I impulse bought a Commodore 16 (and already modded it)
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- čas přidán 3. 07. 2024
- The TED-based 8 bit Commodores have always (at the very least) intrigued me.
So when one popped up for sale (literally) just around the corner - how could I say no?
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The C16 may be my favorite computer of all time. It's got such an odd history, and library. Just such a fun little machine.
"I impulse bought a Commodore 16". How he can say that with Retro Computers stacked floor to ceiling in the background is frickin' hilarious! lol!! 🤣🤣 Keep up the good work, Bud. ✌😎
The Commodore 16 was my first computer I had. This episode is rather nostalgic for me.
same here,followed by the consoles,till the day my brother brought home our first PC,wow was'nt that a change.
Another useful mod is to simply bridge FB13 (close to the video connector) to increase the image quality. A lot of C16s have pretty bad image quality which results in a very stripy picture. Bridging FB13 usually solves this.
Hi bud, thank you soooooooooooooooooo much for that info about bridging the FB13 on the C16's mainboard. I am running my C16 through the computers "Monitor" output to my LED tv's Scart input. It has improved the picture quality slightly, over the older "RF" but i'm going to give this a go and bridge the FB13 points. :)
I love the sound of the rain like that. So soothing.
Love that case! I'm going to give these mods a go when I get a 64 finally. Great video! Thanks!
Great video indeed and so glad that even "Down Under" you where able to pickup such a gem of a retro computer. I myself picked up a C16 (untested) from Facebook Market place last year in 2021 (I last owned one back in the late 80's when i bought one brand new from a well known/at the time UK retailer.) When i recieved this C16 from the seller i noticed that it had had a "Botch repair job" attempt on the power supplies barrel end and the internal glass fuse was blown. So i replaced the fuse and done a full proper repair/replacement of the p/supplies barrel connector. Plugged everything up and was instantly taken back to the late 80's again lol had a go at some classic C16 cassette games that was included with the computer from the seller, then began the "Upgrade" process to 64k RAM ( wired up a 2x way switch, so i can still select 16k RAM mode for some games that wont run properly under 64k mode ) and fitting an internal SD2IEC board, as well as adding heatsinks to the 3x main chips and a small cooler fan fitted ontop of that "Rectifier". My C16 is my true pride and joy old gem computer.
The fuses Commodore used were literally lifesavers. I blew I don't know how many using a paperclip when I couldn't get my hands on an action replay cart as a kid.
Had a Plus/4 when younger - loved it. Had the Jack Attack cartridge for it too and found it addictive (and now still find it addictive on my MiSTer setup 30years later 😬). Jack Attack definitely has sound during gameplay. Assume the function keys on the C16 are also shortcuts to directory/dload/etc. Pressing help after an error in a basic program error flashes up the culprit line, and there’s also a pretty good machine code monitor built in.
Finding out the tale behind Jack Attack forty years later was amusing.
The problem with multiple heatsinks is that the the two on the outer edge can’t dissipate the heat from the centre one as they are physically separated. So effectively, it's not much better than the one in the middle. Better with just a bigger heatsink.
Agreed, but it’s what I had on hand. Hence why I targeted the centre of the chips. I have some single, larger ones on their way.
I’ll try to mention it in the next video.
Another machine I'd heard of but knew nothing about. Great video as always!
I actually remember seeing a big stack of these C16s and accessories being sold at a liquidator here in town (somewhere in the northern Plains in the USA) in the mid-'80s while C64s were being sold through a nearby 'catalog showroom'.
In my experience here in Aus youd be lucky to pick up a vintage computer for cheap because its 'untested' and left dirty (instead you either get something pre-cleaned and asking top dollar... or worse - sold as-is and still asking astronomical prices)
C16 was competing against a bleeping monochrome Sinclair Spectrum 48k computer. The C16 displays more colour than the C64, it is able to play musical chords, it has a brilliant little keyboard for it’s time. No hardware sprites was it’s limiting factor.
Regulators and rectifiers are two entirely, completely different things; they don't even look like one another. You were measuring a linear regulator, not at all a rectifier.
