Building a new C64 in 2020

hi i'm jan beta and today i'm going to  attempt to build a commodore 64. so as   you probably know there are a number of  replica boards that are reverse engineered   versions of the original commodore 64 boards  some of them have some added functionality   and there are ones that are available for purchase  there are some that are open source and you can   just um have them made yourself and i'm in  the fortunate position of having been donated   i think nearly all the boards that are available  these days uh one of each of course not all of   them that are available in the world so there's  probably going to be a number of videos of me   populating commodore 64 boards different revisions  of them and checking out how well they work and if   we can get them to work at all in the first place  this episode is going to be a special project that   i had in mind for quite a while now i'm going  to try to build a commodore 64 that uses as many   newly made parts as possible so as you know there  is a lot of replacement chips for some of the   proprietary chips that the commodore 64 used such  as the sid sound chip and such as the clock chip   and the pla and i'm going to use  several of those as many as i can use   and basically see how far i can go and have  the commodore 64 still work so join me on this   new adventure i hope it's going to be fun for  everyone there's going to be a lot of soldering   and a lot of time-lapse shots of me soldering and  swearing probably i don't know but uh yeah that's   the project for today hope you enjoy and for  this particular project i'm going to use this revision 250466 clone board that was reverse  engineered and actually provided for free to   me by rob taylor aka peepo as i pointed out  a number of times these uh 250466 which is   the latest revision of the older style long boards  for the commodore 64 is my favorite board revision   it kind of combines the best of both worlds of  the short boards which are pretty stable because   they use more modern ram chips and the old boards  which use more separate chips so they are easier   to troubleshoot and easier to repair in the end  this is my favorite flavor of commodore 64 ever so   i decided to use this board for the modern c64  build that i'm going to do as i said i'm going   to do a number of c64 builds and I want to  thank everybody who donated chips and parts   for this i'm going to show some of the new parts  and some of the old parts that people donated to   me during this video and i'm going to put links  to everything that i'm using or to everything i   can find links for that i'm using in the video  description as usual so you can use that as a   reference in case you want to do something similar  i think this is going to be fun at least for me i   hope it's fun to watch i'll try to make this  as entertaining as possible let's get into it   let me take some seconds to thank my sponsor for  this video which is pcbway who are as you probably   know a premium manufacturer of prototype pcbs  with very high quality standards actually i think   the board that i'm using in this build  was actually manufactured by pcbway so   yeah pristine quality if you want to make  your own boards just design something   in your preferred design software head on over  to pcbway.com and have the pcbs manufactured   there are some festivity activities planned for  december so be sure to check the site frequently   and the link is in the video description here's  the board nicely laid out black replica board   of the 250466 revision of the commodore  64. gold-plated of course because yeah   basically rob spared no expense this is actually  still available on his shop this is an early   revision version 1.2 from january 2020 and  he actually sent this to me shortly after he   finished reverse engineering and making the  boards so uh thanks for that and i'm sorry   for the delay but that's how things work in the  beta lab i guess so this build is going to be   based on this board and rob actually also sells  parts kits which have the smaller components   nicely labeled in these bags and he provided me  with some of those as well we have the little   resistor packs that are not so easy to obtain  you can obviously if you know the parts numbers   you can obtain them and the capacitors  and the resistors however i'm not going   to use these because i got another pack that  gopher sells who's actually mentioned in the   credits for this board as well martin and he  sent me this pack from the run stop restore   which is a nice wordplay which is kind of a  more complete version of what rob has which   also includes all the connectors and some  more small parts like the ceramic capacitors   and he also provided the small logic chips and the  ram and a lot of nice round pin turn pin sockets   and the electrolytic capacitors so i'm going  to primarily use these parts for the build and   a link to the restore is also included in the  video description in case you want to buy one   of these kits which i can highly recommend  he offers kits for a number of different   board revisions so i think i'm just going to  start soldering and with projects like this   to keep track it's always good to have like a  list like this is labeled on the packaging so is   martin's offering there's labels for where each  component goes which is all kind of neat to have   but there's something better actually that  my friend edu arana set up on his website   i'm going to show