Ford. For everyday driving.
Seriously, it's been a while since I've seen a site get taken out THIS fast! Does kinda make you wonder.
"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned for SEGA. ..."
Overclocking? Has anybody ever tried to OC a C64?
What's with you people? Didn't you read that this thing runs Windows XP?
/. outrage?
Where's all that
This guy says it's just a Windows XP machine with an emulator running...so basically it's just a modern computer in an old case. This has been done before.
word wrapping wouldn't be the issue. the high speeds will probably make all your games unplayable anyway. Like the theme park or leisure suit larry (1 original)games on a pentium. Even the slowest modes will be just waaay too fast to be useable.
definitely something to dream about doing yourself.
No. I'll continue my long-standing tradition of dreaming about a trio of beautiful, naked, goth-looking chicks who service my every need. I rather like that dream.
But if you want to dream about the Commodore 64, go right ahead.
Since it's bad analogy day on Slashdot how about this:
It's like taking a Model-T, ripping it apart, and using the body panels to make a Toyota look like a Model-T.
I read the internet for the articles.
Chalk one vote for nostalgia and leaving rare and cool things alone.
...modified a Commodore SX-64 to contain a 1.2 GHz PIII system.
Hardly a 1+ GHz Commodore SX-64 Mod. More like a simple case-mod effort. Slapping a small form-factor MB into an SX-64 case is kinda cool, but it ain't that cool. Now, building a real C64 notebook or building a souped up C64 (not emulated) would be damn cool.
Not any more guys :-(. RIP. Apparently the guy was running his website on it and it turned from a cool to warm to hot. Currently the are cooking omelletes on the router. Dirt chip.. 20 cents only.
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
http://www.go64.de/english/frames/frame.htm
Looks like an interesting project. They're building a fully backwards compatible mobo which should support all existing C64/128 software. The best part is the CPU is 20MHZ and the Sid emulation will have 16 voices!
It's all only $200, and will fit into any ATX style case.
The last story tells me to mod my pc with a chip so I can emulate a C64 on my pc...
Now this story tells me to mod my C64 so I can emulate a C64 with it, as well as use it as a pc...
Hmm...i'd like to do both, but I'm afraid that the two mods might cancel themselves out somehow...
I wish some Scandanavian warrior would rip this guys arms off :-)
Made you look!
>Your analogy was off the mark, its more like taking the body of a Model-T and replacing the engine with a nice V12.
A P3 1Ghz is about as much V12 today as a Honda Civic has a V-TEC engine...
If you're going to hack the hell out of a good machine, at least do it in style. A nice P4 2.4 Ghz, or whatever the fastest AMD chip is now would be a start. But a P3 1Ghz? That's so old it's hard to buy!
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Windows XP would REALLY suck with only 64k of memory...
And to start the thing up without a hard drive? I figure it would go something like this:
LOAD "WINXP",8,1
LOADING...
FLIP DISK TO SIDE 2
PLEASE WAIT...
INSERT DISK 2 OF 5.34E20
PLEASE WAIT...
... to gut my Dell Inspiron 7500 laptop with the stupid monitor latches that won't stop breaking, get some chassis fans and a flip-top thing for an old-school NES (mine is missing that flipping cartridge thing) and make myself a Lintendo. w00t.
"I am root. Bow before me." To this I say, "You are root, and you bear the sins of the world upon your shoulders."
I thought, why doesn't some one come up with a C64 palm top. With a flash card to contain all of the .D64, .T64 files. I think it easy to make a C64 fit into a very small palm device with todays technology... It's sure to sell like caffinated penguin mints on thinkgeek!!!
-Jasa -- Linux - The SOURCE will be with you, ALWAYS
'cuz a P3/1.2 (.13u) runs cooler than a P4 or Athlon, and in the P3-S version (512K cache) does more per clock? I could see a high end model of either of the latter melting the plastic. ;)
One of these days, I'm going to wake up, select Slashdot from my bookmarks, and find that the top story is about some 7 year-old who managed to get his bicycle -- complete with training wheels and little brother onboard -- into lower earth orbit using some recently GPL'd Mathematica clone, an overclocked Furby, 50ft of CAT5 scavenged from the local LUGs trash bin and Jack Valenti's ego tinsnipped into tiles for the re-entry shielding.
