Every Commodore 64 Motherboard Revision Ever Made! -
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- Опубліковано 29 вер 2018
- Made a couple small mistakes in this one. I referred to CIAs as SID chips for some reason, and I managed to stick my finger over the microphone for a second. Hopefully this is the last video I will make with poor audio, as my iPad microphone does a poor job. I now have a headset microphone which should improve the audio for any future videos I make. Thanks for watching!
I was just testing one of the older C64s I have and I thought my EasyFlash 3 was messed up, now I know it was the board.
Thanks for sharing, very informative video. I have been repairing, restoring and collecting 64s for about 4 years now. I received one yesterday which is new to me. It's a 425. 1984. I have several 425s, however, this motherboard is the same color as the 466 board, and has an R9 vicII and a R4 sid with all date codes of 86. Very much like the 466 motherboard. I was told it is rev B. Everything works, so I'm not going to remove under shield to confirm. Anyways.. New one to me. Just wanted to share:)
Board Revision Overview:
0:00 ASSY 326298 Rev. A 1982
7:52 ASSY 326298 1982
10:36 ASSY KU14194HB 1982
15:42 ASSY 250407 Rev. B 1983
19:19 ASSY 250425 1984
22:42 ASSY 250466 1986
27:27 ASSY 250469 Rev. 3
30:45 ASSY 250469 Rev. B
Greetings! Doktor64! :-)
At 7:52 it is not a 326298 without revision! It must be a rev a, b or c! The 326298 without revision is the one used in japanese c64 and they were the first c64 with 8-pin video connector!
@@C64-Museum I will likely never have a Japanese C64, but it appears that you are correct. The special revisionless 326298 board in the Japanese C64 seems to have been the first C64 board to include the 8 pin luma/chroma s-video output.
I got an early board 250407 Revision A, board is dated 1983, but all the chips are late 1982. Not seen in this video.
It was very interesting to hear you speaking very highly of the 250466 motherboard, thanks!
I’ve used ‘em all, and the 250466 is still my pick for “best C64 board revision”... Thanks for watching!
@@aphexteknol My favorite C64 board as well :)
Dude, great video; I enjoyed it very much! You are a wealth of knowledge. I wasn't aware of the KU board. Great stuff.
Thanks for the good video about the different Revisions.
Quite welcome! Hope it was interesting and of some use. -aphexteknol
@@aphexteknol 28:00 I got that version in the breadbin style bought in 1989 and later in 2021 I bought a C64c. Both PAL system. Live in Sweden and the C64 are pretty rare here these days.
Also got 2 Amiga 500 and one 600HD
A very very interesting video. Being a novice at c64 repairs this information is of great value. Interesting stuff! Thanks for making this video.
Awesome stuff. With my collection, the 466 board also gives out the best picture by far.
I knew I wasn’t the only one. Theres nothing wrong with a good C64C either, but they “grey dot” bug that affects the later HMOS VIC-II chips does bother me a little bit. But like I said, I’m a 6581 fan myself, so the 250466 is the #1 board in my humble opinion. :)
So much knowledge about the C64 hardware, amazing! Great video!
Scoosie Just trying to give back to the awesome C64 community online in any way I can. Thanks! :)
@@aphexteknol Great vids! Looking forward to working on C64's myself.
Someone hasn't watched John Wick to know why we can still buy new new/old stock parts and my MPS-803 print cartridges were mfg'd Jan 2021.
Can I mail you mine to fully restore? MB 250407. I think my MD6 VA3403 is fried, too.
Very informative! Thanks for making this!
Boris Matešin You are quite welcome! Glad everyone is enjoying it so far! Thanks for watching...
Nice collection, and thanks for detailing each revision. You really know your shit. Keep em coming and you'll hit 1000 subs in no time
Nicely done. Thank's
Awesome video man! I have a C64 too its a 250425 and i'm glad that revision has the sharpest video quality and that it has the best 6581 sid, thanks for the info!
