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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."
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.
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!
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
Yep. I have a working Kaypro... I -could- gut it and install my Athlon in it... but then all I'd have would be an athlon, in a wierd case. The working Kaypro is way cooler. :)
Now, making a REPLICA case, that's another story. Hmm....
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...
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.
Actually, I did just this with a 486 Packard Bell. (details)
First, I converted the c64 motherboard to run from the PC power supply. Then I installed a 1571 floppy drive in the 5.25" drive bay. The 3.5" drive was hooked up to a 1581 controller board, and a Super Snapshot V4 rounded out the system.
For the keyboard, I used the original C64 case (now empty) with a DB25 cable, and replaced the red power LED with a nice bright blue one. :)
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!)
If you're willing to spend all those hours making casemods, why not simply design the case from the ground up?
ie: make a regular PC case in to a SX64-looking case.
You end up with a classic and the "cool PC". What could be better?
>Christ - you people talk like there were only 3 ever made and one went down with the Titanic.
That's almost how it was. And there'll never be anymore made -- the SX64 schematics were mostly lost during the Escom buyout, and the last scraps were lost when Gateway bought out the Commodore IP of Escom.
>The fact that this will be used with the form intact and the function 'improved'? Or that it stays in it's original form and decaying function?
Oh, I'm not saying he should let it rot. He should _repair_ it and bring it up to original new spec, if anything. If not, sell it to one of us for $100. That'd pay for one shit-hot PC case; racing stripes, V-TEC sticker, 8 blue headlights, 6" dual-mufflers, fuzzy dice, mag wheels, and the rest.
Hey, what he likes and what is the "right" thing (to people who actually appreciate C64 machines) are, quite possibly, very different things.
>Personally, I'd love to have a Next Cube with an shit-hot PC in it. Why? So I could use it for what I do *now*, and look at it's beatiful shape and color while I record music and edit video on it. Would I miss the Next OS? Sure, maybe. Would it get used on a daily basis? (We're talking 040 processor, people)
Why not just buy a modern cube shaped case and fix it up to be similar looking to a NeXT cube?
Again, you get the classic and a cool PC.
What this guy did to his SX64 is worse than anything you'd see here, IMHO.
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
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