My
Limekiller
Jennifer, you might find my wang more to your liking!. It is quite large.
Destroying a neat piece of collectible cruft like that is bad enough, but it appears he actually knew very little about what he was destroying.
- The video chip was named 'VIC' not 'VIC20' (which was another, bittier, box).
- Neither Pac-Man nor Donkey Kong were originals on that platform, or indeed even faithful reproductions.
- I'm not even going to go into that 'BASIC operating system' bit [but hey, now that I think of it, it does establish a pattern for Microsoft 'OS'es]
- The T-1000 was a nice piece of PCish hardware; but had no battery either. Mains or no dice.
-- MG
I see it uses the original Commodore keyboard... I wonder, do you still need to use a hammer to press the "Enter" key?
This sig is umop apisdn.
The SX-64 page mentions--
"Ah, the DX. That was the american version which had 2 disk drives. (The UK gets short changed
again! - Akuma). Our european version had one plus a hole marked 'Storage'. Very useful, as long
as you don't store disks in there; the magnetic fields generated by the SX64's drive tends to wipe
them clean or corrupt them at the very least. Nice piece of design.
"
Probably Commodore's way of paying tribute to the Coleco Adam..
Dig-dug oughtta get something like 3,500 fps.
Need a simple, easy to use data tier generator? http://www.gryphinsoftware.com/
but can you play SOLITARE on it?????
Easy guys, I put my pants on one leg at a time. The difference is after I put on my pants I make gold records!
Ok, for fucks sake, people. Every time I post a comment on /., someone tries to correct my damn sig. Well I'm gonna let you in on a little hint...it's supposed to be a FUCKING JOKE! ;)
...that would just be stupid and nerdy. the (car (cdr)) gets the point across to people that know lisp/scheme and is easier to read. Ok, I'm done ranting (for now).
I know scheme rather well, but see, if I did:
(define today
(lambda ()
(car (cdr '(your life)))))
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
making a 15 year old computer up to par with a 5 year old computer and not having it go beepbeeepbeep and losing your stuff.
I have the original UNIVAC in my spare house
You probably mean ENIAC, the huge digital beast built for the Army at the University of Pennsylvania. It was something like 30 tons and had roughly 20K vacuum tubes. Slower than your TI calculator, but being able to do 5000 ops per second wasn't too shabby for 1945.
UNIVAC, on the other hand, was a successful commercial computer (though only after Mauchly and Eckert sold out to Remington-Rand... the company that later became the LZW/GIF bastards, Unisys). The various UNIVACs fit into a single (large) enclosure and had a snazzy operators console. Very SciFi looking. Again, slow by todays standards, but quite a speed demon back in the day.... 40kbps tape storage, 2.25 MHz logic units (still vacuum tube based), sustained performance of over 100,000 ops per second.
Hmm, now as I proof-read, I realize you *are* talking about the UNIVAC-1. I'll post this anyway, heh.
Two stories mentioning the C64 in a row? Someone please turn down the Improbability Drive a bit.
Cranking up my C64. Running a BBS. Being part of a "crack group". Local "crack group" wars. 300, 1200 baud. 1541's. 1581's. Phreaking. Peeks and Pokes. Doing Binary math in my room to make pretty sprites.
560 DATA 255,128,255,192,16,0,8,64,96,0,0,255
570 GOSUB
580 END
Sniff...
I miss those days... 15 years old and no worries
What a beauty it was with its sleek Austin Powers space-age styling: banks of switches (RUN / STEP), flipping numbers, and polished steel head. Moddable? Wouldn't make a bad coffee table, come to think of it...
Was indeed the aforementioned SX-64. To call these fuckers portable is like calling a grand piano pocked sized. They were most certianly not too fucking portable. However, it was a nice unit for blasting some shit up on Fort Apocalypse or zipping around in the original Test Drive.
They were actually a nice fucking unit. All contained, keyboard and all. Unlike laptops the keyboard seperated from the face meaning that an ergonomic desk, like anyone gave a shit about that shit back then, was a lot easier.
I never did anything but play games on the thing, and now I'm kind of curious what the fuck happened to them.