you enter the c64 parts locator  or pcb locator on rananet.net which is also going   to be linked in the description edu has the  assembly 250466 all laid out here and we have   a little drop down menu where we can choose the  components and we can see where they actually   go so we have these little green lights we can  also have them blink we can see where the ceramic   disc capacitors go that we chose in the menu and  this is going to be really useful for this build   thanks edu for providing the world with this  parts locator really useful so usually what   people recommend and i also recommend that uh  is to start with the components with the lowest   profile on the board so i'm going to start  with the smaller resistors with the diodes with   the ceramic capacitors and then slowly build  up height i guess and i'm probably going to   put on the large electrolytic capacitors last and  the connectors so that's the way i want to do this   and whenever i come across something interesting  i'm going to pause the montage and tell you about   it but this is going to be more or less one  big music video featuring the music by focus 10   that is also going to be linked in the description  here's a bandcamp page now where you can also   give him some money for providing the  music to my channel and to the world   and yeah i highly encourage doing so because  uh that's so very generous of giving me   the opportunity to play focus  10's music on my channel here   thanks for that check out his bandcamp if you are  interested in the music you can download for free   or you can give him a small amount of money you  can specify which amount of money you want to   give him and i'm actually using this app which is  just called resistor to determine the color codes   because of course the resistors are not labeled  and people who actually know their electronics   know the color codes by heart i don't actually  i have to admit and this is very useful and i'm   also measuring things with my multimeter so i  can be sure that the value is not completely off do so these resistor pegs there are several  of these they actually have a marking   like this stripe or a dot for one pin  and that's also marked on the board   so the marked pin goes here in the square field  basically so you can't really get that wrong so i also soldered in these rectifier diodes  which are just 1n401 standard these are really   standard parts i took them from my parts pin  there are however some zener diodes and such   i'm at cr1 which is a 2.7 volts zener diode and i  don't have any of those in stock i have a couple   of zener diodes but not that particular  voltage so i'm just going to salvage it   from my spare sport which is a slightly older  revision of the board 250425 but it's very similar   in fact they mostly changed the eight rand drum  chips to only two bigger capacity ram chips so   i think this is the the right part i'm just  going to desolder it from here and sold onto the   new board it's a bit of cheating i know but some  parts i'm just going to salvage because this board   is a spare sport that's beyond repair which has  a lot of broken traces on the ram and elsewhere   so i think i'm going to get away with this and  still call it a build with mostly new parts diodes have a polarity that's something worth  pointing out i guess they have a marking on the   negative side and it's also there's a stripe  usually it's also marked on the board so   again pretty easy to see so these resistor packs have the values printed  on them but they're not very clear actually if you   haven't done this before this one says 332 that  means it's a 3.3 k ohms resistor pack it also   has the designator for the pin 1 3 3 0 as in this  case actually means 33 ohms so you're basically   adding the number of zeros to the number that  the last digit is that's how these things work   ah so i actually have a 6.8 volts   zener in my little stash of diodes  here so i can populate cr2 with a new component always good to have a magnifier ready especially  for these little actual ceramic capacitors and   they're actually they have designators printed  on them but they are teeny tiny so um there's one   0.1 microfarad that's 104 the label 51  picofarad is 510 390 picofarad is 391   so now we have a lot of these point one microfarad  which is 104 29 of them so that's gonna be fun and   yeah it's literally going to be fun because i like  soldering thankfully they are all in this one bag and i'm just bending the legs  sideways so they don't fall out   which works really well for  me for these small components and this is where the pcb locator  comes in very handy although it   looks a bit like las vegas at night at the moment so as you've probably seen in the timelapse i had  this populated with this one which is apparently   the wrong capacitor i think uh yeah otherwise  it went pretty well so far so we don't have   l5 i think we have to desolder this from  here which is an inductor it's just a coil   1.2 micro henry and there's also another  one we have to salvage those i think   i'm also going to have to salvage several  other parts this inductor here which is l4   which is a four pin inductor actually  filtering the voltages coming in after   the jack here the socket and the crystal we are  also going to have to salvage and i think i also   need to salvage this transistor some of the other  transistors i might not have in stock as well   i'm just going to do that now i think because  i already have the