Just a (fairly useless) FYI regarding the royal standard - this gets put on products that the Royal family use. Specifically the Queen, Prince of Wales, Prince Phillip etc. However, usually, the trade off is that the royals expect the company to keep them in the product for free (or for very little money) in return for the use of the standard. A place I worked at had someone from Buckingham Palace wanting us to supply her with what we made, and my boss was going through the options etc. The person on the phone said "And of course, her majesty wouldn't expect to pay for this in return for the use of her royal standard". To which my boss said "You can tell her majesty to f**k off, these aren't free for anyone". The Queen didn't get our stuff!
Thanks for the video! Always nice to see the C16. There seems to be a number of ways to get the 64k. The one in mine is a more permanent as it involved cutting a trace. Now, also currently armed with a desoldering gun, I’d go with your approach. The C16 is a perfect candidate for the uIEC, to be internally mounted.
Great Job !! Love the sign on the background : " Home of the void warranty " . Apple Stores worldwide motto nowadays...
Yay! Never see this one really, but it was my first computer (given by my late grandpa). Still have it and recently recapped and modded. Love these years. :)
That is a very handsome design. I knew nothing about the C16, but now know a bit more! Thanks for educating this old American, again!
Good video! The incident with the fuse on the other hand... :-D
Loved the 'Tah dah!' intonation when Trailblazer loaded. It's never a sure thing ;)
That trailblazer game reminds me of skyroads for DOS.
Lovely machine. I had a Plus/4 back in the day, and it was a young programmer's dream: the machine code monitor with warm boot feature when things went wrong, and the BASIC that actually supported the machine's graphics and sound (checkmate C64 owners...). The C16 with 64k is probably a better machine than the Plus/4, if only because it lacks that "business software" that was more embarrassing than useful. 16k isn't really enough to make the most of the machine's graphical abilities, so the 64k will really help - especially for homebrew.
I heard the reason that the C=64 only had BASIC v2.0 was because Jack Tramiel didn't want to pay Microsoft more licensing fees for newer versions of BASIC. Cheap bastard, he was... The C=64 DEFINITELY deserved a better BASIC than it got. Graphics/sound programming was kind of painful with the lack of graphics/sound keywords. I realize there's Simon's BASIC and whatnot but that should have been a ROM upgrade, not a cartridge. Did the C=64 have socketed ROMs or would this be a desolder/add sockets project? Either way, BASIC 2.0 sucks.
I dont have a c16 but I do have a plus 4 it really gets overlooked some games are very good great video
Seattle mug! Respect!
Hey, a dark POM!! Thanks for the video, was very entertaining as well.
also my first use of a computer was the 5 1/4" floppy.
4:50: There are some interesting stories out there, about Jack Attack and Jack Tramiel, that you could google.
Awesome i have this and the commodore plus 4 both are great computers in they own right
Really intersting upgrade. I have just one C16, so I prefer to keep it original. However, it is really interesting.
My cousin had one of these things, his Dad picked it up dirt cheap in the late 80's with a cassette and joystick. Years later I asked about it and he told me it was thrown away. It was just a weird computer for Commodore to release, to be honest I dont think that Commodore had any real idea what to do with it.
It was just being sold off cheap and as it didnt have many commercially released games, they ended up either being stored away and forgotten about or just binned.
Yet another footnote in the odd decisions of Commodore. How they released the Amiga without screwing it up completely still amazes me to this day.
The fuse did its job after all this time. It deservers talking about!!
It blew because of me being clumsy
@@MrLurchsThings Been there, done that - on a much larger scale... :-(
@@jeffreyphipps1507 hah. Mark and I blacked out half the house once after slipping with a Coco PSU.
It does have some nice mods that are not very well known, everybody has seen the 6510 adapter, but the 6502 adapter would be nice to see, and im not sure if that needs a kernel mod too or not. Ive seen larger memory expansions as well which would be nice to see. The 6510 mod with the kernel change and the 64k expansion that sits under the ted is pretty standard. I do love the fact that the thing is so easy to put in your own regular joystick and cassette ports as well without massive trouble. A 27c128 kernels makes things easy too. I was thinking about getting a 6502 adapter... not sure if u can use a western design version or not.... have not seen it covered at all.
Good DIY mod (yes, there's a no solder version - but it's worth noting the manual method).
