All New Commodore 64 using Ultimate 64 & LEGO Keycaps!

Hello DIN Diners, thanks for joining me back here in the retro recipes kitchen so on the menu today we're going to be trying to solve what is the holy grail of Commodore 64 problems and we're going to be doing it by giving peace a chance LEGO pieces that is. welcome to retro recipes I think we can all agree that original c64 Hardware is best but it isn't without its problems understandably some people looking to expand their collections don't want to get snipes on eBay then when the machine arrives recap the board I have to fix faults that occurred during shipping when a trace fractured or static fried a RAM chip as if it was a ham chip sorry what's step no ham chips Ram chip but luckily you can almost build a completely new commodore 64 from scratch one that's never touched a Commodore Factory apart from one thing a very important thing in fact 67 very important things the key camps there should have been 64 ssin so today let's build the world's first completely new Commodore 64 now on to be very clear about my criteria for our challenge so I've set as three roles one not a single part must have ever set foot in a Commodore Factory even it even if it doesn't have feet number two it must be fully compatible meaning it includes a tape port cartridge port and so on and unfortunately this rules out the upcoming c64 mini maxi unfortunately all of its ports and its key caps are incompatible and three it must be commercially available for anyone to buy not just a one-off imbrue project let's get started and for this recipe we need four main ingredients first he can get new PCBs such as Gideon's ultimate 64 I comps c64 reloaded or even our denver slits clone PCBs which look so good they probably came from PCB way with their full assembly service because as we all know PCB stands for pretend Commodore blues and we very generously been donated an ultimate 64 by Tom Wilson not the Todd Wilson but head I think at the heart of the ultimate 64 is an FPGA chip that stands for field programmable gate array but remember FPGA isn't emulation or even a simulation it's real Hardware programmed or wired to recreate the device you want it to become well either way tom is certainly not trying to prevent us going back to the future here thanks to him where we're going Marty we don't need ports because we've got his board chairs Tom and you can get new cases these brand new c64 c cases from icon and pixel wizard the molded in original Commodore US a factory tooling although to fit my criteria the brand new case that pops out never touched that Factory now I bought this one myself a while ago for another repo but pixel wizard have generously donated us some stickers so he can give this world first a fitting serial number like three oh but wait not one yeah and they given us these snazzy 3d printed ultimate 64 adapters and keyboard adapters because there's even a new keyboard base the incredible meklord 64 by lao bricks currently donated by him to our little retro channel for this project he uses cherry MX or gator on switches comes with 3d printed adapters to fit into old c64 key caps but what about new c64 key caps well so far anyone buying all these pieces has to put old key caps as cherry MX on the top 30 year old two cherries now don't get me wrong they still look great and I know the owner is rightly delighted but on the other hand to me it's perhaps a bit like buying a new car and putting a 30 year old steering wheel on it you see so far nobody has succeeded in mass-producing new replacement key caps granted Thomas Koch off pixel was at fashioned these interesting looking 3d prints as a one-off but they're expensive slow to create and a little rough around the edges as 3d printing often is but there was this IndieGoGo campaign nearly four years ago but by all accounts is completely stalled with people in the comments extremely angry as has puppy frantic is commit comes telling you you are come on up please yeah and the latest room is in those comments are that the guy has run off to Thailand I really hope that's not true and the campaign does eventually come to fruition it's a tough challenge so I feel for the guy unless he's in Thailand there are also some homebrew one-offs on forums like the great lemon 64 and plenty of options for amiga keycaps but what companies who make those don't seem to realize is the commodore 64 is better than the amiga right right the four years is enough I got tired of tapping my fingers waiting for someone else to make something commercially available and decided we just have to do it ourselves here today see here's the weirdest coincidence Lyle bricks who makes the mech board 64 the Commodore 64 keyboard base or his name is bricks and with the order he gives he one of these mr. bricks made of Lego somehow there's something to do with Commodore keyboards and Lego and it isn't just me if you've seen my videos building the full-size bricks t4 Commodore bricks t4 you'll have seen this revelation you see I was exploring my real keyboard and I noticed inside the keys they connect using this axle shape look familiar yeah it's the exact same shape that LEGO Technic axial pieces use so I designed the keyboard so that you can actually take off all the Lego keys put them onto a real Commodore 64 keyboard and that way you can have something that looks like this that is fully operational oh by the way we have 1/5 of the votes we need for Lego to consider mass producing the bricks t4 so please if you haven't voted and you want to see a brand-new Lego commodore 