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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!
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?
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.
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...
What's with you people? Didn't you read that this thing runs Windows XP?
Runs Windows XP? More precisly: Limps-along with Windows XP like a mangy three-legged dog that stopes every ten feet to eat it's own poop that dribbels out it's ass.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
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/
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
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 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.