desoldering station fired up these are all components you can still get i  think or equivalent components for these birds   i'm just going to salvage them  because they don't have them   in stock and i have this  board to salvage them from okay so this is where this goes because  it's a filter for the input it's actually   a film capacitor i mistakenly put it in here  a couple of standard 1n4148 diodes these are   just these are the most common diodes you  can find so i have plenty of those in stock   and again they have a ring that indicates the  negative side so it's marked on the board as well   the little transistors that you can see the small  black things here they are just very regular   npn small signal transistors and there are  c945s on this particular board there are c   1815 which are all they are standard parts and i  thought i had some in my parts bin but i don't so   i'm just going to salvage them from this board  in this case uh c945 they are marked as 2sc   1815 in the parts locator but uh yeah these are  fine and they are probably equivalent but i'm just   too lazy to figure out the equivalents and figure  out if i have them so i'm just going to salvage   them these are all parts that are still readily  available from various electronics parts sellers   there we go my little transistors c15 next to the  vic 2 graphics chip is a tantalum capacitor it's   also provided in the kits and these are actually  polarized so plus which is not marked on the board   is facing downwards and on these as opposed to  electrolytic capacitors and other components   the positive lead is marked you can maybe see the  little plus marking there and one thing to go by   in most cases that you can use is that the longer  lead is the positive lead on most components that   i bought that i've seen that's a good indicator  so the positive lead should go facing towards me the last of the really small components is  this trimmer capacitor that's used to make   up for slight timing differences is provided  in the kit so it goes here where ct1 is marked so i think that's all the really small and flat  parts covered time to put the sockets in for the   ics and yeah they should all be provided in the  kit as well so i'm just going to use these which   are nice turn pin uh sockets which i prefer  over the leaf sockets especially if you have   something where you don't change around parts  all that often these have a much tighter grip   on the components these have a little notch on  one end and you should line them up with the notch   that is indicated on the silk screen of the board  although famously commodore didn't always get   these things right it's a good habit doing that  so you know which way around the chip goes in   because that is going to have the pin one in the  upper left corner in this case the markings here   pin one is always the upper left and the pin  ones are actually indicated by square vias on   this board as well that's nice and the way i do  this usually is to tack a bit of solder on one   or two pins on opposing sides so it holds in  place and then solder the other pins and then   so the pins are tacked completely this is now  holding in place and i'm soldering all the pins   this is going to be fun lots of soldering and i'm just doing these one by one i think  because i don't want to miss soldering a pin   okay one in only a thousand to go actually using  sockets has several advantages um one of them   being that you don't heat up the actual ic while  soldering because that can sometimes damage them   and you don't risk doing that you only heat up  the socket pins which are not easily damaged   the other thing of course is you can replace  and change things around easily without   any soldering in the future  so that's a very handy thing yay and that's all the ic sockets in things to  take care of are making sure that you don't get   any solder bridges which can happen this pin  spacing and make sure you don't have any stray   solder blobs that are anywhere on the  board or any little residue of solder   the back side looks messy because there's a lot  of flux still we're going to clean that later   but for now yeah this went rather smoothly  actually so i think the next step and this is   actually the first special thing that i do to  this that's not like a stock c64 i'm going to   populate the voltage regulators and i'm going to  use switching regulators which i've already done   tried on a regular c64 in my dc to dc converter  conversion which i'm going to link the video   there's actually two videos the first video i  replaced both of them and when i replaced the 12   volts one the sid chip was making kind of strange  noises when i turned the machine off so i don't   really want that to happen but i think as i'm  going to use a replacement sid chip i think that   probably can handle the voltages better than the  real sid chip what i think happened is that the   12 volts they took too long to turn off really  because the dc to dc converges take a lot less   power than the linear regulators that are in here  in these positions in a real world old school   c64 so i'm going to put these in here these are  recom brand and they're actually labeled as a 7805   oh one point oh this is the one i'm going to use  for the five i never one of these in my main c64   and works absolutely no problems whatsoever so  this i'm not too worried about and this is kind   of the 12 volt equivalent r 7812 0.5 so this is  half an amp and the other one is