It's weirdly validating to see videos about this computer. I had one as a kid, and I was literally the only person I knew of with one. Everyone else either had C64s or Segas. I got mine for Christmas in 1986 and it came in a plain white box. Inside it had the joystick and Jack Attack cartridge, along with a full manual that detailed the BASIC and had some really cool programs (there's one that draws a spirograph-style circle that my Dad and I would always tinker with, as well as The Great Commodore 16 Music Machine).
I remember when I finally "upgraded" to a C64 in either 1989 or 1990 (we were too poor to get an Amiga), I was really disappointed by how primitive the BASIC was on it. Instead of all the cool graphics commands like COLOUR (which the interpreter let you spell either way) or CIRCLE or BOX (or even GRAPHIC, which lets you set the graphic mode) it was all PEEK this and POKE that and I hated it.
I had a lot of fun with Jack Attack, though. It's a fairly basic platformer where the goal is to crush the round dudes either by jumping on them or pulling boxes around the level to trap them (but the boxes can also trap you). It was the first video game I ever played.
Also the fuse in ours blew up after like a year. The failure ended up melting the power supply and we replaced it with a Realistic-branded one from Tandy that had a switch for different voltages. That supply worked much more reliably than the original one did.
The "but why though?" 8-bit Commodore
I never could find a proper game list for C16 or the Plus4. Like a complete library list, not even on wikipedia. I also bought an A500/C16/Plus4 lot 3 years ago 10 km from my location….
I had one in the day, got it for $100aud. Had some great games like Mr puniverse and also had great programming tools which required an expensive cart on the c64.
I’ll add that o the list of games to check out 👍
i had blagger which was on the cassette,however, i did'nt have a monitor though so i used our tv which you should'nt use because it went color stained.the poor thing,oops.
I have had a boxed NTSC C16 and Plus/4 for years and never even turned them on. I guess I should get on with that eh?
I've got one of these waiting for me to make a repair vid for, never even powered it on.
The Internet Archive has several PDF books about this machine (C-16/Plus4)
I'm going to take a punt at the lack of sound being due to the TED chip handling sound rather than a SID chip. If the game was programmed for a C64 and has sound that is meant to be handled by a SID I'm not so sure the TED can handle it but I never owned any Commodore computers, (Atari FTW,) so take this with a pinch of salt.
Yeah, unfortunately just upgrading the RAM doesn't make a C16 compatible with the C64.
Some friends had one when I was a kid. It was no C64, but still fun.
The PLA in the plus4 series is way less prone to failure. it runs much cooler and does not need a heatsink.
The most common failure is the CPU then the TED chip, both run hot. Best option is to mod an old laptop CPU cooler.
Also the joystick ports are not %100 Atari compatible (auto-fire etc..) and 64K RAM carts are electrically a brute force hack and should not be used.
The Plus4 adds 2x ROMs for the crap built in software & 6551 UART and extra 6529 IO chip for the user port.
The voltage regulator circuit in the +4/C16 is a hack according to Bil Herd, the chips need more than 1A but the regulator is rated to 1A so they just put a 5W power resistor across the regulator to boots the current.This works but it always needs the same load to work properly.
The simple power supply is notoriously known for killing important chips on those systems. To prolong the live of this system replace the aging 7805 voltage regulator with an modern step down regulator in the same package and remove the 5W resistor. This reduces heat and ensures no sudden overvoltage kills CPU or TED.
The C16 certainly should have sound but I would try an non plus/4 game to confirm.
Guilty as chraged! 😏
Do i have to first remove the component that is soldered to the 2x connections of FB13 and then bridge it (which i'll use a small piece of wire if the component has to be removed first) and will it improve video quality output through the C16's "Monitor" output or is it just for better quality through the "RF" output please, guys ? thanks for any further information about this, as i can't find anything on Google on doing this MOD :(
Can't really envision Liz and Phil setting up their C16 to the Palaces TV...
They definitely would have gone for the Plus/4 😂
I very much enjoyed this. If there was a C16 near by for even $100 I would call that a good deal. My ebay searching has yielded me no such luck. :)
I paid $ 250 for a C 16 on e bay. This is luck man.
The keyboard would have to have to have key caps rearranged.
