exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

Well, I accidentally won an auction.

How was it accidentally? Well, I'd been outbid and so forgot about it until on Wednesday the auction house phoned me up saying that the original bidder hadn't paid and did I want the items... And so I said yes.

This meant a trip down the M40 and around the M25 to Epping this morning to collect a... Boxed Commodore 64 with tape drive, documentation and a few tapes. This is my first American 8-bit.


It's all present and correct...


And amazingly it works!


Just a bit of cable burn on the side. The tape drive will need a bit of a clean but the main machine is pretty clean and it comes with a dust cover. :-)

I've not tested the tape drive yet.

looks to be in pretty good condition @stephen_usher. I can highly recommend the kung fu carts for it if that's something you'd be interested in.

Very nice, I have breadbin envy now, mine is a C64 C.

PhilC wrote: 05 Mar 2022 12:57 looks to be in pretty good condition @stephen_usher. I can highly recommend the kung fu carts for it if that's something you'd be interested in.

Yeah, it's clean with just a bit of cable burn on the right end.

Yeah, cart stuff would be interesting. Tape and floppy on the C64 is just so slow. :-)

stephen_usher wrote: 05 Mar 2022 13:07

PhilC wrote: 05 Mar 2022 12:57 looks to be in pretty good condition @stephen_usher. I can highly recommend the kung fu carts for it if that's something you'd be interested in.

Yeah, it's clean with just a bit of cable burn on the right end.

Yeah, cart stuff would be interesting. Tape and floppy on the C64 is just so slow. :-)

I was shocked by just how much the Epyx Fast Load cart improved load times. There seem to be a lot of nice SD solutions out there for the C64 right now.

I've managed to load the only real game, "Sherlock" by Melbourne House.

Initially I thought that the system was faulty as the screen went blank as soon as it started loading.

Anyway, it shows that the SID is at least mostly working as it has background music to the text adventure, but not particularly complex music.

stephen_usher wrote: 05 Mar 2022 13:31 I've managed to load the only real game, "Sherlock" by Melbourne House.

Initially I thought that the system was faulty as the screen went blank as soon as it started loading.

Anyway, it shows that the SID is at least mostly working as it has background music to the text adventure, but not particularly complex music.

IIRC, the blank screen is normal to begin with. With my VIC-20 I literally pulled out the datasette (Same as the C64) and it loaded and saved right off the bat after sitting in a box for years, same as the one you have.

Nice find (or should I say win) @stephen_usher

Especially as it boots straight out of the box.

Be mindful that the PSU could go at any time and ruin the party. There are newer/safer options. I would suggest investing in one.

Is that a dust cover at the top of the picture there? (Looks better than mine; I have a funky brown one that looks like it was made BEFORE C= made C64s).

Yeah, I got a replacement PSU and didn't even attempt to power it from the original.

It was £80 + commission (£100 in total), which isn't bad relative to eBay pricing at the moment. And seeing as it's from a normal auction it's less likely to have been a strip-and-dump machine.

Kung-Fu cart now ordered from The Future Was 8 Bit :-)