one amp so they   should be equivalent to the original parts and  i actually don't know if this is going to work   but i'm going to try that's the whole point i  guess and these also run a lot cooler because   they are way more efficient than the original  linear regulators so they don't need a heatsink   and they should produce a very little ripple  because these are really these are quite expensive   actually good dc to dc converters i think you  could get away with using way cheaper ones   but i kind of want this to be nice and pin 1 is  marked by a little dot don't want to reverse these   we can always replace them with 7805 and 7812  voltage regulators linear voltage regulators   if it doesn't work i kind of think it will  work for the bridge rectifier i'm going to use   one that i've used in a number of future proofing  commodore 64 builds or reverbs this is a kb pc 610   and uh yeah it's way over the top you could  get away with using a much smaller one   and the originals are much smaller  but i'm using these because   why not because these don't perfectly fit the pin  spacing you have to slightly raise them which is   a good idea for air circulation because these  ones quite warm actually they are made to be   warm so nothing to worry about there but a bit  of extra air circulation doesn't hurt at all for all the connectors i thankfully  have the kit from the run stop restore   so i'm just going to use this and it also includes  the fuse holders and the fuse and the power switch   so that's really nifty because these are  non-standard parts or at least some of them   that are not easily found from regular sources  it's really handy to have these all in one place i think it's a good idea to screw these  joystick ports down before soldering   with the nuts and bolts that  are also provided in the kit   so i'm just so the solder doesn't get cracked  if you tighten the screws after soldering now for the connectors for the keyboard and  the power led and then we're almost done   then the only things that's left to solder  on are the electrolytic capacitors but first   the connectors and these are just  regular 2.54 millimeter spacing   or pin headers these are the ones with  long pins so yeah they fit the connectors now for the electrolytic capacitors and yeah this  is a thing you've seen me doing a number of times   on this channel i suppose basically it's just  recapping without the re and the capacitors were   provided in the kit actually but i am going to use  my own capacitors because frankly i think they are   better brand for the actual capacitors i am going  to use v-shy brand ones because i really like them   and for the radial capacitors i'm going to  use my panasonic fc series caps that i use   all the time and never had any issues with so  far that's just a matter of my personal taste   and i'm using the parts locator  because it makes things way easier okay here's the thing that i found actually  a c200 is supposed to be a 2.2 microfarad   electrolytic capacitor actually they don't have  the polarity marked and it doesn't look at all   like the footprint of an electrolytic i think they  commodore used an electrolytic in that spot for   these boards but as you can see on this slightly  older board the c200 is a disc ceramic capacitor   so maybe they just used both in different  production runs or something like that or they   decided later about using an electrolytic because  it was cheaper or i don't know because it worked   better however i'm going to put an electrolytic in  because it is specified both in the parts locator   and on the little bags it's 2.2 microfarad c200  so yeah i'm just going to use that so figuring   out the negative side of the capacitor is not that  difficult we just set this to continuity testing   and the negative sides should  be connected to ground in this   specific one so this side is our  negative and of course the negative   is the marked one on these electrolytics  and the long lead is the positive one okay one last thing to  solder in is the rf modulator   however i'm not going to use an rf modulator  because who uses analog television anymore   and the rf modulator deteriorates the video  signals anyway so i'm going to use this little   board which is actually made by copperdragon and  it's available on github so you can make your own   if you so desire it's basically the little  part in the component mod that i've made a   video about that also was designed by copper  dragon this is the part replacing the original   rfmodulator circuitry from that project basically  this should give me the normal video output on   the audio video jack here and not give me  an rf output which i don't need anyway so   and this is going to have the best possible  signal quality this was donated by mitchell   actually or donated a bunch of things that i'm  going to show in some future videos just going to   find some pin headers to sort of this in this  has positions for the long boards and the short   boards this is a long board so we're going to  have to populate these rows facing towards me there's some solutions for this that you can  build or buy pre-made and you can of course   salvage an rf modulator for from an actual  c64 board i think the ones for all the long   boards should work in this board as well now the  only thing left to do is do some cleanup work   i think i actually managed to put the  cartridge connector in at an angle yeah   uh let me just quickly make everything look nice  so that nobody