Hi folks, it's been a crap year, so to stay sane I've done a bit of soldering. I'm not the first guy on the ball here by any means, but I made some SixtyClones and thought it would be fun to share:
As you see, I couldn't quite decide which one I wanted the most, so I got the whole range. They've been kicking around in my workshop/office for a while now, so excuse the dust and smudges. I started out with the earliest revision that's available, the assy 250407. This is by far the PCB with the most components, with the elaborate clock-cycle circuitry around the vic II-chip and the eight old school RAM chips:
All the logic here is new, and the MOS chips are mainly from a black screen 407 I bought a while back, hoping it would be a simple PLA fix. Turned out it was more serious than that, and it ended up as a donor board. The vic here is a nice, ceramic revision 3. It definitly needs a heatsink, but I can't get myself to cover that beauty up at this point. Might swap it out for a plain one in the end. I ended up using PLAnkton on this one, a nice solution that I saw obitus1990 also used in the build he posted here. Wanted to try out a PLAdvanced, but couldn't get hold of one at the time. Later! The modulator is a NOS unit that gives an OK picture, the colors bleed a bit but that's how it is with this vintage of C64s.
And of course, I do recommend the ArmSID, it's a super nice alternative to original chips.
Used modern Kemet polymer caps in place of all the small electrolytics one, and went a bit overboard with the big ones in the power section, as you can see:)
Got a thing for those nice, orange Epcos/TDK capacitors. The 1000uF one is actually a polymer capacitor, correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think any other brand makes thl axial polymers at all. And when I'm on the topic, here's a nice article about recapping the C64 and picking polys that I used when I was researching this build, as you can see I went with the 10uF Kemet that the guy recommends:
https://www.element14.com/community/com ... or-the-c64
Then, on to the great 250466. This was the flavour of C64 I had when I was a kid, so it's got a special place in my heart.
The vic is a 6569 revision 5, supposed to be the best of this generation, and the SID is the 6581R4AR. Advanced resonance, I'm told it means:) From what I gather, this is the setup many 466 were shipped with. The CPU and the CIAs are from a 469 donor board that's still fully functional, soldered sockets in there and put it in storage.
The small electrolytic caps on this one is mainly replaced with polymer caps from Panasonic, went with the SEP-series. Same brand for the power caps as on all the others:) Went with a Shuriken RF replacement, and found that it's best to use it with a lumafix to tune out the jailbars. At least on my old samsung LCD monitor, might be different on a CRT. In my opinion the picture quality is about the same as on the 407, quite good but not stellar. But hey, that's how it's supposed to be! And it certainly looks the part:)
The number of parts is a whole lot lower on this one compared to the 407! Used the SaRuMan for RAM and a GAL PLA, havn't tried that one before. It's working really well, but it puts out a bit of heat, so be aware of that. I'm not sure I'll use it in the long term.
And finally, the 250469 shortboard:
A fun, quick build. The chips are mainly from a shortboard that I messed up while testing out modulator mods. Had to make amends for that, and here it is. The PLA is a NOS part, and I got hold of a nice ceramic basic/kernal ROM, I believe it's a part that originally was made for the first run of 128s. The modulator is an original that've recapped, and the picture quality is the best of the bunch. Much better color saturation, the other two seems a bit washed out in comparision. It's got jailbars, but that's really the only downside.
And of course, a few of those nice Epcos here too. Just for fun, here's the 469 with the original board I used for reference during the build, A nice revision 4 with clear, matte solder mask. Makes it really easy to see what's going on on the PCB:
And a final familiy shot:
The next step is of course putting these in cases, I'll do an update when I get around to that. Hope this was a nice diversion, it sure was for me! Shoutout to Rob who did the reverse engineering and made the PCBs, go check out his stuff on Tinidie.
Cheers
Olem.