Putting a PIII in one isn't exactly a kosher mod, in the PMF book of mods. There is an inherent goodness in this absofuckinglutely slow C64 processors of the day.
It's a pity that the fuckers are outrageously overpriced on Ebay. Adjusted for inflation, I'm thinking that the current assraping prices are more than the few hundred that was charged back in the first Regan administration.
My favorite game on the commodore was the baseball game hardball. (ahh, the good ol days). Anyways, I assume that games back then were designed for that specific processor speed, thus any animations are relational to the speed of the processor.
Does anyone know if this is correct? I would imagine with this kind of processor the pitchers are throwing about 300mph. Probably tough to hit.
Metamoderate if you don't like it.
The attempt to be funny is as important as being funny... Not everyone thinks a joke is funny. That doesn't mean noone thinks its funny. Geesh, give the mods some slack. If they wouldn't have modded it funny then someone would have been bitching that it wasn't modded up.
I still think the C64 webserver was way cooler. I won't link to it so it doesn't get slashdotted (can barely handle one person hitting it), but you'll find the site through Google.
Anybody can destroy a computer.
He is probably also missing the point that you CAN use a 5 year old computer if you don't put WinXP on it.
I also find it ironic that he complains about not being able to use a 5 year old computer, yet all he puts in the case is a PIII/1ghz (and yes, it's probably for power and heat reasons, but ironic nonetheless).
I don't see why he had to ruin this computer. Is he too lazy to burn his favorite MP3s onto a CD-R (or two or five) and use a CD player? Or just use a computer he already has? No way in hell you'd see me rip the guts out of my SGI Indy or Sun SparcStation IPX just so that I could have a PC in a "retro" case.
When I was a teenager, the only computer that I could afford was a 386 @ 8MHz with something like 2 megabytes of RAM. I put up with the damn thing into the 90s ('96 or '97 IIRC), until I finally was able to afford a modern machine. I'd like to see if he could get by with something like that (probably not).
It's a regular PIII system inside the case. Any issues with C64 games would be problems with the emulator(s)
matguy(.com)
...in what, a week and a half? :P
Think I got it from work, iirc it was still in use and had some important stuff on it (go figure) but was dead. They wanted me to try and resurect it... I laughed
TM
Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
I don't think that's semantically correct...
I can suggest improvements that would make more sense if you'd like.
The message is - if you get pissed off cos your sig attracts complaints then CHANGE IT !!! Otherwise you'll keep wasting everyone's time with your offtopic BS
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I don't know what you mean by "originals", but Pac Man, Ms. Pac Man, Donkey Kong, DK Jr., Mario Bros., and other games of the era were quite excellently translated to the C64. Hell, I was playing a great version of Smash TV on my SX-64 in the early 90s.
:) 'you put Windows XP on a C64? WTF?'"
And of course, the SX-64 did boot into BASIC.
I do think it's a shame, though, that he gutted a working SX, since there are hundreds out there that are no longer working, but what the hell -- it's his box to do with as he pleases. I'd prefer he used a dead one in the first place, but nostalgia does not prevent me from acknowledging that this is a pretty sweet hack.
I like when he goes to the LAN party:
"i couldn't play pac-man for more than five minutes before someone was asking me why i'd bother bringing a commodore to a LAN party. every time i simply minimized my emulator and watched their jaws drop
That reaction shot has gotta be priceless.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
Yer gettin' a Commodore! Brah!
I really hate it when people hack up perfectly good old computers and think it's cool. This guy trashed a pretty rare piece of equipment that can't be replaced. Ugh. But this observation is redundant, and not going to earn me karma. That's ok ..
...
It's just like seeing your favorite vintage machine being parted out on eBay. To me, the whole is worth more than the sum of the parts. Somebody who hacks apart a machine for fun (this article) or profit (eBay) just doesn't understand.
I take my sadistic pleasure in trying to do things on older machines that the Bit Gods just did not intend. Like, try to run DOS 6.2 on a PCjr. (No DOS after 3.3 supported the PCjr.) Or try to run a modern SCSI drive and SCSI CD-ROM on the poor beast. Now, that's retro computing
Or the guys who build their Apple ][s into monster machines - that's classy.