can tell i'm terrible at soldering oh and what i also have to do there's actually a  little jumper here that determines if this is a   pal or an ntsc machine there's some little solar  bridge points where you can set the specifics   of the pal output i'm going to have to solder  in a wire here so this jumper here we need to   make a connection between these two points so  i'm just using i think a capacitor lag probably if you have an ntsc machine you obviously  leave this jumper open so cleaning up with   some alcohol and brush especially on  the flip side because there's a lot of flux residue of course it was a lot of soldering so that should conclude the soldering portion  of this build so it's time to populate the board   actually and uh thankfully all the logic and ram  is also supplied by the run stop restore martin   sent me the whole range of kits so we should have  no problem populating this and also it's labeled   which logic tip goes where on the board so let's  just do that i'm just going to put my anti-static   wrist strap on for this because now we are dealing  with some more sensitive components obviously this   is also the 556 timer chip included in the package  here usually what you do is to bend the pins   inward i usually do it on the table a bit with new  chips which these are so they fit into the sockets   ne 556 timer this is just pick and place so  i'll just time lapse you through it basically yeah so far we put the standard logic chips  in which are all readily available still   these are really standard 74 series logic this is  the ram this is four four six four two four four   six four ram chips the first custom chip that  martin also supplies is this 8701 made by mos   actually which is responsible for a lot of  the timings of the vic 2. this is a part that   actually frequently fails because it gets so much  use i'm not going to use this original ship that   martin supplied though i have something else that  i want to use this was made and sent to me by jeff   bird of the haybird youtube channel i'm going  to link his channel in the corner here because   you should check that out definitely very nice  retro channel and very knowledgeable person so   he made this based on the work of frank who's  also known as iz8dwf in the scene and he also   has a youtube channel that you should check out he  actually developed the circuit for this and jeff   miniaturized it so that it nearly has the same  dimensions as an original ship and fits the   commodore 128 in particular that that was the goal  of his endeavors because he had a c128 that had a   bad 8701 timing chip he wanted something  that fits and he sells these both as kids and   pre-assembled on his website so if you want one  of these very elegant replacement 8701 chips get   them from jeff's website i'm going to link that  below in the video description so this should fit   in here it does so for the vic 2 video chip itself  there's no replacement yet i think we are pretty   close to seeing an actual fpga implementation of  this or some other kind of replacement for this   but there's nothing that's finished i think  several people are working on reverse engineering   this chip and are combining their knowledge and  maybe something is going to come out soon but   for now just going to use an original vic 2. and  martin from run stop restore actually sent me this   second box that says surprise and  surprise i already opened this of course   it's got a nice card and it says there  are c64 chips in here so let's have a look   and actually martin sent me a full set of c64  chips so thank you very much for that this   actually includes a pla replacement that i'm  actually going to use this is the plankton one   of the best pla replacements available this was  made by s slapion or eslapion i think it's rather   supposed to be pronounced in french who i also  mentioned in my commodore 16 saruman ram expansion   video that's also one of his projects and actually  makes a ram replacement for the c64 too but i   didn't get that yet that's a future thing i want  to probably put in this c64 i'm going to use the   plankton as the pla replacement and i'm going  to use the original vic-2 so this is a pla that   goes here vic-2 is actually the real life original  vic 2 revision 3 from 1986. quite period correct   for the original 250466 sport i am going to use  this original 6510 processor for now it says okay   on the bottom that's that's a good sign i guess  and i am going to use the cia chips which are 6526   there's also no replacement for those yet but  i know there are some people working on those i am going to use the original  roms this should be the basic rom   because of course you could use eproms or  more modern flash roms or something like that   but i think i have so many of these chips that i  want to use these rather and martin sent me some   some more so probably going to put in the kernel  switcher at some point or something like that   so martin included a nano swinsid which is using  a little arm processor to emulate a sid chip   i think i want to use this for now i have  something better that i'm going to try later   but for powering this up and initial testing  i'm just going to put this in because it's way   less expensive than the other thing i want to  try plus i have several of these nano swinsids so   wouldn't be that bad if it failed i  have to populate the fuse of course   just bending the fuse holder a bit  pre-bending it a bit because it was bent   quite closely there we go okay in theory  and if i did nothing horribly wrong   this should now be a functioning commodore 64.  