Category: Commodore 64

Boatfest 2023 Recap

Last weekend I attended the second annual Boatfest gathering, which again took place in Hurricane, West Virginia. Despite its name, the event has nothing to do with boats — it’s a gathering of retrocomputing and retrogaming enthusiasts named after the organizer, John “Boat of Car” Shawler. Boatfest is difficult to summarize because it’s different things to different people. Some people go to Boatfest to show off their vintage computers and gaming systems, while others go just to see them. It’s an event where old friends reconnect, and new friendships are made. There are tournaments, there are presentations, there are people… (read more)

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23 Tiny Screws

Today I am repairing a Commodore 64 keyboard. Not just any keyboard, but the one I grew up using back in the 1980s. The original Commodore 64 came with brown keys. For a brief period of time, Commodore made a similar computer, the Commodore 16, which came in a black case with grey keys. A few years after the C16 was discontinued, Commodore’s stock of replacement keyboards flooded Radio Shack. Although the two keyboards were not electronically compatible, the keys themselves were. I bought one of those keyboards back in the late 1980s, plucked the gray keys off of it,… (read more)

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Can You Go Back? A Look at the THEC64 Maxi

Late last week my newest computer, THEC64, arrived. I’m not in the business of buying things for myself this close to Christmas, but this was a computer I pre-ordered back in August. After multiple production and shipping delays, the machine finally found its way to me the first week of December. Most people know I’ve been a fan of Commodore computers, and specifically the Commodore 64, since the mid-1980s. I’m still a fan of the computer today; I’ve written two books about my experiences with the computer (Commodork and Commodorkier), and record a podcast called Sprite Castle where I play,… (read more)

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Ultimate 64 Assembled

Ultimate 64 with clear case, clear monitor, Commodore

After an extroidinarily long period of procrastination, I got my Ultimate 64 up and running over the weekend. The Ultimate 64 is a drop-in motherboard replacement for the original Commodore 64. Not only does it retain most of the original’s ports (joystick, cartridge, video, and serial) but it adds USB, ethernet, and HDMI output to a nearly 40-year-old computer. The USB ports allow modern joysticks to be used and games to be loaded directly from a USB stick, eliminating the need for a physical disk drive. The ethernet port can be used to connect to BBSes hosted on the internet,… (read more)

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Pushing Projects Forward

I can’t remember if I mentioned this or not — I can’t remember anything, anymore — but my 3D printer wasn’t working properly for a while. It was working okay, but not great. Everything I printed was coming out with a weird, rough finish. For the longest time I thought there was something wrong with my printer, but after doing a bunch of online research I narrowed the issue down to a single software setting. Literally, checking a single box in the software fixed the issue. I bought an Ultimate 64 over a year ago. The Ultimate 64 is a… (read more)

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Super Mario Bros. on the Commodore 64

In the world of computers and video games, “killer apps” are defined as programs or games so useful or desirable that it actually drives hardware sales. In other words, people want the application or game so bad that they will buy a computer or video game console just to play it. Two of the earliest examples of killer apps were VisiCalc, the first electronic spreadsheet that sent small business owners running to their nearest Apple computer dealership, and Space Invaders, a game that caused sales of the original Atari 2600 console to triple. It’s hard to think of a bigger… (read more)

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SLLEA RCA Video Adapter – You Get What You Pay For

The old saying “you get what you pay for” is usually true. Recently I had a brilliant idea. Instead of hooking up my old computers and video game consoles to a large television, wouldn’t it be nice if I could hook them up to a small flat screen monitor? I have a couple of 4:3 ratio flat screen monitors out in the garage that could work for just such a project. The only hurdle is that those monitors only have VGA inputs, and my old computers and video game consoles all have RCA (composite) outputs. If only someone made a… (read more)

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1581 Reasons

Although I used a Commodore 64 as my primary computer for several years in the 1980s, I didn’t own all that much hardware for it. Two floppy drives, a printer, a modem and a joystick were just about all needed to keep myself entertained for more than half a decade. People occasionally ask me if I ever owned a hard drive for my Commodore 64. I didn’t, but not because I didn’t want one. The most popular hard drive for the Commodore 64 was the Lt. Kernal, which held 10MB and cost $1,000. It would have been nice to store… (read more)

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A Little Trove of Disks

Many years ago when I began collecting vintage computer hardware, every acquisition got me excited. Each new computer, floppy drive, and box of assorted peripherals that came into the house made me absolutely giddy. But after you’ve tested, cleaned, and aligned your hundredth floppy drive, and installed additional shelving in your garage to hold all those old CRT monitors you might need someday, the elation of “yet another” old piece of hardware begins to wane. What never gets old for me, however, is digging through other people’s software collections. A year or two ago I acquired a(nother) complete Commodore system… (read more)

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Ten Games You Should Try To Beat

A friend of mine recently asked me to name five games I would recommend playing all the way through from beginning to end. There are tons of modern games (The Last of Us, Halo, Portal) that have great story lines, but I wanted to go somewhat old school with my list. I also couldn’t possibly limit myself to just five, so instead here are ten games I recommend modern gamers go back and play through from beginning to end. Note that this is different than my list of games that will always stick with me; the games on this post… (read more)

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