Or just simply enjoy the machines, as they were originally designed. My Timex Sinclair 1000 was one step above garbage in 1983, but today it's a hoot. Same with C64s, Vics, the dreaded PCjr, etc. Even an old IBM PC 5150 with the 64KB motherboard and the 5 ISA slots can be a hoot. (Yes Virginia, people did use monochrome monitors without graphics, and they like it!)
I've got an old Tandy 1000RL I've been thinking about putting X86 hardware into. Right now I'm using it as a monitor stand.
I've also got an old Apple Performa 620/CD or something at work that I'm doing the same thing with. It would make a good funky style rack case if I ever had the motivation to do the modifications.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
Amiga rights are owned by... Amiga!
Some ex-Gateway employees bought rights to use the Amiga name and patents and such.
http://www.amiga.com
?syntax error in 570
ready.
This is Old News.
In the late 1980's, one of the Amiga luminaries, Dale Luck, got his hands on a Commodore SX-64 (when they were slightly less rare), hollowed it out, and stuck an Amiga 500 in it.
Apparently one of the toughest parts of the hack was getting the keyboard to work as the C-64 keyboard layout and electronics are completely different from everything else. Fitting the motherboard was also a bit of a squeeze. All in all, it was an amusing hack, but because the SX-64's color monitor was of such low resolution, it was a struggle to read, even at 640 * 200 pixels. So it was cute but, alas, not useful.
As others have already observered, gutting one of these rarities to stick a PC in it is just sacrelige.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
twas a joke, man. He's making a humorous statement by paraphrasing the annoying guy in the Dell TV commercials who says "Dude, you're getting a Dell."
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Wake us up when there is a real 65x2 running at 1Ghz or faster.
There are not that many SX-64s around.
If this had been a broken unit he modified, I'd have said go for it, but he gutted a PERFECTLY WORKING SX just to fit in some PC.
Blasphemy.
--
Jope
hey, no one said id have to like that,
but some people would kill for a rather intact SX64, given that they where RARE even back when they where state of the art.
i had one, and i`ld give the proverbial arm and leg for one intact.
gotta say whoever commited this atrocity isnt sane.
would not slice a sx for a mere trashy x86.
rc
Its a sad day for apple when even the commodore 64s are made faster than the crap they sell.
ehhh i miss my old C64. the times we had. if it weren't for my crack headed mom selling the damn thing for crack i would still be playing choplifter as we speak. i may want the fastest processor and the most ram to today's standards but i for one could never destroy such a work of art. this guy is a douche bag and i'm gonna "DREAM" about pissing on his little computer... /paul
fact: microsoft > linux
First I thought that it was a really original hack, with making the poor C64 actually run at 1+GHz. That would have been awsome (no idea how you would do that though, but then again, I guess shrinking that old system into one single 0.15 micron chip would be easy today. And not only that, incredibly awsome ;)
Something new within something old.
Beautiful.
Someone should browse at -1.
italic bold underlined
All this talk about them being so rare...are they really?
Here's one and another SX-64.
Not trying to troll here. I happen to collect (original, full size) arcade machines from the eighties, so I understand the pain when I see one gutted.
Imagine for a moment a world without hypothetical situations...
PRESS PLAY ON TAPE
FRA: STFU GTFO
it's load"*",8,1
>
I had a 99 SE up till a few months ago. Never had a problem with it. Jet Black with a Silver stripe. My favorite team colors.
Had to trade it in though with the immenant arrival of the 4th kid. Got an '02 Windstar Sport. The sucker has a 22~25gal tank on it.
It too is jet black but no stripe yet.
Ursula Andress, Catherine Deneuve, and Charo, twice...
that we can expect Club Caribe back anytime soon?
Umm... as far as I know a 800 mhz PowerPC
has 3 times the power of a Pentium III with the same speed.
So a 1000mhz ppc-chip is enough to kick the ass of a 2.8 GHz P4 (who is slower than P3 in many things!).
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
I just found this site.
At least it's smth different than the standard frameset :)
I wrote the guts of a 65816 core in C in a few days, which is a superset of the 6502. The bugs in it were due to inadequate documentation rather than inherent difficulty. e.g. if you perform TXS in native mode with 8 bit indexes, does the high byte of the stack get set to 1 or 0?