Great video. Excellent explained.
Josip Basic Thank you! Glad you got something out of it. I tried to share all of the knowledge I’ve learned while keeping it interesting. :)
Very nery nice overview! 34 minutes fully loaded with information! :-)
I came to your channel because of the Mindflare Retro video you supported! :-)
Here in germany the 250469 boards are more common, no matter what revision ... so if you need one more ... :-)
So best regards from germany! Your Doktor64!
Doktor64 Thanks for watching and glad you enjoyed it! I wanted to make a video like this for a long time and I was lucky to own a collection with all the revisions so this was my best attempt at doing that. MindFlares new video helped me gain a ton more subscribers recently and I really appreciate his help and exposure. Greetings from Ohio USA! -aphexteknol
No rev b and c 326298 boards? They existed just in USA
Great video =D
GadgetUK164 - Retro Gaming Repairs & Mods Thanks for watching GadgetUK! Hope the video wasn’t too dry and boring. :)
Not at all! It's very interesting! It's not every day we get chance to see a Silver Label C64 board!!!
@2:01 I have a non-silverlabel with green connector and switch. As we know, Commodore used whatever component they had available, at the lowest price.
Good video!! Back in the days i wonder how my friend can play the "Last v8" properly. Mine stuck or freeze in the beginning, his don't. So many revisions of the boards causes so much incompatility or errors these days. Know it now for sure :)
Maudio I’ve seen dodgy PLAs that seem to work OK but cause crashes in certain games or software a lot too, so that could have been the issue. Commodore had a habit of shipping out anything and everything they could whether it worked or not! Thanks for watching!
Very interesting video. Will look out for fake silver label C64s. I remember the reset circuit modifications and that the output was push pull and interfered with some cartridges.. I just remember that my C64G with 250469 motherboard has a gold colored solder mask.
bwack My C64G has the gold colored solder mask board as well. There were a few different manufacturers of the PCBs themselves over the years and each one has a unique look to the solder mask. As for silver labels, people have tried to sell fakes but more commonly a silver label is found which has been repaired or rebuilt. The case might be authentic but the board inside or the datecodes on chips might be all wrong, and to a collector that hurts the value quite a lot... Thanks for watching bwack! :)
Thanks for this great video, just seen your channel, you just got yourself a new subscriber and a 👍🏻 on this video, have a nive day. Retrocengo
RETROCENGO Thanks for watching and I am glad you enjoyed it. Take care!
Found this very interesting. I have about 6 boards and they are all different.
Justin Glad you enjoyed it. Going to be working on some new content soon, so stay tuned!
8:29 yes, maybe that's the explanation! but I have a silver label with black cartridge holder and red switch 326298 rev.A s00011953 !!! cia chips are 0283 - pla n82s100n 8238
You are right... those aluminum sheet heatsinks were pretty common here in Europe. They were glued to the chips (the cpu) with some kind of epoxy, which really sucks, when you want to replace it with a decent heatsink.
Excellent video. I still don‘t have a 250466. Did you notice the protective diodes soldered on to of two resistors on the very left of the 250425 board? I have two boards, that have them and one that doesn‘t have them. They are obviously for protecting the serial IEC port. The color ram being integrated into the PLA of the shortboard has confused me a lot, once. There are two different schematics of the shortboard. One has the color ram, the other doesn‘t (of course). I was looking for the color ram in that schematic without and thought, that now I was going crazy, because I couldn‘t find it anymore :-). The Rev. B is not very rare over here. I have found them in the c64c and c64g machines. My youngest C64 has date codes of 1991.
svenpetersen1965 The extra diodes were part of a running revision halfway through the production of those boards, which is why some have them and others dont. I think I mentioned it, but the Rev B shortboards are extremely rare over here in NTSC land. I’ve only been able to track down a single example of one in NTSC form for my collection, but the bare board in my video is a PAL version that I got from a friend in the UK who had stacks of them, LOL. Thanks for the great comment and also for watching!
