Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

1+ GHz Commodore SX-64 Mod

Posted by timothy on from the not-your-ordinary-case-mod dept.

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."

9 of 316 comments (clear)

  1. Been said before by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  2. Wow by Apreche · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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!
    1. Re:Wow by karnal · · Score: 4, Interesting

      "Radio Shack Coco 2 in the house"

      I remember dreaming of having enough money one day to get the 512KB memory upgrade for my coco3....

      Or, drooling over the 1MB or 2MB upgrades, or the 0 wait state disk controller (OS9 goodness....)

      --
      Karnal
    2. Re:Wow by fatboy · · Score: 3, Interesting

      or the 0 wait state disk controller (OS9 goodness....)

      A friend of mine had the Frank Hog Labs 0 wait state disk controller. I only had a DISTO Super Controller II 4-n-1 and it sucked!

      Multi User, Multi Tasking with less than 512k of ram. OS9 rocked. I still have the c compiler around here somewhere for it.

      --
      --fatboy
  3. A little audio theme to go along with that... by apk · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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

  4. Whoa this is really cool by SuperDuG · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Take a regular PC and load up an emulator on it while still using the old case. This isn't a hardware hack, it's a case mod if anything. Anyone else interested in a really fast C64??

    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
  5. Re:For crying out loud by RollingThunder · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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....

  6. Re:My project is the opposite by FuzzyBad-Mofo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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. :)

  7. 6502 is easy... in software by pommiekiwifruit · · Score: 3, Interesting
    It's not so hard in software. VHDL may be another matter of course. Ugh, hardware :-(

    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