64 on store shelves just take a couple of minutes to sign up and vote a bitly slash bricks deform but yes thanks to that cross shape the keys were amazingly cross-compatible i still can't really believe it myself now there are actually only two suitable LEGO pieces available they have the desired axle hole in the middle one is round the other is squarish now these square ones only come in black or grey but luckily those are very close to the dark brown and grey of the original keys I think we'll call these new key caps the bricks key four key cap set by the way there is no spoon those Lego letters from the Brick City for looks perhaps a little too Lego ish and certainly didn't resemble real c64 keys with their pets key characters and all that so let's design all-new graphics for a full key set of Lego tiles to clip on to the LEGO pieces yeah that was easy that it wasn't the font we using here is the same as you see on some variants of the c64 see the Dobies ITC avant garde gothic pro book originally used by avant-garde magazine with its meaning of experimental felt it was the best choice for this experimental project or maybe just mental Sumi wait Adobe don't see me now I had originally drawn up these stickers but I decided we need to do this properly so let's pay a visit to mr. ed Pearson of the fantastic brick sanity now brick sanity can print almost anything onto Lego or other plastics using their fancy printer as you can see here from Lego periphrastic and the printer is the same type used by two German manufacturers so we can be sure that the ink is durable enough to withstand years of fingernails or smacking because you keep killing your Jet Set Willy in the toilet now these are just draft prints but here's a close-up look at the quality of the final print but hopefully you'll be able to order online at the end of this video so we've got the tops of our key caps but what are they going to fit onto it's time to design our full keyboard full of key caps wait how is that even possible it's not one of those Christmas cracker magic tricks and we'll come back to the subject of the key caps in just a few minutes so now we've got our printed parts let's start the build first I need to free the pixel wizard case from its current owner and give that old PCB and keyboard a new home and what better than a new bricks t4 case they are call me bananas but my favorite color is yellow so let's go with this yellow and gray combo breaker like everybody and then disaster and so I had to build it all over again as I've mentioned once before I used to work in a keyboard Factory but I got fired because I didn't put in enough shifts and so they wouldn't let me return or enter yeah they even changed the caps locks hmmm looks like it needs retro writing her another time beautiful but while we're here I want to gauge how fast we can type on original keys compared to bricks keys so for that let's fire up nine to five typing cheater by ethics wait what the function key why is he chasing her through this very long office so if you don't type fast enough he'll catch up with her presumably to give her a raise I'm curious now what happens if we let him catch her oh goodness okay well luckily I'm a fast typer okay so with the old keyboard I max out of 57 words per minute you're welcome love but we'll come back to this game when we're done with a new keyboard okay so here's our lovely new case let's install Gideon's or rather Tom Wilson's ultimate 64 inside it using those pixel wizard wizardly adapters a mouthful they're surprising now how light this is let's let's do a little comparison yeah put that on eBay started at $0.99 next stop the mech board 64 notice how everything is called 64 ultimate 64 mega board 64 bricks key for nice and it brings everything together speaking of which if all goes well here and I put the bricks key for set up for sale I'm going to create a one-stop shop a web page where you can systematically grab your whole new c64 in just four steps now they'll be live at Perry fact accom hopefully by the time you watch this axles crossed now the MEC border even comes with a choice of LEDs to go under the caps lock to signify when it's on or off now captivating and then these are the SLS 3d printed adapters to help the alt keys or the Lego keys fit onto the new MEC board switches and so the moment of truth would put the adapter into the Lego brick and push it down firmly onto the switch yes solid fit but nobody said this was gonna be easy with key houston we have a problem sorry that was terrible but so is this the 3d printed adapters that convert the guitar and axles to Commodore 64 axles a to tall when placed in the Lego bricks to impart to the lip they have running around them now although this video is about building a new Commodore 64 I want to be clear if you just need to replace the key caps on your old c64 this is the perfect solution your key caps will look like this that we square not fit perfectly onto the existing old Commodore 64 keyboard base now my website you'll see two distinct different sets of key caps on for the old one for the new but if you're going for the make boss 64 and the old new look we're gonna have to design something new basically I have to reduce the height of all the keys on the keyboard and the only way to do that it's by using these 2 by 2 round Lego tiles you saw them earlier in this video by placing two of those in place of a full brick it drops the height by about 5 millimeters and then it's just a case of copy and paste however for these larger keys we need to place a break of the side