aphexteknol I own 6 assy 250469 and four of then are Rev. B. One is Rev. 3 and the last is Rev. 4. I like the 250469 from the engineering point of view. They are most advanced. The SID is a matter of taste... it has always been pretty noisy :-)
svenpetersen1965 I really like the ‘469 shortboards too, but the only thing I don’t like is the so-called “grey dot bug” that the HMOS VIC-II chips exhibit when switching registers mid scanline. Aside from that they are really great boards, and of course the 8580 SID is legendary too. You are right about the SID chips though, ALL of them are pretty noisy! :)
Very nice video. Unfortunately all my PAL-N boards (I live in Argentina) are 326298. Those were imported by Drean, the company that licensed C64 and C16. I've to get a newer one for better video quality.
I just bought a newly fabricated 250466 clone PCB today. I'm planning on building my own C64 over the next year (2021). I can't afford an original Commodore due to the retro collecting craze driving the prices through the roof. I can however swing five or six dollars every once in a while for some resisters or capacitors.
Have you priced the full set of custom chips that I assume you will need to populate your new PCB?
@@erikberg7891 I have, and it's actually cheaper than trying to buy an actual C64. Quite a bit cheaper.
@@KlingonCaptain Awesome!
Great Video ! thanks... but You forgot to mention about the 7805 and the 7812 regulators on the shortboards. What has replaced them? where are they? :D
Mert Uckan Excellent question. I really should have mentioned this in the video, but the short answer is that they were eliminated entirely. With the new HMOS process and chip redesign used on the C64C shortboards, all of the onboard chips are powered directly from the 5V off the power supply. The VIC runs entirely off of 5V now instead of 5V and 12V as in the older C64 designs, and the 8580 SID chip now needs 9V instead of 12V that the previous 6581 needed. The 9V is derived from the 9V AC line, and the board was setup so that you could change a zener diode to select between 12V or 9V depending on which SID was used. In actual production though, only 8580 SIDs were fitted from the factory, so this feature wasn’t used although it does appear on the factory schematics for the shortboard. Hope this answers your question, and thanks for watching!
@@aphexteknol sure it does. thanks again.
I have a 250469 rev.A and rev. 4 but dont know the differences between them...
noticed that the ku1419hb hasnt got an option to cut a trace for ntsc, and do the usual 6567 6569 and clock crystal change, wonder if its possible to convert it ntsc somehow anyway, could be a laugh
While the KU board was indeed released only in PAL flavor, it does actually have provisions to be set up for NTSC operation. I do still have a replica KU motherboard done by my friend “bwack” and if I ever get around to building it, it will be built in NTSC form simply because. Thanks for watching!
@@aphexteknol looking forward to the video :)
Thx for this! For audio use (Mssiah), what motherboard would you recommend? I have two c64s: from 1983 250407 REV C and 1989 250469 REV A. I’m planning to put 2 SIDs in either one, but can’t decide which one.
Jose Mäenpää Hello Jose! For studio work with MSSIAH, I’d recommend using a C64C with either the original 250466 longboard or 250469 shortboard. A shortboard C64C with 2 8580 SIDs will probably give you the most flexibility audio wise for making SID music. Depending on which dual SID board you use, you might need an adapter due to the placement of the SID on the 250469 shortboard. Another added plus is that C64Cs with shortboards are fairly easy to find, especially if you are from Europe where they are more common than breadbin C64s... Either way, I’d suggest going with 2 8580 SID chips. 6581s are fine and have excellent filter resonance, but the 8580s are a little cleaner and support more combined waveforms than the earlier 6581s...
Jose Mäenpää So yeah, so the short answer is I would put dual 8580 SIDs in your 1989 250469 board for MSSIAH work... :)
aphexteknol Thx! I’ll go for the shortboard then.
Don’t have 2 8580 at the moment, and was planning to use the SIDs from
both machines, but let’s see. I’m from Finland, and it still is pretty easy to find C64. 😎
in keeping the commodore 64 motherboard how far can you mod them?
