Commodore 64 & Rare SX-64 Computer Review - Gamester81 

As a Commodore 64 enthusiast since about 1983 or so, I need to add a few corrections and additions to this. First I'd like to point out that the very popular Atari joysticks were compatible with the C64, so anybody with an Atari system would already have controllers for games. The cassette deck plugs into the cassette port on the back, not to the peripheral port (which is actually called the serial port). The voltages never changed between the C64 and C64C; the power supplies were identical and interchangeable. The power supplies provided one 5vDC pin (to supply all the chips with a main power) and a matched (inverted) pair for 9vAC. The two 9vAC lines went to the user (modem) port and a 60Hz clock. The 9vAC pair also went through a rectifier and voltage regulator to make a second 5vDC source (to provide power for certain logic circuits), and one of the lines of 9vAC branched off to be split into 9vDC unregulated (mainly for the cassette deck motor and RF modulator), and 12vDC through a diode and voltage regulator (mainly for the SID). There were numerous different motherboards with slightly different schematics for the C64, but each one performed all the same functions. GEOS (Graphic Environment Operating System, by Berkeley Softworks) was never installed internally on the C64. It was a separate operating system software loaded from floppy disks. Turn on the C64C in that box and you'll get the familiar blue screen of BASIC. I'm not very familiar with the Plus/4 but as far as I know it had nothing to do with the C64. Peripherals may have been compatible as was often the case but the software was not, unless it was something written with the same BASIC commands only. The Plus/4 was modeled after the Commodore 16. Always fun to see videos like this about Commodores!

I love the C64, nearly as much as I love the Atari 800XL.

Brings back a lot of childhood memories. I remember when my parents bought the C64 from Woolco in Toronto, Canada for my brother and I. They also bought a monitor, disk drive, and two cartridges, Gateway to Apshai and Jumpman Junior.

It is amazing how universal the DB-9 pin port was, it was even used all the way up to the Genesis, most computers today still have it, even though it isn't used that much.

Wow thanks for posting this great review. I totally grew up on the C64. My entire pre-teen and early teen life was spent in obsession with this machine and writing BASIC programs for it lol. I'm 31 now.

this was my very first computer in 1983..many a good times,loved the Last Ninja Series and IK+

Nice review. A friend of mine had a Commodore 64, back in the early 80's. He used to spend many hours typing in some kind of machine language for a video game. It seemed to totally own him. Now look at me, with my XP machine. Thanks.

I received a Commodore 64 for Christmas back in 1989 when I was 12 years old & it came with 10 games, 5 games were movie tie-ins & the other 5 were based on quiz shows that were on TV at the time.

Fantastic computer in it's day with with some of the best music ever heard on any system ever. Rob Hubbard and Martin Galway worked magic with the Commodore's SID chip.

Thanks for making this! I've been interested in the Commodore 64 for awhile now, but I didn't really know much about it. Great video!

@InfoTotheMax7 yeah give it a moment to finish rendering. It should clear up soon. Sorry about that.

gamester i owe you for getting me interested in the history and the different variates of games and for that i thank you. great video as always =D

Enjoyed the review! That SX64 was very interesting and the was the first time I'd ever heard of or seen it. I never knew they sold 17 million C64 units either. Great vid!

@boverhof3 Yeah tried replacing the monitor board but with little luck. I need to do more homework to see what I'm doing wrong. I'll figure it out soon I hope.

I had a Commodore 64C for years, and i had no idea there was a cartridge slot on the back, i thought the games came on cassettes only. All the great games i missed :(

very nice episode john, I never knew about that other commodore 64c model I think the shell is very similar if not identical to my commodore 128 one, anyways great video and very informative, keep up the good work buddy.

Cool video, Gamester81 ! as always !

Cool review! I remember the Commodore PET and 64 were the first computers I ever used. HUGE nostalgia trip!

Very informative, there was a lot of info i didnt knew about the commodore 64, nice video

hands down, u got me into collecting retro consoles and games : ) thanks for everything man.

awesome video, i love watching videos like these, because i learn so much from them :)

Had one for over 7 years. SQ was such an amazing game

great review man, lots of information, great stuff, take care man

I think now I would have preferred a commodore 64 over a Nintendo in '87. If you added the cost of a tv and floppy drive its probably just as well I didnt get one. I think if the games had been tweeked a little and a two button gamepad had been produced, this probably would have been the best 8-bit to have in the '80s.

I grew up with an Atari ST before the NES...Man I loved that computer

I was up set when I got my Commodore 64. I purchased it on amazon for 60$ and the disk drive from the same guy for 60$. They came in the same box full of news paper. I opened the box and the computer and disk drive were in their original packaging! First of all, they didn't mention that bit in the description, and I am horrible at keeping boxes. They didn't come with a manual but did with everything else. My favorite part is the box says "Welcome to the world of friendly computing"

4:20 Holy crap, I had that game for the c64! I played the hell out of it.