let's find out so yeah uh crossing my fingers   a lot because there's a lot of things that could  go wrong with this build of course because there's   a lot of building involved in this so yeah i  think i would just want to try to power this   on now it should have power coming here and now  we flick the switch cross your fingers everybody and make a ding and we do get a messed up signal did  we go too far with the replacements   or is there something else rotten here oh  actually i think i know what the problem is   we are supposed to ground this little thing  let me investigate this and as it turns out   it actually was a really stupid mistake i made i  forgot to add the ground pin here so i soldered in   a botched wire for now i'm just going to  come up with a better solution there's   actually a hole right below there and you're  supposed to put one more uh pin header pin   there so i'm just probably going to put a  wire in there for now this should be grounded   maybe this fixes the problem with the video  output okay this time for real hopefully let's see ooh okay that's at least better than what we  had before this at least resembles a commodore   64 startup screen uh probably time for some  troubleshooting yeah it would have been a miracle   if this thing worked first try i guess let's let's  figure out what's wrong yeah after putting this   through some of my usual troubleshooting  paces and using the usual sights i go to i   determined that actually because it was  displaying the same screen no matter what i did   and it didn't start up a cartridge at  all that hinted to the cpu being broken   so i took out the cpu that martin supplied and  put in one of my spare cpus and yeah guess what it totally works so i in fact made  a c64 that's that feels pretty good   to be honest so apart from me forgetting to solder  on the ground pin it wasn't really my mistake   and i did everything right obviously  so let's put this through some tests   and see if it actually fully works but  i'm quite optimistic that it will nice and the little thing you hear is just the  swin sid initializing that's like like a   feature of the swimsuit that has takes a couple  of seconds to start up actually but then it should   pass through i hope yeah it passes all the tests nice of  course i'm going to do some more tests   so i tried many games and many demos on  this actually uh stayed up late to play with   this thing and it seems to just work  perfectly fine which is amazing of course and even with the replacement chips it does work  absolutely no problem whatsoever it seems and   for my testing i have temporarily connected the  keyboard this is just the top half of another c64   connected the keyboard from that to be able to  run stuff and test stuff and as far as i can   see everything works i've thrown a lot of stuff at  this and a lot of demos that are pretty demanding   on the hardware and on timings and such i ran the  super zaxxon cartridge from my bit cartridge which   i have which runs actually runs the super saxon  cartridge the 1541 ultimate 2 plus doesn't do that   it actually doesn't run the card backward does  that so one more reason to get a backbit i guess   so super zaxxon actually is a good test  for the pla functioning correctly because   many replacement plas can't run that correctly  and get you get like scrambled graphics and such   plankton is known to run that fine because it has  the ex exact timings correct so um if you have   an eprom replacement pla or something like that  you might run into issues with the super zaxxon   cartridge in particular which is a good test  to figure that stuff out so one last thing that   bothers me the nano swinsid is okay it actually  sounds better than i remembered it to sound maybe   i got a slightly newer version of the firmware  on there or something like that i don't know   it does sound reasonably good and it is a very  reasonable replacement for a reasonable price   i think these cost like 14 euros and you  can also of course make your own the uh   the pcb and everything is free to download so you  can make your own version of this or expand on it   or whatever you want to do with it however i think  i have something better so here's the thing i want   to use for this build and actually i'm in the  fortunate and very privileged position to just be   able to drop martin who designed this and produces  this an email and telling him about the project   and he just agreed to send me a sample to use for  this build of the armsid and the armsid is just   it's basically a similar approach to the  nano swinsid in that it is based on a   little armed ship a little microcontroller  chip but is so much more sophisticated and   actually martin put a lot of work in this  and there are regular firmware updates to   this things like that it's very well built yeah  let's take a look you can actually buy these   for 27 euros which is a steal for what it is on  retro comp see that and i'm going to link that in   below as well let's check it out it comes in these  esd save boxes and look at the beautiful thing so   the pins are gold plated and things like that and  it's very there's so much attention to detail yeah   look at this it's just it's beautiful look at the  design it's so cute actually looks like an actual   chip if you put it in there and uh there's several  versions of this martin