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.
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.
Thanks man, hope it doesn't come to that. The fact that you said that your Reloaded board makes your SID run cool kinda helped make the decision for me.. I must do that right away to prolong it's life.
The reloaded mk2 is the way to go for sure. Once you get it setup you can long press RESTORE to swap between SID chips or switch between stereo-sid to mono, long hold the reset to swap back to stock CBM dos etc etc. Also it has a standard line out for sound and Svideo as well, has the cleanest picture I have seen to date, granted I am running a last model sony pvm manufactured in 2007.
The one thing that you will have to look into a a proper power adapter, it requires a sub 100mv ripple and most 12volt wallwarts are all over the place, I just happened to have on on hand since I collect those things in a bin because they are expensive when they need to be replaced, external hard drive enclosure power bricks half the time will work. There are a bunch of forum posts here and there with links of what has worked for people in NTSC land. Let me know if you need any help.
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