This is another old project, dating back to about 2004. I had it covered on the old Schatenseite, and I want to give a short presentation on the blog to preserve it.

I was given an old Commodore C64 that somebody decided to dispose of. The first version, in germany this case is dubbed ‘Brotkiste’ (bread box). It didn’t turn on anymore, and lacking any personal Commodore history I didn’t hesitate long before taking it apart.

Unfortunately, I didn’t know about microcontrollers at that time, otherwise I would have been able to save the functionality of the keyboard. I wasn’t able to, so parts of the underside of the keyboard had to go, to make space for CPU cooler and RAM.

I inserted a VIA EPIA M10000b, so the C64 ran at 1GHz. The system was completed by 256MB RAM, a 2,5″-20GB-harddisk, a CD-ROM from a notebook and an external power brick.

Built like this I could attach the unit to my TV set, mainly for playing some games on it. But to be honest: this was one of the projects that made more fun during the build than afterwards…

Nowadays I would build this in a different way. A Raspberry would look great in the case. Needing much less space it would even be possible to keep the keyboard in a working condition. And running the Retropie distribution you could even have this certain 80’s feeling…

See also…

• C64 @ 933Mhz – Another build project