Well of course you had to get it
I came across a Commodore 16 at a yard sale a long time ago, like in the late 90s. I assumed it was a misbadged Commodore 64, and I thought it was broken because I couldn't get any Commodore 64 games to run. Had I known it was very rare here in the US I would have kept it instead of turning it in for scrap metal. To this day I still don't understand why in 1984 Commodore, knowing that the IBM PC was trouncing all competition and 16-bit micros were on their way, they thought it was the best use of their resources to create a completely new 8-bit computer standard which was incompatible with and a considerable downgrade from the Commodore 64, the best-selling computer in history.
Nice local find! I have a few boxes that I need to minimize the damage and further degradation but I know nothing about it. Who was the name you dropped when you mentioned a tuber that does this?
Toy Polloi
Cool video for sure, I have a Commodore 16 myself and I've been thinking about programming for it a bit. What monitor are you using in this video btw?
It’s an Acer. Their Ferrari model
@@MrLurchsThings thanks
love that black case, but Commodore really should have just come out with one low cost TED based machine instead of 3 that really confused the market.
I agree. They should have at least ditched the 116 with its terrible, horrible, no-good rubber keyboard. And just think, there were almost 4 machines. There was the never released "364" with a numeric keypad and built in speech synthesizer, which got axed right after Jack Tramiel was fired from Commodore.
If they wanted to save money, they should have just used chips that, by that time, were commonplace. It's not like the plus/4 series was compatible with much. Sound could have been done with Yamaha chips. Having tons of colors wasn't helping when the game developers were primarily developing for the C-64 still. They should have gone with the VERY common 6845 that had the capability of 80 columns. Begin better diversification. However, Jack Tramiel was still busy destroying Commodore so he could jump to Atari.
@@LeftoverBeefcake I almost forgot about the 364, but yeah something in between the C16, and Plus 4 with a solid rubber dome keyboard with actual full travel keys I think could have been doable even at the cost Commodore wanted to get the systems down too since they owned the mold making machines, and could have reused molds from their older keyboard lineup, and just stamped on new lettering, or heck even low profile plastic keys to save money on the plastics themselves, and I don't think people would have complained too much, long as it had at least 64K of RAM, solid colors, & 1/2 decent sound at a fair price below that of the C64.
From memory of the time (eek) the C16 was a joke of a system. It didn't fit in anywhere, it didn't have the capabilities of anything much and seemed to exist purely to compete with low price competing systems but purely on price. I doubt at the time that anyone who was lumbered with a C16 compared to the Plus4 or C64 was overly happy about getting one.
I still don't know why this machine exists. However, it could still land Apollo on the moon, which took 4K and 1 Mhz.
"It could still land Apollo on the moon" - LOL! Yeah, amazing that. Then again, so could the VIC-20.
I'm still convinced to this day that Jack Tramiel was attempting to kill Commodore before jumping to Atari. The design isn't as cheap as it could have been, and the concept of the Plus/4 integrated software was stupid. The software is wretched and pathetic. Disk based software written for the Plus/4 was FAR superior. Simple, cheap hardware design changes would have made both the C16 and the Plus4 cheaper to manufacture, with better features. Selling the Plus4 as a "business machine" was stupid. Instead of making a ton of colors on a business machine, make it capable of 80 columns and do away with PETSCII in favor of ASCII. Make it more data compatible with the business world. Claiming better RF compliance with the stupid joystick ports was ridiculous.
At that time, the machine could have loaded and run a 6502 version of VisiCalc (it was just over 32k) or dBase II (around 37k). That would have been *business* software. That was clearly not what is was marketed as.
Even the C128 was an oddity. It had two processors. One could run virtually all C64 software. The other could run virtually all CP/M software. Since the Z-80 was the superior processor, why bother with a *third* OS? CP/M may have been on its way out, but it was data compatible with MS-DOS. Data from VisiCalc on CP/M was portable to VisiCalc on a PC. Ditto dBase II. Ditto WordStar. Ditto lots of applications.
People who wanted to play games did so on the C64. People who wanted more moved to the Amiga. More wasted money for the most part. This was Tramiel's fault.
Sure, that and 7.5 million pounds of thrust...
I'm a little intrigued, was that unit originally sold in Australia? What's with the Italian language used on the box besides English?
same size case and keyboard as the c64?