Really enjoyed, well done !

This was an amazing video for me because I never knew anything about the commodore. So your telling me they built a all-in-one computer in the keyboard?? Thats awesome! I also appreciate the little informational tidbits about AOL I never knew that either.

@lotsofgames No Jimmy I haven't replaced the fuse yet. You?

thanks for this video man was a trip through memory lane for me... good times

Commodore rocks! Awesome video, man!

i still have my 64, and it surprises me how good some games hold up in terms of playability and originallity.

The C64 was the first computer I ever had back when I was five or so. And I have an SX-64 (A friend was trying to get rid of stuff in storage so gave it to me), though the keyboard doesn't work worth a darn.

Excellent video John. question for anyone, I live in Chicago any ideas where to find a c-64 aside from ebay?

Still my fave computer of all time, great vid.

Enjoyed the review and the history lesson. The SID chip was also an awesome piece of engineering for the time. Still sounds great today.

One of the great and fun things about computing back in the day was anyone sat in their bedroom with some basic programing knowledge could write, publish and sell their owns games very easily.

i remeber getting a commodore 64 for my christmas when i was 9, even today it's still one of my all time favourite systems

I had one of these actually it broke and I got another that the sound didn't work on so got a model 2. We had a floppy disk drive for this which made my friends jealous. Thanks for the nostalgia!

@WWETNABRAVES That's my goal. Thanks, and I hope 2011 goes well for you moving forward.

@iMalakai Cool thanks dude, I'm glad to hear that.

sweet review bro

another great video

I love how the power supplie of the Commodore 64C has a smiley face on it!

Very nice~ how much do those arcade cabinets usually go for man? id like to buy one one day.

dude, you probably own all videogame systems and PCs of back then, you rock

i loved my c64 the soundchip was awesome used to love some of the music in the games. had so many great games too.

I vividly remember having a whole bunch of commodore 64C at my elementary school. I do remember one of my favorite games to play on that computer were the where in the US and Europe is Carmen Sandiego.

I love my 'breadbox' Commodore! I even use my Commodore monitors for all my old consoles, too (Genesis, N64, GameCube & DreamCast), 'cause they're the best! I use Wico joysticks, 'cause they remind me of old arcade joysticks. They're pretty nice. I added a memory card reader to my C64. It's much better than messin' with old floppies and cassettes! I only wish I had gotten one sooner. I have a nice, early Vic-20, too...

Man I loved those Epyx games. I didn't have any cartridge games, but the ability to copy games on those big old floppy disks and share them with friends was incredible. This system got me into PC gaming, which I still prefer over consoles.

HEY GAMESTER! Are you coming to Portland Retro Gaming Expo this year?

Nice review John, I'm glad to own both the original C64 and SX-64 as you saw a couple of weeks back that I got. If there's a way you can make a copy of Star Wars for the C64 that would be awesome. = )

The tape has a dedicated port that is the serial port or the monitor oport

I remember my dad had the commodore 128 computer with the floppy drive and a commodore monitor. He also had well over 1,000 floppy disks. Many of the disks had multiple games on them too. Some of the programs I remember are some art programs, a life simulator (can't remember the name), and a really good music program. There was also a program that made the disk drive "sing" ...if anyone has this program please post a video of it!!

This brings back so many memories..love the machine..hard to believe it only had 64k of memory(!)

Well at least I have a Commodore 64 and a 64C the later version, a big piece of classic computing history. Great video as always.

I'm waiting for that amiga review

Great vid,would love to see you do a review on the 128k sinclair spectrum

Kick ass review thumbs up/like.

My uncle actually just gave me a vic 20 that he had when he was a kid and i love the thing. It's cool how you could program crazy stuff with it cause it is a computer. Great video john!! Haha and they say the game gear us big

if i wanted to get into video game system collecting where should i look for rare systems/games? maybe a list of rares so that i can know how rare systems are?

awesome video John, it shows that you are slightly older than me haha!

@ReaperJ21 no...thank you. =)

I had the Plus 4. it was a neat business programmable little computer. it wasn't for gaming much. I loved mine.

when we had the commodoe 64c i used to rest my feet on the power supply to keep them warm, that thing would get HOT man, i loved this system and had over 100 games for it thanks for the memories.

Can you do a video on the Trs-80 Color Computer?

sweet. i still have my commodore 64's myself (model 1 and C) but the amount of tapes i have to sort through is crazy.

C64 was HUGE here in Finland. Computer & nerd explosion began here! Best computer - best games - ever!