I've been thinking of trying to do the Transactor 1Meg C64 project. Has anyone, to your knowledge done it on one of the latter boards with 2 RAM chips?
In the Aug. 1989 Transactor issue Vol. 9 Iss. 6 that talks about the 1Meg C64, there is actually a section concerning modifying the “E” board, which applies to the machines that only have 2 41464 DRAM chips. From a quick skimming of the article, if I was to attempt this modification, I would probably stick with the original style longboards with 8 4164 DRAMs due to the extra work involved in building the separate memory daughterboard for the later 2 RAM chip boards... I can’t say I’ve ever personally heard of anyone building either version, but if it sounds like a fun project theres no reason not to give it a shot!
@@aphexteknol That's the one. I have my original copy, though it was water damaged in storage. I also have PDF's. It would be a shame to ruin an older long board doing the mod. That's why I was thinking of using a short "e" board.
I also thought is might be easier to replace the 41464's with something like 414256 chips to get to the 512K internal RAM. Wouldn't bank switching 2 higher density chips be electronically easier than 16 lower density?
I'm seeing the video! some 326298 rev.A have the red switch and the black cartridge port, why? Also, looking at the Commodore 64 serial register site, I noticed that the older ones have revision B or C in most cases!
in this video I show a 326298 with red switch and ceramic ram!
ua-cam.com/video/GxKS3idosDc/v-deo.html
these are questions I have been asking myself for years!
At 17:34 you say "Your two SID chips. Do you mean CIA chips or am I totally lost on something?
Yeah, it was a goofy slip-up, which I noted in the video description. They are CIA chips for sure. :)
You're missing a sx64 example
I have 2 SX-64s, but I wasn't going to totally disassemble one just to show the motherboard. I tried my best. (SX-64 is pretty much electrically a 250407 if you are curious)
This is great! I’ll be staying tuned for more. Have my first C64 since I was 12 yo on the way. It’s a 1984 bread bin. Sadly it looks as though the SID chip has been replaced as from what I can make of the picture on eBay it reads 8580R5
4591 25
It’s also not a MOS chip but a CSG. I’m guessing this was a later 1991 revision of the chip?
12 BIT JuNGLE OuT THeRe You are correct that CSG marked chips are the later versions. Glad you noticed that because all breadbins with the large style motherboards are supposed to have 6581 SID chips in them! 8580 SID chips require 9V and 5V while 6581 require 12V and 5V. Feeding an 8580 SID 12V like that in a board thats meant to have a 6581 will cause it to have a very short life span if it makes any sound at all, so it needs to be removed and replaced with the proper 6581 ASAP. Unfortunately things like this are a common problem with people not realizing that all C64 chips aren’t 100% compatible across all revisions...
12 BIT JuNGLE OuT THeRe Also, thought it was worth mentioning that I’ve been into jungle/DnB since 1997 so you’re in good company. :)
Damn I didn’t know that! I’ll have to scan over the other chips when it arrives and make sure there’s no other new additions. Any recommendations where I might find a suitable SID chip to replace it with? Shame aside of the plain nostalgia and love for the machine I’m keen to do some tracking and samples of that SID chip! Great to meet such a big C64 fan and junglist 👾🎧
12 BIT JuNGLE OuT THeRe I’m guessing you’re in the UK? I have a few friends over there that can probably help sort you out with a SID chip. One of them runs a shop called Mutant Caterpillar which you can find online. If that doesn’t work, get ahold of me on Twitter and I’ll put you in touch with someone else... (I am @aphexteknol on twitter)
I’ll drop you a line on Twitter! I’m from the UK but actually live just outside of Perth in Western Australia! Thanks btw I appreciate the advice, I’d love to recap the machine I have coming and future proof it a bit. I’m also aware of the psu issues and have bought a replacement supply for the 5V board that should fit neatly into my existing power brick. Keen to give it some real tlc. Any other advice will be welcome 🙏