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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."
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
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
It took 15 years, but I can finally play my C64 copy of "Bad Dudes" at more than 5 frames per second - hoorah!
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
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
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.
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!
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...
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
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/
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
I thought, why doesn't some one come up with a C64 palm top.
Bingo! That's the kind of thing I'd be interested in seeing.
That and the Commodore One project.
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...
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).
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.
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!
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
Its a sad day for apple when even the commodore 64s are made faster than the crap they sell.
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.
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...
it's load"*",8,1
>
that we can expect Club Caribe back anytime soon?
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...
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!
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 ----
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.
After reqading that, I just had to do a google search on beetle trike. LOL
There's a couple on eBay And at $41.00, not too expensive.
Drop me a line, dude. dan@BLOCKtheSPAMreifs.com, remove "BLOCK" and "SPAM".
Jouster
Drop me a line, dan@BLOCKtheSPAMreifs.com, remove "BLOCK" and "SPAM".
Jouster
Very cool project - and thanks for documenting it as you went. I gave away my SX64 in spring when moving overseas, otherwise I should be tempted to try something similar. Would an internal wi-fi card work behind one of the plastic panels? That way you could save one of the 9-pin control ports for a joystick.
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.
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.