Commodore Is Back Selling New C64s, But Should You Buy Them?

August 17, 2025 by 108 Comments

It’s hard to argue with nostalgia, but you can toss a bucket of cold facts over it. In the case of the recent rescuing of the Commodore brand from the clutches of relabeling of generic electronics by [Perifractic] of Retro Recipes, we got [The Retro Shack] doing the proverbial bucket dumping in a new video. Basically the question is whether the fresh Commodore 64 offerings by the new-and-improved Commodore are what you really want, or need.

The thing is that over the decades many people have created all the bits that you need to build your own classical C64, or even buy one off-the-shelf, with people like [bwack] having reverse-engineered the various C64 mainboards. These can be populated with drop-in replacements for chips like the SID, VIC-II, CIAs and others that are readily available, along with replica cases and keyboards. If you crave something less bulky and complex, you can run a bare metal C64 emulator like BMC64 on a Raspberry Pi, or just run the VICE emulator on your platform of choice. There’re also options like the full-sized TheC64 and Ultimate 64 Elite II systems that you can buy ready to go.

Basically, there is a whole gamut of ways to get some part of the C64 experience, ranging from emulator-only to a full hardware DIY or pre-assembled format. Each of which come with their own price tag, starting at $0 for running VICE on your existing system. With so much choice we can only hope that the renewed Commodore company will become something more than Yet Another C64 Experience.

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Commodore 64 On New FPGA

July 28, 2025 by 19 Comments

When it comes to getting retro hardware running again, there are many approaches. On one hand, the easiest path could be to emulate the hardware on something modern, using nothing but software to bring it back to life. On the other, many prefer to restore the original hardware itself and make sure everything is exactly as it was when it was new. A middle way exists, though, thanks to the widespread adoption of FPGAs which allow for programmable hardware emulation and [Jo] has come up with a new implementation of the Commodore 64 by taking this path.

The project is called the VIC64-T9K and is meant as a proof-of-concept that can run the Commodore 64’s VIC-II video chip alongside a 6502 CPU on the inexpensive Tang Nano 9k FPGA. Taking inspiration from the C64_MiSTer project, another FPGA implementation of the C64 based on the DE10-Nano FPGA, it doesn’t implement everything an original Commodore system would have had, but it does provide most of the core hardware needed to run a system. The project supports HDMI video with a custom kernel, and [Jo] has used it to get a few demos running including sprite animations.

Built with a mix of Verilog and VHDL, it was designed as a learning tool for [Jo] to experiment with the retro hardware, and also brings a more affordable FPGA board to the table for Commodore enthusiasts. If you’re in the market for something with more of the original look and feel of the Commodore 64, though, this project uses the original case and keyboard while still using an FPGA recreation for the core of the computer.

a Coleco Adams console on a desk

Coleco Adam: A Commodore 64 Competitor, Almost

July 21, 2025 by 65 Comments

For a brief, buzzing moment in 1983, the Coleco Adam looked like it might out-64 the Commodore 64. Announced with lots of ambition, this 8-bit marvel promised a complete computing package: a keyboard, digital storage, printer, and all for under $600. An important fact was that it could morph your ColecoVision into a full-fledged CP/M-compatible computer. So far this sounds like a hacker’s dream: modular, upgradeable, and… misunderstood.

The reality was glorious chaos. The Adam used a daisy-wheel printer as a power supply (yes, really), cassettes that demagnetized themselves, and a launch delayed into oblivion. Yet beneath the comedy of errors lurked something quite tempting: a Z80-based system with MSX-like architecture and just enough off-the-shelf parts to make clone fantasies plausible. Developers could have ported MSX software in weeks. Had Coleco shipped stable units on time, the Adam might well have eaten the C64’s lunch – while inspiring a new class of hybrid machines.

Instead, it became a collector’s oddball. But for the rest of us, it is a retro relic that invites us to ponder – or even start building: what if modular computing had gone mainstream in 1983?

Let’s Buy Commodore! Well, Somebody Is.

June 7, 2025 by 65 Comments

When a man wearing an Atari T-shirt tells you he’s buying Commodore it sounds like the plot for an improbable 1980s movie in which Nolan Bushnell and Jack Tramiel do battle before a neon synthwave sunset to a pulsating chiptune soundtrack. But here on the screen there’s that guy doing just that, It’s [Retro Recipes], and in the video below he’s assembling a licensing deal for the Commodore brand portfolio from the distant descendant of the Commodore of old.