was kind enough to send me   a two sit version as well which has two needs  two sockets in the c64 you put it in so we can't   really put it in this one in this state maybe i'm  going to put it in here or maybe i'm just going to   make a separate c64 build with a stereo sit and  two sid sockets for now we are going to use this   yeah and this is actually pretty special to me  because i am a huge fan in case you didn't know   of the sid chip the original ones and especially  the old ones which are even more difficult to   simulate emulate because they have so many flaws  that give them the particular sound they have   the newer 85 50 sid chips are actually a  lot better from a technical point of view   and have a lower base frequencies they they have  a lot more oomph basically but i still like the   more analog sounding 6851 version the initial  versions of the sid chip and this supposedly can   simulate that sound quite accurately so yeah  i'm really looking forward to trying this that's   what we're going to do and obviously it will be  interesting to see if it works at all and fully   in this configuration with so many replacement  parts and a non-standard power supply and   non-standard voltage regulators everything's a bit  different from a stock c64 so we're going to see   yeah this thing rocks it actually  has really tight bass frequencies   which is i think it's a bit tighter than the  original 68 51 but that's not a bad thing you can probably barely hear through the  microphone but i can tell you this thing   sounds really fat and not as uh  clinical and dead as the nano swimsuit   tends to sound like this is actually really good  i wouldn't i want to check out some more stuff   that i know uh how it's supposed to sound this is  pretty close to what this sounds on my uh stock   c64 with the old version of the sid chip and  this should actually auto configure it to be uh   to emulate the old version because  it gets the 12 volts supply   like the old version of the sid chip so it can  just determine which one it emulates and this   makes this a drop in replacement for all board  revisions so you can just drop this in your c64   and be safe and it's just going to auto configure  to the particular set needed in that machine   that's awesome that sounds really good i kind  of kind of sounds more bassy than the than your   standard sit which is not a bad thing at all just  it feels really powerful i think it's also louder   yeah i used the internal sid player  of the 1541 ultimate cartridge   to play some of the stuff i know this is one that  sounds particularly bad on many replacements it's   the title track of to be on top by chris hillsback  which uses a lot of samples which actually work   way better on the older side revisions because  it utilizes many of the flaws that those have this sounds pretty good actually it sounds  pretty close to the real thing i'm going   to definitely going to make a separate video  going deeper into this and uh comparing it with   different sid revisions wanted to do that anyway  so for now color me impressed this thing is very   good so and actually obviously i ended up  playing with this for several hours and   it seems to work flawlessly from what i can  tell from my testing the arm sid sounds amazing   the quality from the rf modulator replacement is  amazing the timing chip and the pla replacement   work flawlessly the voltage regulators actually  work flawlessly as well probably i think if you   we had an original sit in here we get we would  get the farting noises i made the video about   ages ago uh yeah in this configuration it seems  to work and doesn't seem to cause any interference   with any of the components so yeah one last  thing that i can do because that replacement   already exists is the case and actually had this  sitting here unopened for quite a while i got it   shortly after the new batch of  pixel wizard c64 cases was released   so what color did i get this time let me show you  i thought because this is such a futuristic build or kind of futuristic it's not  really futuristic of course   i got the clear one i have a thing for clear  cases i put my amiga 1200 in a clear case and   i'm probably whenever clear cases are released  for other computers i'm going to get them again   i know it's not everybody's taste but  my taste i like i love transparent stuff   probably because i love the electronics  and i love to actually see them in there   look at it i think it looks pretty darn cool and  it has the old style commodore logo and it also   has the old style 64 logo which i think looks just  amazing on this one it's sort of like slightly   silvery reflective sticker here i don't know if  that's very visible on camera i think this looks   really good let's put the board in there i guess yeah and it is a tight fit but it should work   not going to use the original  screws because they are crap frankly i have some fitting screws they are just i think  they are the standard size you find on many   things and even the ones that are  salvaged from dvd players and such   are better than the ones supplied actually  and of course it's difficult to screw them in   just because this case is new so there are no pre  uh drilled threads yeah that went in rather nicely   i like it so considering the keyboard and the led   i'm just going to take them from this machine  because uh yeah the keyboard there's actually   several things to replace the keyboard there  are new keycaps that was an indiegogo