Another hack for you: I have a C16 too and installed Jiffy DOS with an eeprom. I don't know if the Pi supports it but the loading times are much faster and my SD2IEC supports it. On the C16 the screen turns black with Jiffy while loading. Just saying. It's normal.
Yup. The Pi1541 supports JiffyDos
Jiffy DOS, not related at all to Jiffy Pop popcorn
Most vintage computers I see are too expensive. 200 to 600 dollars.
I'm in the US, not that it matters. 🙂
Ball blazer? that game looks like it...
what on earth could you do with it? Only play boulder dash? At least program something like hangman or whatever.
At 17:40, why didn't you just put two heat sinks side by side? Were you concerned that the middle of the chip would get the hottest and the middle of the heat sink is more effective?
pretty much. I've since gone back in and replaced them with a single, bigger heatsink. With the smaller ones, they dont 100% butt up against each other, and thus and gap (regardless of how small) would have been over the core of the IC and thus the hottest part.
DOOD!
Did you sort out the sound?
Nope, other than the HORRENDOUS title screen "music" and level-finish sounds (also horrendous), _Boulder Dash_ for the Plus/4 and expanded C16 does not have any sound. This is a shame too because the C64 title theme is one of my all-time favorites. Simple but catchy: czcams.com/video/FiEVfa1OK_o/video.html
Why would you hacksaw a heatsinc in half when you could of just put 2 heatisincs side by side???
Because the thermal pad doesn’t go all the way to the edges and you want the largest bit you can over the core of the chip.
The Commodore 16 is really just a re-homed Commodore 116, which came in a tiny cheap case. The sockets were all replaced by DIN sockets to save space in that case.
You are right about the ports being reduced in size because of the C116. But the C16 actually isn't a rehomed C116. The board layout is very different.
@@EgonOlsen71 Yes, they moved things around, but they are basically the same computer.
@@domramsey That's true.
IL POTENTE
"the other side of the rectifier", don't you mean the regulator?
Next one should be interesting. Out of curiosity can you run the best (cough!) word prcoessor on it? I used a C64 back in the day and they were pretty ordinary apps. I ended up running 80 column tasword.....which was pushing the graphical capabilities of the machine. Yeah, I know it's shit boring...but let's be honest when we were kids you just didn't have access to a PC (until later) and these clunky crappy computers are what you *had* to use to get by on the productivity front. Besides, it's what we had to bullshit our parents that they were actually for...you know..homework, not games. Yeah I know the bigger version of the machine had a built in word processor...but surely no one used it...because it looks aweful!
Script plus on cart is a great word processor, update of easy script.
@@LeonardCrassman cheers I'll check it out. I find early productivity efforts interesting.
You could actually yank the plus4 roms out and swap them with the cart roms.
Good vid, but I gotta comment on Commodore had terrible marketing ideas. If you making a 16 bit, the case and keyboard needed to be completely new and not just some minor updates that looked like the dated 8 bit.
The C16 was another 8-bit machine.
I have to say that I hate the fact that C64 owners are pillaging these rare machines for the case and keyboard. Not cool, just paint your C64 case matte black. As for the keys, you might have to live with them as they are. It'll still look great.
I agree in principle... but the trouble with the C16 and Plus/4 is that their CPUs and TED chips tend to be problematic. As replacement chips are getting harder to find and therefore more expensive, I can understand why some people use dead C16s as case and keyboard donors.
That said, I'd be inclined to try and source at least two C16s, in the off chance that one has a dead CPU and the other has a dead TED. Try and make one good machine. Although this is getting harder due to what I said in the first paragraph.
TBH I'm surprised that there aren't any reproduction cases being made. The ZX Spectrum sold fewer than half the units of the C64 (although it still sold around 5 million units) yet there are reproduction cases available in about 6 or 7 different colours.
I hate that people throw out those RF shields. They were part of the original machine, and for so-called "collectors" or "retro computing enthusiasts" to just throw them away is sad. It shows no respect whatsoever for the machine or the people who created it. If you don't want it, fine. Take it out and keep it in the box.
It’s safely stored away.
I hate that people watch videos and complain about what someone does with their own property. Get over it.