6502 is very simple compared to Z80 or other 8 bit chips. I still think the SPC700 is the prettiest though :-) and current RISC chips with their weird special-purpose instructions barely deserve the name. Bring back the One Instruction Computer :-0
I love the dinky screen, and how it uses the sensible VIC-20 colours - blue on white with cyan border, instead of blue on blue with blue border.
But the disk drive is out of alignment and AFAIK you can't plug a tape deck into it. My cartridge selection is rather limited! I can connect it to my PC I guess using the PC-parallel - 1541 DIN plug, but I don't know if the software will still work on Windows XP... You may guess I haven't used it so much recently...
at the Discworld Convention 2002 slave auction ("3 beautiful goth chicks") and hardly anyone bid for them! It can't be that common a fantasy...
I only ask because if PPCs are three times as powerful as a P3 my next Linux box is going to be PPC based.
... someone managed to port Windows XP to Commodore 64-SX (in its original configuration) and
being able to run it... Just wonder how many tapes it would take to hold the bloated XP.
Well, you do realize you can rip apart that old Indy or IPX and buy a new one for much less than the cost of a PC case, right?
As we're speaking now, I see a *working* IPX on Ebay for exactly $9.00, and an Indy R4600sc for $20.00...
I mean really? Who doesn't have an old classic or sparc 2 they're using as a foot rest or door stop?
I've been considering modding my old Macs into PCs, with two IIlc's holding FlexATX mobos if I can swing the port drilling properly (with a PCI riser for networking), and a PowerPC 6116 with a MicroATX board, gonna need to stock up on parts though, so in a sense I paid $15 a pop for used Mac cases... The systems are still functional, but frankly not much can be done with them...
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Commodore BASIC at 1.3ghz must be faster than vb on a processor of similar speed.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
tha main cpu is a 6510, 'cause it's a c64, the vic20 had a 6502. I think they are some diffs on the way they adress things... i'm not sure of the diffs...
the graphics chip in the vic20 was the vic, the 64 got the vicII.
no vic20 chip in the c64...
i would have been more impressed if he had modded his sx64 with all the c64 add-ons like the super cpu, memory and hd expansions...
There's a whole host of recycled cases at mini-itx.com - quite a few consoles and some silly ones too. They use mini-itx motherboards which are quite dinky, ideal for the smaller consoles. They haven't squeezed one into a Gamecube yet - has anyone done this? There's other sites, but this one gathers several together.
Now if you created an actual C64sx that ran at 1ghz.. THAT would be an accomplishment.
:)
;(
And no, emulation doesnt count..
Plus he destroyed a bit of history in the process
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Man in North Carolina upgrades his left nut to a 1.8 Gigahertz Athlon system, complete with DVD/R, Wireless networking, and 18" flat screen. Film at 11.
"Early rising is a vice, Ira; it'll stunt your growth and shorten your days." - L. Long
Formerly defunct Commodore Corporation has announced they will litigate against "mad modding bandits" who are taking their property and altering it claiming it was never meant to be run alternate hardware. The corporation hopes to come back via patent lawsuits to build the new Commodore Business Machine ][, or the CBM2-Box for short.
This space for rent.
nobody should browse at -1 unless they're moderating. Very little happens below "1" worth reading.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
I was thinking the guy had used the laser clock generator to run his SX64 cpu at 1.2ghz. That would have been a hell of a lot more worthy than just sticking a goddamned Wintel chip in a weird box.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Why am i the only one who has that dream?
*Real Genius
Self-realization. I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, when he said, "I drank what?"
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
I know that I can sell it right now for $400. I also know I can wait 5 years and it will be worth a grand - if I put it in it's case and leave it in the closet.
If I play this guitar, invaribly I will put a ding in it here, a scratch in it there. I will need to change its strings, adjust the bridge, most likely adjust the neck. All these things are pretty much normal maintainance for an instrument that has not been played, or is heading into a new season.
Say this guitar has a bad pickup in it (and I have decided to play it). I have these options:
Leave it alone.
A new Pickup
Rewind the Original pickup.
A new pickup destroys (the collector's) resale and also maximizes choice.
A rewound pickup is less damaging to resale, but does not present as much choice.
Blahblahblah.