What country was the Commodore Plus 4 made in? I also ask the same question about the SX-64. Did I hear speech at the start of the Star Wars arcade game? I couldn't understand what it said.

the computer i'v grown up with,followed by the amiga 500.great review

Even Prevue/TV Guide used a Commodore Amiga system for the channel listings.

Nice review man still see your star wars game is still not working have you got any ideas of what may be wrong with it?

and you could really hear the 1541 scratch and work as it loaded up. Had a three disk game, calle defender of the crown. It took seconds instead of minutes with the black floyd program

Great video! I own a C64, VIC20 and an Amiga 500 and a 600.

That's an '83 (or later) model. The very first edition in '82 didn't have the rainbow stripes. I used to sell the C64 in an old kind of store called a "computer store" which sold only home computers, and most software was sold on cassette tapes in ziploc bags!

I always thought that I was the unlucky kid because I had the C-64 instead of the NES and SNES. When you look back at it, it's the other way around. Lol I had so many games on this thing and my two favorites was Ghostbusters and Impossible Mission. OMG I spent soooo many hours playing Impossible Mission. I finally beat that game. That game was extremely hard to beat, but I was so happy when I did. I also taught myself Basic and wrote some code on that thing. Very amazing computer! I miss it!

Wow ,this is amazing! Im proud to be a NES kid but i wish i couldve experienced those back in the days!

I had a c 64 back in the day. Here in Denmark we made eprom cartridges. And got a small program called black floyd to the eprom. You could tripple you load speed from the floppy drive. It was extreme back then

I do want to get another 64 for my video game rig, actually. On the 'DX', I knew someone back in the day that took the effort to modify an SX to install a second floppy drive. It didn't work perfectly, as there was an issue with the internal shielding versus the drive electronics. But it did work.

@rrob78 I remember a Disney game on this too. I believe the one I played was around the Matterhorn Screamer and the character was Goofy. Not sure if it was the same game or not.

I'm a huge C64 fan, and the 1541 drive you have is actually a model II called a 1541C, which is more rare, and actually a slight bit faster, plus you can get what's called a SuperCPU, and overclock the C64 to 20mhz, and which allows you to play some new homebrew games that have come out in recent years.

I used to have an Atari ST in those days, I remember feeling "Superior" to my C64-owning friends, and yet I was still jealous. They had SO many more games! Plus accessing NEW games was a LOT easier for C64 owners... I don't know if it was different down here, but growing up in Canada, no shops carried anything to do with the ST.

As a kid I only got consoles parents refused to fork out the money for a PC.A friend had a C-64 and I was so envious of it.While the graphics did rival the NES it was the game types that mocked me.So many interesting games that you just could not get on console.While he was playing cool sims and strategy games I was at home playing shallow platform games... Love your reviews btw

@pnroyal gotta love those 9-pin controller inputs :)

The Commodore Plus 4 featured in this video is actually a beefed up Commodore 16, not a C64. I owned one of these back in the 80's. It could run it's own games as well as Commodore 16 games.

did you cover the Commadore Plus/4?

CPlus 4 didn't came to replace the c64, it's another different machine. It had cuted a lot of the games oriented features of the great c64, making it cheaper because it was basically oriented to business & educational market (and also it was intented to be a spectrum competitor, well the C16, which was even a retailed CP4, fits more this statement). Apart from this, I enjoyed the video very much!

A commodore video cable has a "composite video" line which should hook in to most TV's round "video in" ports.

C-64c also has a different SID chip for sound. You can compare games on both & you may notice sound differences.

Great video! Can you demo Geos on the C64? From what I remember it was actually better than Windows 3.11.

@Gamester81 What do you think is a reasonable price for an Amiga? Cause I REALLLLY want one.

I'll be waiting for the amiga review. :]

thanks for covering the 64 thing it was bugging me about what that ment

I still have my commodore 64, Zx Spectrum and Zx Spectrum +2 all with original boxing ;D Awesome arcade machines too in the video.

Interesting, I'd never heard of Quantom Link. I assume it was not available in the UK? The C16 +4 was not a version of the C64 it was a separate computer. An upgrade from the C16 (which has the same case as the Vic 20 and C64 but, in grey).

Wow didn't know the Quantum Link/Ameria Online thing. That's really interesting.

Gamester81 - have you played the Last Ninja games for the C64? If not, I highly recommend you track these down (the two first ones especially, the third isn't bad but nowhere near as great as the two first). One of my all time favourite series of games, and with some of my fav soundtracks as well. If you haven't played them you'll definitely see why.

@The420Northwest I think $30-$50 is a reasonable price for one of these computers today.

I recently picked one up and it played about 15 minutes before I got the black screen of death on it. Got a C64-C on the way though.