to act as a stabilizer and this is what we end up with the mezzo turn the situation to our advantage is our Lego so we can choose from multiple colors you can have something like this or just original Brown and gray or pre-owned an orange and if you're using the keys with an old keyboard don't look like this the only difference is the bricks under the top printed tiles won't be colors there will be black and the function keys will all be grey it's just a limitation of what bricks are available for those base parts you can order the top tiles in any color that's available so now we've designed it up let's build it in real life there's our two tiles in goes the adapter that you'll get with the mech board and the printed tile goes on top sort of reminds me of an old typewriter keyboard and you can see here the height difference now we've lowered the key on the left compared to the one on the right and the taller keys were also a little less stable because they were so far away from the switch now the spacebar is interesting it has this metal stabilizing bar and you'll get these additional adapters to go into the adapters adapter it actors what you do is slide those in to either end of the stabilizer bar let's build our space bar here and I don't mean Mos Eisley cantina nice slide the other end on push it together firmly and fingers crossed actually fingers tapping I was amazed how much abuse you can give this thing and the space bar is nice even and balanced now I'll return key with its plastic stabilizers and I'm actually gonna add one extra tile of height to those stabilizers so they really do touch down onto the keyboard base and we'll take off all our old keys and here's our new function keys looks kind of interesting now these Lego tiles aren't always consistent in size and occasionally the axle hole will be a bit too rather loose all you can do is just put in a piece of tape or saran wrap and just thicken it up by a few microns makes all the difference alright let's see my words per minute when it comes to assembly it was about a million words per minute okay so the MEC board connects here to the ultimate 64 and rests into the pixel wizard adapters the best of three worlds in goes the case LED now let's just get serious for a second full disclosure I am the first to admit that these keys are not as good and will never be as good as real keyboard keys for one thing they are slightly loose although when I looked at the real keyboard even those keys are a little loose but definitely the Lego ones are far from perfect but they do meet the criteria so let's design up our serial number label three I mean boy bastard the end result may not be quite as pretty as the stalled IndieGoGo but Legos can't be choosers sorry then again they are nicely reminiscent perhaps of the very early silver label squarish Commodore pet style keys and honestly I can't think of many combinations more nostalgic and retro than Lego and Commodores speaking of Commodores the logo is still a trademark and I've tried reaching out to the current rights holder and unfortunately no response so I think for now I'll just go with this commodore style that's iki thank s they don't want to take my money speaking of which I'll be selling these not for profit on my website but if you do want to help out this small retro channel and help keep it alive would appreciate your support on PayPal or patreon okay so let's plug in the completely new Commodore 64 nothing no power oh I didn't turn the plug off sorry okay I'm nervous this is a big moment now ever go into setting up the ultimate 64 itself is there's plenty of videos about that but in short I just flashed the kernel and the ROM from the USB stick in the back then we're in business and now for the all-important and so politically correct right into five typing tutor wish me luck but wish her luck but not him creep her love of the ultimate 64 includes real disk drive sounds too insert cracking knuckles sound here eh not bad so my words per minute are essentially on par with the old keyboard so there it is the world's first completely new Commodore 64 fully compatible 100% commercially available with no part relying on old stock or defunct factories now I have no doubt that better options will come along in a year or four but for now I hope this helps those of you who are looking for something better than this keep an eye on the description of this video - for all the recipe ingredients and links you need but also for updates and developments on this project and this whole saga of trying to replace key caps maybe something better will come along you take a look down below and you can order your bricks key for key cap set right now from periphrastic calm or bitly slash bricks key and if you're quick maybe you'll end up with the world's 2nd completely new commodore 64 if you liked this project hit like hit subscribe do all those things that helped me keep making these for you and what do you think of this nostalgic solution is it the key to the problem or just a load of brick comment below and cheerio what do you mean I love it more than you know come back

Channel: Retro Recipes

Views: 246,179

Keywords: computer, retrogaming, retro, retrocomputing, commodore, commodore 64”, commodore amiga”, electronics, refurbs, refurbishment, restoration, soldering, how to”, refurbish, atari, apple, c64, a500, retro gaming”, music, chiptunes, 8-bit, chip tunes”, Sid chip”, ASMR, Lego, AFOL, maker, perifractic, keycaps

Id: 5UX-gqylYgQ

Length: 28min 58sec (1738 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 09 2019