My point is this: People are watching too much Antiques Roadshow, and Lost Treasures, and endlessly refreshing pages on eBay. They lose sight of an important thing.
In 90 percent of collectables, the 'collectable' item was *meant to be used*. Crackerjack toys were meant to be played with, China teapots were meant to serve hot tea, guitars were meant to be played, cars were meant to be driven.
That is the purpose of their existence. These items had something special about them: they worked well for their purpose, they were fun, they never broke, or you had your first date in one.
In many of these items, form follows function - an apple peeler used by Gramma looks pretty much the same as one you can buy now. In some guitars (especially) function follows form - they look great, but were cheaply made, or are banged up and *used*.
If I love the form of a NeXT cube enough, I'll want to use it all the time. I'll want to see it, and touch it, and *use* it but I don't do things that that hardware can do.
Sure, I have stuff that is put away and not modded, or used. I have Hot Wheels still in the package, I have a guitar that sits in a case, I have a Beatles keychain in a drawer. I can look at these things and be happy I have something that not many others have - but I'd rather be using them in the context of their creation.
Some things I have learned in my short lifetime - Keep and use the things you love, get rid of the things you don't. Life is too short to be worried about resale.
You get one ticket for the ride, make sure its the ride you want to be on.
And they might give you a "gentleman's C" when you can't get your goddamn FPU to work! (I hate verilog)
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
No, this site is not run on the c64. I am hosting this site for neil from a cable modem with a 384k upstream cap. That is why it's as slow as something running off a c64. It's actually a debian box with a duron 600 (cpu is 98% idle). this guy seems to have done a good job mirroring it: http://www.thereifs.com/~dan/SDM/3. Sorry the server sucks, but I didn't know it was on slashdot until this morning when I couldn't even telnet to my box...
After reqading that, I just had to do a google search on beetle trike. LOL
I'm so happy for you Neil!! I love you!!
There's a couple on eBay And at $41.00, not too expensive.
I'm thinking Windstar if I wind up getting stuck in minivan mode. With any luck, there will be some decent large wagons available by then. How is the performance? Mileage?
What's your favorite team? Raiders?
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
also f** anyone here who thinks that this is 'murder' to an old collectible... 99% of my emails come from people who are 'die hard' c64 collectors, and they love the mod. i say it brings the c64 into a new era. like sticking a new V8 into an old MG midget or something. if these things are so rare, why can i pick up a used one on ebay for under $100???
i did NOT put any window kits in it. i did NOT put any neons or LEDs on it.. i kept it as stealth as i could, and it still runs the emulator.. no C64 functionality has been lost, except for the cartridge. oh well. i think it's worth it, seriously
but thanks to all who have enjoyed this site, i will keep it updated so please visit back. i've still got a lot of work to go...
-neil jansen
http://sx64.opsys.net
Yeah, really. What's the big deal here?
He basically built a PIII system into his SX64 casing. The original post makes it sound like the PIII is actually used (in some way) by the C64 system. Like, using the PIII as a calculations co-processor.
Now, that would have been news for nerds.
I remember when I was a little kid and bought Alien Syndrome at Babbages. Brought it home looked on the back cover and got all amped about the graphics. Long story short is it didn't work. I called tech support and they didn't support the SX-64, only the C-64. Man was I disappointed. But Mail Order Monsters sure did rule!
JOhn
Campaign for Liberty
Imagine a Beowolf Cluster of THESE!!!
larry22@clarice.2y.net
sorry this is a test
An agreeable project, to VHDL the M6502. First test case: floating-point mult/div, of course. But you are more correct to assume the importance of game-plaing ability.
the warm, pulling sensation of falling, smiling and watching the screen through shimmering tears.
"I really did it! I could destroy 99 ships in Taipan for the Apple IIe when I was eight years old! Now I can barely operate the wall plug without getting confused."
Good. Old. Days.
hi, I like pancakes -.-- -.-- --..
The page now says:
fuck you, slashdot.
I had to take the page down because the site is hosted on a cable modem with a 384k upstream cap! Try a mirror instead.
well Performance is well, it's a minivan :P steering and get up and go are tight though.
Mileage is very close to the Taurus though, only 2 gal less/mi.
and yes, the Raiders.
