These posts are the heart of breadbox64.com. It does not get better than this – enjoy!
To reduce any radio frequency (RF) interference with surroudning hardware (e.g. old tube TV’s), Commodore added shielding to their machines. In the early machines the RF shield came in the form of an aluminum covered cardboard that was wrapped around the motherboard. As carboard is … Read more
I’m a Commodore 64 hardware horder! I have spend quite some time collecting some of the different versions of the Commodore 64 (link) that was produced over the years. Whenever I manage to get a new machine for my collection, I usually clean it (keyboard, … Read more
Getting a brand spanking new Commodore 64 is no longer just a wet dream for a retro geek like me. With the new Pixelwizard cases (link), new motherboards (link, link) and new keyboards (link) the dream is certainly within reach. However, I still need new … Read more
It’s finally time to show what has been clutting up my workbench for way too long! Back in 2015 I got my hands on two C64 Reloaded boards (link) and installed them inside cases from the Kickstarter campaign (link). I also entered the Phase5 Indiegogo … Read more
This may come as a shock to some, but the sad news is that the old chips inside a Commodore 64 will eventually fail!! Most often the chips will simply die due to old age or other external factors like a faulty power supply. When … Read more
Are Data Back-ups for Sissies? Some of us still have heaps of old 5.25″ floppies laying around. It is well known that data stored on this type of media is not the safest place to keep it. While most of the data can quite easily … Read more
It has been almost two years since I boldly announced that I would make new keyboards (link) for my C64 Reloaded boards (link). I have now realized that making new keyboards is by far the biggest Commodore 64 project that I have ever gotten myself … Read more
…and a yellow longboard have been added to my collection of Commodore 64 motherboards. The yellow Assy 250425 Revision B longboard is in really great shape. It has a MOS 8500 MPU which is quite unusual for the long boards. Normally they have MOS 6510 … Read more
During the last couple of weeks I’ve received 8 (!) broken Commodore 64 machines that were in need of repair. The repair logs of three of them have already been described here (link), while the latter five had issues ranging from faulty Serial Ports (link, link, link), … Read more
The most common cause of a black screen on the old Commodore 64 long boards (link) is a broken Programmed Logic Array (PLA) chip located at position U17. Based on different input signals, the PLA creates chip select signals and controls which chip is to … Read more