campaign   that started ages ago and got delayed quite a  bit because uh obvious reasons the pandemic was   happening so for these commodore 64c cases  you actually need little standoffs where the   keyboard actually sits on and gets screwed to and  i know i have some 3d printed ones somewhere but   i can't find them at the moment so i came up with  this workaround just stole some lego bricks and   i'm going to put them here temporarily until i  can find the proper standoffs i know i have them   daniel aka c64 customs gave them to me when he  visited me and i can't find the box of stuff   he gave me it's just a small little uh treasure  trove of things uh yeah i can't find it so i came   up with this temporary solution to have something  and it i think it should work pretty well actually   because uh it sits rather tightly still because  it's clipped in here or it sits in these clips   but yeah as i said for now i'm going to use this  keyboard there is a couple of projects actually   uh there is the mac board that  actually replaces this whole assembly   with an assembly that actually has uh  tactile switches for every single key and i   am going to get one at some point but it isn't  here yet and i want to kind of finish this build   for this video because it was probably long enough  so we're going to have to make our own power led   assembly and for that i'm going to use this green  led that i salvaged ages ago i think from an old   like vu meter on an amplifier usually  the bigger piece you can see in here   is the cathode so so that's negative and the  smaller piece is the anode so that's going to   be positive and we have to file this down slightly  because famously ah this doesn't quite fit in here   so we have i think we have to file  down the sides a tiny little bit   and i'm just going to use one  of my trusty nail files for that yeah this is going to do nicely so we have to take off some material  from the sides and from the other side   this was a standard five millimeter  width led and they don't quite fit   so you have to take a bit off okay just  confirming the polarity with the multimeter   with the diode test this actually should light  up but you probably can't see it in this video   light this has a forward voltage of 1.788 volts  so that should be the correct polarity so i'm just   going to solder on some wires use some heat shrink  to insulate the contacts and i'm going to crimp on   a little connector which is a connector  for a pin header of course and lengthwise   it's going to go from here to approximately  here so we need a diagonal like this maybe so on the board as you can see is actually  a three prong connector and that's because   the middle pin is ground both of the outer pins  are positives so you can have a connector where   only two of these are populated and you can put  it in both ways quite intelligent engineering   commodore and i'm just going to make one like that  so 3 pin 2.54 millimeter pin spacing connector   with ground in the center and one connector  for the positive one of the side pins i like to twist them a bit just like the  original cables so this is what we want   we have the outer pin or one of the outer pins  positive and the center pin should be the ground that looks good okay and  then we put it all together and hey i am quite pleased with the results   what do you think uh i'm definitely  going to open this up again when i find   the standoffs but this looks kind of great kind  of cool let's see if the led actually lights up   and it does it does light up but it's  a bit dim because these green leds   take a bit higher voltage than the red ones so  this is an old led too so i'm not too sure about   that maybe i'll put something else in there at  some point but for now this is a working commodore   64. yes so much for this video i think uh as i  said this is going to be a work in progress for   some time but i'm quite pleased with how it turned  out so far definitely going to put a brighter led   in that's a bit dim but uh yeah some other things  i want to do is to put a completely new keyboard   into this probably some kind of kernel switcher  i haven't quite decided what to do there yet   if you know of any modern replacement parts  that i haven't tried and you want me to try   or if you have developed a replacement part that i  didn't know of please let me know in the comments   uh also let me know any other ideas you might have  if you like this stuff please give it a thumbs up   or even subscribe to this channel there's  plenty more videos coming about this and   i'm also going to build some of the other  replacement boards that are available out there   for purchase or for free yeah and before i  forget extra special thanks go out to everybody   who supports me on the youtube memberships  page or on patreon or with little donations   thanks to everybody who donated parts for this  i still have a lot of c64 parts but as i said   i'm going to build at least one more c64 board  completely from scratch so they are going to   find a good use and if they are not used in one of  these builds they are going to be used to repair   broken c64s so they are in good hands with  me i hope thanks everybody and yeah hope to   see you again on this channel i'm yanbita  thanks for watching see you next time bye

Channel: Jan Beta

Views: 126,142

Rating: 4.9554319 out of 5

Keywords: Jan Beta

Id: ZtpRdVTuHQw

Length: 64min 12sec (3852 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 30 2020