Can you tell me about these Commodore 64's

[A4000_Mad]

Hi guys,

I've recently aquired a couple of Commodore 64's and was wondering if you could tell me about them :-)



The brown one was in a local paper advertised as FREE to collector. So I drove 30 miles to get it and gave a nice old couple a fiver anyway, without even opening the big old cardboard box that they handed to me.

For the white one I made a donation of £10 at charity shop yesterday.

1. Why do they look so different?

2.  How old do you think they are?

3. Are either of them rare or valuable? :-D

4. Anything else you can tell me about them?


The white one is boxed like new but is missing a cartridge that is shown on the rear of  the box with pictures detailing the games Flimbo's Quest, Fiendish Freddy's Big Top O' Fun, KLAX and International Soccer :-(

Thanks

[motorollin]

1. The brown one is the classic "breadbox", and the white one is the revised C64-C. They're identical inside AFAIK.

2. 80s? ;-)

3. Not particularly. In my experience it's harder to get hold of the breadbox. They both look in excellent condition which will increase their value.

4. I'll respond to that with a question: what is the button on the breadbox above the number 9? This is an addition...

--
moto

[Krusher]

The top one is the original C64, the other one the C64c, produced in 1986.

As for value and rarity, they are mass produced and can be had for free (as you did)

The 64c design is based on the Commodore 128, chipset is also different from the original.

[Damion]

The white one *probably* has an 8580 SID, which has slightly different sound characteristics from the earlier versions. (I prefer 8580 SID, actually.) For all practical purposes though, they function the same.

Both appear to be in great shape. :pint:

[mariom990]

they are very common units but i've looked the 64C and they had a little different "commodore 64" logo, more squared than usual, that i've never seen before... maybe this is one of the first models... :roll:

[amazing]

the first one...the breadbox is also from a newer type

i think its the last from that series

u can see that from the color..these ones stay grey
i have an older type that are more silky and coloring more brown

i prefer the olders for the looks..in operation they all work the same+ newer type are better cooled the olders have more heat problems

[redrumloa]

Nice buy! The other posts have explained what these are fairly well. What appears to be a button on the top one is interesting, that is a hack of some sort. I'd guess it is an IEC(floppy port) reset, but you will probably have to test yourself to find out.

Neither are rare or valuable as the C64 is the #1 selling computer of all time having sold in the ballpark of 20 million units, there are plenty of them out there still. A clean "breadbox" C64 like the top one is more sought than the 64C despite being more common.

Now you need a composite monitor, a 1541 and a XA1541 cable :-)

[swift240]

The old one is the first original one that first came out.
The sound chip on that one is the 6581 and all games with speech played well, such as BeachHead I and II.

BUT on the second one the sound chip the 6580 was poor at the speech side of the games that had speech.
However the screen display was better than the original.
Reason some of the chips was different to the original.

The original (mostly) had plug in chips that made life a lot easier if they were to be replaced the main chips was mostly the SID 6581, the VIC 6520, and the 3 ROM chips (cant remember the numbers now). and in some cases the CPU 6510.

I would use the original any day compared to the newer type, simply because the sound was better.

Mike.

[Nlandas]

I wonder if the button on top means that there is a non-standard chip inside or if it's just some form of reset switch to help with Assembly language programming.

Over 17 million Commodore 64s were sold world wide.

That doesn't count the

C= One or the C64 Direct-to-TV -

Don't forget to check out the C=One project.

C64 Direct-to-TV

-Nyle

[swift240]

No wrong it was 30 million units sold.

Mike.

[LoadWB]

IIRC, the original 64C (before the Rev E mobo) used a combination of 8500- and 6500-series chips.  The Rev E mobo used all 8500-series chips and denser RAM chips (two 64k x 4.)  It also eliminated the original 82S100-based PLA with a much larger, MMU-like logic array.

God, bus decoding on the 64 was fun!  Multiplexing address space in the $DE00 and $DF00 pages was the best!

From memory, so I wouldn't necessarily quote me on this fact.  Unfortunately, I've never owned a Rev E mobo.  Would love to grab a couple, though.

The C64 just got better and better as time went on, to many degrees.  With the notable exception of the sound chip.  The 8580 dropped the 12v requirement and changed the filtering capacitors so the sound output was affected rather dramatically: certain instrument sounds became stronger and much clearer, while other effects suffered.  The speech in Space Taxi, for instance, did not sound as good on the early 8580s as it did on a 6581R4.

I can't wait until I get my personal computer recreation room set up.  It's been long enough!

[Jiffy]

swift240 wrote:
No wrong it was 30 million units sold.

No. There are several guesses about how much 64s were ever produced. The lowest guess is indeed 17 million, the highest is 30 million, but the latter is almost certainly not correct for the C64 alone and most likely includes all C128s ever produced (about 7 million, if I am not mistaken).

Now for C64s in display in the TS: they are indeed the original (breadbox) model and the newer C64C. They _can_ have different motherboards, but this is not necessarily so. The C64 has seen several different motherboardrevisions and the C64C was also delivered with exactly the same motherboard as its predecessor in the brown breadbox. The switch to the newer SID-chip was made in a later motherboardrevision. You can only be sure of what type of motherboard you have by opening up your 64.

As has been mentioned before: both these models of the 64 are neither rare nor valuable (in terms of money). They are still great fun, though. I enjoy my C64C to this very day.

[yetihw]

real easy "the best f***ing computer on earth"

[A4000_Mad]

Many thanks for your interesting replies :-)

Unfortunately the above photo is of poor colour quality and the brown one is actually a lot browner than it looks. I would agree that the extra button isn't any kind of "hack". If there is a screw under this seal then the unit has probably never been opened......



I do indeed prefer the older looking brown one. I was impressed with the way it powers and controls the C2N cassette player (much better than using a Spectrum). The sound is of really good quality through the TV's speakers. IIRC the Spectrum does not send any sound to the TV, it just makes poor quaility noises from inside the unit. So far I've only switched the white one on to check that I get a green power light.

Last night we played Nemises and Elite on the brown one and they were very good games. Nemises reminded me a bit of Project X. With a 1541 and a XA1541 cable would I be able to load a game from cassette and then save it to a disk? Were most of the games that were released on cassette also released on cartridges?

Me thinks I'll be heading to Ebay soon :-) 8-)

[xeron]

The button is a hack because the C64 never came with a button there. Its probably a reset button.

That label looks like it has been carefully peeled back and then stuck back down to me.