8-Bit Handouts: Channel Donations

Taking a look at the C64 stuff that's been donated lately. Thanks to Dane, CityXen, Phil from Knox Butte Technologies, and Don!

C64 Userport LED demonstration (thanks to

Index:
0:00 Intro
0:58 C64 Books from Dane
8:54 Tombstone from CityXen
11:21 User Port Prototyping Kit from Knox Butte Technologies
15:18 Part One: C64 Hardware from Don
21:34 Part Two: Inside the C64 Box
29:22 Part Three: Inside the Big Bin
35:47 Thanks!

[adriansdigitalbasement]

Awesome! Time for some C64 repair videos :-)

[elektro-peter]

4:00 Yes! Do a Video on BASIC garbage collection please, I would love that 😃

[rotordave]

I really appreciated that zoom-in on the Knight from The Computer Chess Champion - the first thing I thought of when I saw the cover was Pokey from Gumby.

[RavenWolfRetroTech]

Dane in Pansylvannila taught me a new skill today! Great video Robin!

[fluffycritter]

I love albums with hidden demos and stuff in them. MC Frontalot’s album Zero Day has a hidden track with a playable .tap audio that gives you a tiny demo that provides a link to an additional track in mp3 format.

[MrMaxeemum]

Thanks for the link to CityXens web site it led me down a rabbit hole of weird stuff, cool demos and cool music. C64 forever ✊

[rdoetjes]

I think I should make that userport video. Literally 30 years ago for my highschool Computer technologies, graduation project, I made one based on transistors and LEDS where you could program these LEDs. And I proved how much faster assembler was over Basic, by programming a counter and measuring the frequency difference of one of the bits with an oscilloscope. It was also a nice introduction to my microelectronics electronics engineering BSc, I was pursuing.

I recently redid it to make a 16 LED version based on retention of vision (I wanted to experiment with instead of latching the bytes, as I’ve done on the PC before).
I did this utterly useless project because the PCB Cad program I used became payed software so, I redid this with some opensource software to be tets it and And I had just refurbished this C64c, repainted it, repaired and thus it was a logical choice, to do something quick and cheap for the C64.
Don’t mind the big blob of hot glue, temporary insulation until FINALLY the DC jacks for PCB arrive. Im also still waiting for the little diode as you can see (to prevent putting the voltage ik the wrong way), so I bridges that with a piece of wire. This is the last time I order components from China! It asked forever to arrive — if ever. And I rather support my own economy :)


I just never thought, it would be interesting as it’s so trivial. Back in 1990 I even made an 8BIT ADC/DAC to record raw sound into it and play it back.

(Here’s the picture of the little PCB).

[proxy]

your channel name is already perfect for this kind of video format...

[dougjohnson]

The reg and revised ed are on Archive.org. Thanks for going over them, I did not know they existed.

[shamrice]

27:13 I like how the Atari 800XL is actually pretty comparable price wise and feature wise so they put it as far away as possible with the the Apple and PCjr between them.

[csbruce]

0:35 You could cover the personal info with "Commodore Security" badges!

0:58 How about a knife more like Dave on EEVBlog?

18:52 The 1571 could also read and write MS-DOS disks and various CP/M formats. Like the C128, it was a multi-mode Swiss Army Knife.

24:06 The faded label says "ATARI".

33:20 Don't think I've ever heard of a "1571-II" before. Oh, never made.

38:00 Sounds like you were prepping for a lockdown!

[HobbyHalloween]

My 2 cents for the user port prototyping board: I would recommend that it should have socketed buffer chips in case you short something out on the protoboard... (but maybe they are inside the black interface box?) Anyway, often the buffer would survive a temporary short and it protects the computer I/O port... The resistors are a good idea to limit the current both for the LEDs and if something should short. And if it's an egregious problem where you try to overdrive an output, or a short to power or ground, the buffer will take the hit and likely burn out, but it would give it's life for the C64 .. and since the buffers are socketed, they are easily replaced and they are inexpensive (a buck or two). Have fun with it. I did some custom hardware interfacing with the VIC-20, similar thing, had a good time coding Commodore code and tinkering with electronics.

[rivards]

Just think, there was a time and date when the very last of the hundreds of repair shops listed in that warranty guide went out of business. And we'll never know when it happenned.

[macdaddyns]

You could call this segment “The 8bit STA(Store to Attic)”

[chromosundrift]

That 64c had silver front-printed petscii graphics rather than the usual top printed ones!

[MoosesValley]

That was a great user port bread bin kit. Would be a lot of fun to play around with ...

[mikegarland]

What a cool trip down a Commodore technical memory lane. I envy you, having all that hardware on hand. My wife would be fighting me for storage space if I had all that equipment lying around. 🙂

[CAMintmier]

For the mailing information issue, consider taking a photo of the mailing info for your purposes, then using a big black magic marker to black out the not-for-public information. I've seen other youtubers do this, such as Adam Koralik, Dave from EEVBlog, and a few others. At least I know they do the second part. Not sure on the first part, but it's always better to have shipping info for your purposes.

[pikadroo]

Wow, I have to say you handled opening mail with a lot more class than other channels. Hey, I am going to buy that C64 data file book but I'd really like to see some examples from it in videos. I can't wait to read it myself! Very interesting topic! =)

[kissingfrogs]

its a bit late but I loved a book called "Commodore C64 Book: Commodore 64 Tune-Up (1984)(Floegel, E)" which helped me drive electronics with the user port. So much regret giving it away. They also used a c64 in industrial control applications