Ursula Andress, Catherine Deneuve, and Charo, twice...
Dear Dung,
A LOT happens down here in the -1 realm. This is
where REAL men hang out because we're not afraid of
"mod-duh-rators".
Dogbert
why? Then again thats like asking a ham radio operator why he makes a light blink everytime foot steps are heard in the dark. exactly, why..
Obama = Socialism.
Hey, I really liked what you said- I've always wondered why people dont use some things- guys who buy bikes/cars that are dream machines and do maybe 400 miles/year, or just garage them. That's a crime really and totally pointless. Unless something gets trashed it can usually be restored. Sometimes its nice to keep old things, and yeah sometimes its nice to see things in good condition, but ultimately its pointless...like everything else it just turns into memories which is all we have left at the end of this ride. I remember my first car, bike, computer etc, and they were great, but things move on and we get to experience something new all the time.
Whoops, I'm rambling. But I like what you said.
My Indy runs just fine. My IPX just came today, so I haven't gotten a chance to test it out.
And I paid $10 for it.
But that doesn't change the fact that I would never take the guts out just so I could have a PC in an IPX case.
I dashed off an e-mail to the guy after I saw on his website that he seemed to be interested in building a linear power supply with designs from a Radio Shack book.
Given the apparent quality of his project so far, that didn't seem right... here's the e-mail for others to consider if they're trying similar projects.
Please remember that opening a computer power supply does expose you to potentially lethal amounts of power. Also, they run off the line power (120V/240V), and component failures or other problems can cause fires. Don't play with them unless you know what you're doing.
######
Hey,
Cool project. Kinda disappointed to see ?irreversible? modifications to something as rare as an SX64, but your artistry is evident.
I was planning on doing something similar with an old PET I have with a fried motherboard. The PET was retired from a school - while the front decal is in pretty good shape, the cabinet needs to be repainted and a few other things. Of course, the difficulty in building the SuperPET Ultra will be less than yours. :) And I'm certainly not worried about putting a CD/DVD-ROM behind a
floppy drive door; almost everything I do comes across the ethernet.
Color CRT into the PET? Nah, I'll probably hack an old monochrome NEC MultiSync to drive the PET's green phosphor monochrome CRT and call it good. (I want 800x600 or better; of course, on a 5" SX64 CRT, that's less of an issue...)
i bought a book down at radio-shack, "Building Power Supplies" (RS#276-5025), which gave me all the calculations i needed to come up with a decent design.
Uhh... having never seen that book, I'm not sure if it book covers switching supplies in sufficient depth to design one for a computer. And you don't want a linear ~250W computer power supply, they're very heavy. (See http://www.glowingplate.com/ticard/ for a similar situation which TI built.)
the only problem now is that all the parts will run me around $60, which i don't have (it's so high because i need seperate supplies for the +3.3v, +5v, +12v, and -12v. a normal ATX PSU actually uses a single multi-tapped transformer-style coil to step the voltage down, whereas i'll need seperate coils and controllers for each voltage). since i do have a power supply that works for now, this will probably be my last part of this project.
At this point, you have a PC board template planned out. My suggestion is labor-intensive but less so than attempting to design a switching supply from scratch (trust me on that). Don't underestimate how much time it will take you to get through stuff like the Power_Good comparator circuit or the ATX controls.
Switching supplies are a nightmare to build on your own. The tiny little transformer on your board steps down ~250W of power. To do this with a linear supply requires a huge and heavy transformer because it's running off the line frequency of 60Hz. All other things being equal, transformers get smaller as the frequency increases.
Since you're a Commodore man, you might know the transformer in a PET. I figure it's rated for about 100W of power at 60Hz. Open up any modern supply and you'll find a tiny one on the board which handles about 250W. This is not Moore's Law of Power Supply Design. :)
Most modern computer power supplies are probably running around 50kHz. Of course, the chopper which cuts up the incoming power must be very accurately tuned to the resonance of the transformer; generally, you're dealing with (impractical in single unit quantities) a custom transformer.
But someone else has already done all this stuff for you...