It’s a fascinating story and we commend him for tracing a path through the mess that unfolded for Commodore in the 1990s. We tried the same research path with a friend a few years ago and ended up with an anonymous Dutch paper company that wouldn’t answer our calls, so we’re impressed. In conjunction with several other players in the Commodore retrocomputing world he’s trying to assemble a favourable percentage deal for manufacturers of new parts, computers, and other goodies, and we’re pleased to see that it’s for the smaller player as much as for the industry giant.

When looking at a story like this though, it’s important not to let your view become clouded by those rose tinted glasses. While it’s great that we’re likely to see a bunch of new Commodore-branded Commodore 64s and parts, there are many pitfalls in taking it beyond that. We’ve seen the Commodore logo on too many regrettable licensed products in the past, and we fear it might be too tempting for it to end up on yet another disappointing all-in-one video game or just another budget PC. If something new comes out under the Commodore brand we’d like it to be really special, exploiting new ground in the way the Amiga did back in the day. We can hope, because the alternative has dragged other famous brands through the mud in recent years.

If you want an insight into the roots of the original Commodore’s demise, have a read of our Hackaday colleague [Bil Herd]’s autobiography.

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The Commodore 64 Gets An HDMI Upgrade

May 25, 2025 by 39 Comments

The Commodore 64 may remain the best selling computer of all time, but it has one major flaw. It doesn’t have HDMI! That makes it a total pain to use with modern displays. Thankfully, [Side Projects Lab] has whipped up an HDMI output board to solve this concerning oversight from the original designers.

The project was inspired by work by [Copper Dragon], who whipped up a nifty RGB output board. This device worked by reading the inputs to the C64’s VIC II graphics chip, which it then used to recreate a pixel-perfect video frames to then produce a quality analog video output. [Side Projects Lab] figured the same interception technique would be useful for producing a quality HDMI output.

The result was the HD-64. It sits inside the C64 in place of the original RF modulator. It uses an interleaver socket to capture digital signals going to the VIC II. It then feeds these signals to an emulated VIC II running inside an FPGA, which creates the pixel-perfect screen representation and synthesizes the proper digital HDMI output. Meanwhile, the analog audio output from the SID chip is captured from the RF modulator’s original header, and sent out via the HDMI output as well. The default output is super-sharp, but the device can be configured to allow scanlines and anti-aliasing if that’s more to your tastes.

If you want to hook your C64 up to a modern screen, this is going to be one of the tidiest and sharpest ways to do it. We’ve seen similar hacks for other platforms before, too. Video after the break.

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Crossing Commodore Signal Cables On Purpose

April 29, 2025 by 19 Comments

On a Commodore 64, the computer is normally connected to a monitor with one composite video cable and to an audio device with a second, identical (although uniquely colored) cable. The signals passed through these cables are analog, each generated by a dedicated chip on the computer. Many C64 users may have accidentally swapped these cables when first setting up their machines, but [Matthias] wondered if this could be done purposefully — generating video with the audio hardware and vice versa.

Getting an audio signal from the video hardware on the Commodore is simple enough. The chips here operate at well over the needed frequency for even the best audio equipment, so it’s a relatively straightforward matter of generating an appropriate output wave. The audio hardware, on the other hand, is much less performative by comparison. The only component here capable of generating a fast enough signal to be understood by display hardware of the time is actually the volume register, although due to a filter on the chip the output is always going to be a bit blurred. But this setup is good enough to generate large text and some other features as well.

There are a few other constraints here as well, namely that loading the demos that [Matthias] has written takes so long that the audio can’t be paused while this happens and has to be bit-banged the entire time. It’s an in-depth project that shows mastery of the retro hardware, and for some other C64 demos take a look at this one which is written in just 256 bytes.

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A Scratch-Built Commodore 64, Turing Style

April 23, 2025 by 18 Comments

Building a Commodore 64 is among the easier projects for retrocomputing fans to tackle. That’s because the C64’s core chipset does most of the heavy lifting; source those and you’re probably 80% of the way there. But what if you can’t find those chips, or if you want more of a challenge than plugging and chugging? Are you out of luck?

Hardly. The video below from [DrMattRegan] is the first in a series on his scratch-built C64 that doesn’t use the core chipset, and it looks pretty promising. This video concentrates on building a replacement for the 6502 microprocessor — actually the 6510, but close enough — using just a couple of EPROMs, some SRAM chips, and a few standard logic chips to glue everything together. He uses the EPROMs as a “rulebook” that contains the code to emulate the 6502 — derived from his earlier Turing 6502 project — and the SRAM chips as a “notebook” for scratch memory and registers to make a Turing-complete random access machine.

[DrMatt] has made good progress so far, with the core 6502 CPU built on a PCB and able to run the Apple II version of Pac-Man as a benchmark. We’re looking forward to the rest of this series, but in the meantime, a look back at his VIC-less VIC-20 project might be informative.

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