interesting commdore 64 variant

[carmel_andrews]

link only

 

 

http://www.richardlagendijk.nl/cip/category/computer/c64g

 

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:C64G.jpg

 

 

According to various articles i saw about this variant of the c64 the motherboard was the same one (slightly modified) they used in the c64gs (a 64 without a keyboard that only plays cart games), does this system predate the launch of the c64gs or where commodore launching both systems simultaneously

 

Also, they (this variant as well as the c64gs) used different revisions of the various MOS/CSG chips (the 85xx series), so using new manufacturing processes (namely HMOS as opposed to NMOS)

 

It would appear that since the system was aimed at the games player (since it came bundled with 3 game carts) I am assuming that this was commodores version of the atari xegs (but without messing around with the keyboard/non keyboard bundle), I guess that's also why commodore later did a keyboard-less version (the c64gs)

[nathanallan]

Never heard of this one, nice info. Thanks for posting, Carmel

[Garak]

A must see site for unknown and various versions of Commodore computers/hardware is The Secret Weapons of Commodore! site.

 

Garak

[carmel_andrews]

the garek refered website also mentions the ToI (the first cbm machine to use the vic chip...unreleased but was shown at the ces show according to the home computer wars book) was the ToI the same machine that CP was supposed to be designing and spent ages doing it

[zylon]

Since sales of the 64gs were real low, a lot of the motherboards were reused in some of the computers later. I read this a couple years ago and can't remember where.

[JonArkanix]

The C64G is considered an uncommon item in the C64 community, considering it was only released in limited European countries. I recently picked up a working unit for my C64 hardware collection, a very nice color to these C64G. Curiously, I already had the actual keyboard in one of my C64C units.

 

A similar hardware find would be a 1570 disk drive, the single sided variant of the 1571. Even rarer, for people outside of Europe, is the C116 computer w/1551 disk drive. I'd have a setup now, if the shipping from Germany wasn't more costly than a flight.

[TMR]

Since sales of the 64gs were real low, a lot of the motherboards were reused in some of the computers later. I read this a couple years ago and can't remember where.

 

i'm not sure that was the case, the board was the same but by the time it was stuck inside a C64GS case it had a top-mounted cartridge slot; converting it for a standard C64 case would mean remounting it, changing the BASIC/Kernel EPROM and adding quite a few components.

 

i know that we picked up a lot of C64GS units where i worked for a song, we stripped most of them for chips and sold the joysticks, four game cartridges and power supplies on to C64 users. i've got three C64GS units if memory serves (i think the ROM image on teh interwebs is still the dump somebody took from one of mine) and one where a friend and i were in the process of converting it so there's a keyboard connector in place, a custom EPROM to give it Commodore BASIC (it boots up with two shades of green and i fixed the issue with memory under the Kernel being corrupted for good measure - i have a C64 that starts in shades of red with the same fix) and i had it loading and playing games from a TIB Ultimate 3.5" disk drive.