Get yourself a good ATX supply; two identical ones are preferable so that you can compare notes along the way. Open it up; discharge all the capacitors. Place the PC board on the stage of an overhead projector, then map out the schematic using that backlighting. Even if you don't know what all the windings in the transformers and chokes do, just represent those components as little boxes with pin numbers on your schematic. Label *every* component by type number.
Once you've got the schematic completed, get a friend (or several) to go over a copy, crossing off each and every connection to every component as soon as they're confirmed to be correct.
Transcribe the schematic into Eagle CAD or another PC board autorouter. (OrCAD is good if you're running Windows, but I hate Windows, so I don't use it.) Import the PC board template, place large/special components where you need them to be, then tell it to route the board.
Check it over again. Etch the board. (Apparently, this isn't a problem to you, judging from your work.) Transfer the corresponding components one at a time from the original PC board to your new PC board.
All consumer electronics are cheap crap, using the lowest-rated (ie cheapest) components possible. While you're transferring components, replace electrolytic capacitors with ones having the same values (in uF) but higher voltage, temperature and ripple current ratings. Replace 1/4 watt resistors with same-value 1/2 watt resistors. If you can find a given transistor or MOSFET type, look it up and choose the one with the same parameters but the next-highest voltage, current and dissipation ratings. Get an electrical engineer or technician friend to help you. This supply should now last an order of magnitude longer than it would with its original components.
Your 10lb aluminum heatsink will, without any question, cool the power supply's power transistors enough to eliminate the fan. Make sure you put mica insulating hardware between the transistors and the heatsink; you want to be able to ground the aluminum. The heatsink might get warm but should not get too hot to touch; the attached transistors will almost definitely be running cooler (and will last longer) than they would in the original supply.
The airflow through the original power supply case also cools the transformers. I'd place the main transformer right next to the aluminum heatsink and devise a thermally-conductive clamp to hold the transformer against it. Heatsink grease will be your friend. I don't think the magnetic field leaking from the transformer will be sufficient to cause worrysome eddy currents in an aluminum clamp pulling heat away from the transformer.
Just a couple of thoughts for you. Should cut your costs and yield a more practical/reliable project.
Thanks for the great read,
Lawrence
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
oooooh now I get it (not from the US).
but mods are still on crack : 5 - funny
(5 ?!? It deserves a 2 max)
Short story:
MOS designed and produced the 6500 Moterola sued them to the brink of death. 6502 was the compramise.
The chip so named for using Moterola's pateted buss hence the lawsute.
Before MOS went to silicon hell (Red Dwarf refence) Commodore bought them up.
From then on Commodore would make it's own chips.. Except for rom and ram as anyone looking inside an old Commodore 8 bit can tell.
Moterola never made a 65xx chip.
Side note 6502 clones are still made today and still a populare chip in low end applications (not computers)
http://www.6502.org/
When I saw this story I thought someone cloned the whole 65xx chip line and broke the speed barrer on em.
But part of me knew it was just someone gutting a sx64 for a pentium 4 system.
This'll be ideal when I get my time travle card working.
Then my computer will look 'normal' when I go back in time and tell my yonger self I'm an idiot.
I don't actually exist.
A LOT happens down here in the -1 realm.
Yeah, I've browsed at -1 before. That's where all the potty jokes, goatse.cx references, and f1r5t p05t! crap happens.If being a "real man" requires talking about poop, showing stretched asshole pics, and being the first dog to piss on the tree, count me out.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Slashdot moderation has gone to shit, and is gettin stinkier every day. what fuckwit retard modded this as a troll? how is it a troll? you didnt even fucking read it did you? you lowlife gutter licking pig raping cock touting cesspool swimming sister fucking ring whore. your arse makes Goatse guy's look like a goldfish's shithole. READ AND UNDERSTAND BEFORE MODERATING [OR NOT]!!! cuntwit. I'm modding the man back up if/when i can, to teach you pathetic little pre-pubescent shit-mincers how to fucking moderate!
Motherfucking done!
oh arse-rapers, it didn't do that [undo mod from an AC post] before. At least it makes sense. *makes mental note to use other IP/box next time*
FORTRAN, "the infantile disorder", by now nearly 20 years old, is hopelessly
inadequate for whatever computer application you have in mind today: it is
too clumsy, too risky, and too expensive to use.
-- Edsger W. Dijkstra, SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 5
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