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[–] [deleted] 1 pt 2y

That theme song sounded pretty slow... wonder if it's PAL only. Actually ordered what I believe should be a PAL C64 from the UK a few days ago. Pretty sure I have a monitor that'll work with that. If not, a new quest.

[–] 1 pt 2y (edited 2y)

You can convert ntsc to pal easy, you just need the pal vic, proper crystal, and solder a jumper on. But yeah it would assume it is pal, you also need an Ram Expansion Unit to run it. There are some designs here and there to roll your own, built one back in 2004ish for my BBS system with a CBM hdd to speed things up a bit. My daily is a c64 reloaded mk2 at the moment, with a pal vic and two sid chips, 6581 R4AR4 (rare) and an 8580 R5. Good rig all in all. Uses 12 volt dc in and scrubs power where needed so it runs crazy cool. The Sid chips are mildly warm to the touch compared to almost boiling. The one downside to the board is it uses the PLA equivalent to the CSG 906114-01 chip. The most current but some (1.5%) of software does not like it. Highly recommend though.. link >>>=========> here.(icomp.de)

edit: Oh shit, he has cases(icomp.de) for sale now as well. hmmmmmm..... tempting.

[–] [deleted] 0 pt 2y (edited 2y)

That's a fine rig! I haven't got that deep into it, hell my first C64 experience was in 2015. Wish I would have gotten to it sooner. I should definitely put one of those reloaded's together, though... my one fully working C64 is probably living on borrowed time.

I have 2 ntsc breadbins. One died, just wouldn't boot up anymore. Bought a second one that mostly worked, the SID chip's 3rd channel had no noise output. So I took the SID from the first and whacked it into the second one.

The shitty part about that was, the 1st unit's SID was socketed. The 2nd unit's SID was soldered in. Desoldered that fucker easily enough though with some Chip Quik SMD1 alloy. I did install a socket in case I have to do this again!

Runs software from either a 1541 drive, SD2IEC, or the next thing mentioned below. Only ever used the tape drive once, for obvious reasons. At least if I want to make tapes, I have that 1530USB thing.

Did manage to get ahold of some REU... in the form of a Turbo Chameleon 64 v2 with the ethernet daughterboard. Man this thing is fantastic, but it didn't come cheap.

Edit: That SID chip I'm using that I recovered from a donor C64, still isn't 100% functional I believe. Seems to be the reason I couldn't use any mouse, because this mouse issue followed the SID from one unit to the next. For now, the TC64v2 cart has PS/2 mouse port and it does seem to work. Was awesome finally being able to use a mouse on C64 for the first time using the TC64v2.

[–] 1 pt 2y

Yeah, pin 23 and 24 on the sid are pot x and y, kinda weird that they threw that on the sound chip instead of designing it into the cia. As I understand it they ran out of I/O options on the CIA's and just fudged it in to the sound chip. Sid chips are super hard to find these days because of that synth that came out in the late 90s that took 8 of them. People would just find rigs, pull the sids and throw the system in the dumpster. That was when a lot of people including my self started snapping stuff up to save it. I have spares if you have a P.O. box or something, just let me know.