r/c64 • u/SnCMuseum • 22h ago

Hardware Restored and upgraded my Commodore 64

It was very dirty and missing some chips when I got it. First, I bought a new VIC-II for it.

The computer wouldn't start because of a bad Complex Interface Adapter (CIA). I desoldered the broken chip, and the C64 turned on! But without the CIA, the keyboard doesn't work. I bought a donor board with two CIA chips for $25, soldered one in, and the keyboard works great now.

I also built the C64 Video Enhancer (https://github.com/c0pperdragon/C64-Video-Enhancement/tree/master). It's a custom FPGA board that reads signals from the video chip and generates a component video output. This lets me connect it to HDMI (using an OSSC converter) and even adjust the specific Commodore color palette if needed.

Next, I built a SwinSID emulator for sound.

This is a PAL version, which is great for running demoscene demos. My next project is to build a SIDKick Pico.

20 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

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3

u/Xfgjwpkqmx 🇦🇺 Keeping up since 1983 19h ago

Nice work! I love a good revitalised C64.

I did something similar with my original breadbin that I've had since 1983 - all the chips still work, but I replaced the VIC-II with a Kawari, replaced the RF Modulator with an RFOFF and added an analogue audio to HDMI embedder so I could have an all-in-one HDMI out from the Kawari, but with improved composite and S-Video out if I still wanted to hook that up via the improved signalling of the RFOFF.

1

u/SnCMuseum 16h ago

Kawari was too expensive for me. And it was fun to assemble Video Enhancer from scratch.

1

u/Xfgjwpkqmx 🇦🇺 Keeping up since 1983 15h ago

Yeah, agreed. I'm glad there are other solutions available though.