Commodore 64 cleanup and C64OS

Let's clean up the Commodore 64C components a friend gave me, and assemble them into a working computer. The first step is to clean the motherboard, especially the thermal paste on a bunch of the ICs, and eyeball it for problems. It cleans up nice, and looks to be in great condition. The metal RF shield in this computer doubles as a heat sink for the ICs that run hottest, and everything I've read says that thermal paste is superfluous, so let's get rid of that glop and not replace it.

My plan was to recap everything and install a JiffyDOS kernal. I was so happy to see that the 28-pin kernal ROM is conveniently installed in a socket that will be easy to pop it out of and replace. And then... once I sat down to actually replace it, I realized that I had been looking at the wrong chip, and that on this motherboard the 24-pin kernal ROM is in fact soldered directly to the PCB. :facepalm: In addition to being a pain in the butt, it means I have the wrong-sized JiffyDOS.

So I'll re-order the correct JiffyDOS. The capacitors look cromulent for the time being, so I'll save all that soldering for a later day. I'm also going to probably wait until next summer to do any retrobriting.

The case and keyboard get a good cleaning, and then assembly begins. The replacement keyboard and replacement screw kit fit like a glove. New footie pads to replace ones that had gone missing, and this thing is a beauty!

Here it is with the Epyx FastLoad Reloaded cartridge and SD2IEC, and it runs! No magic smoke!

I don't have a joystick yet, so here's a text adventure and the brand new C64OS, both running great. C64OS deserves special mention here. I've barely scratched the surface of it, but it's a truly mind-blowing piece of software. An easy to use modern operating system... written in 6502 assembly, that runs in 64k of RAM. It's a true engineering marvel. It goes way beyond the minimum amount of functionality it needs to be serviceable - it includes little quality of life delights like visual themes, background images, and a menubar clock. I LOL'd when the installer at one point said something along the lines of, "Hey, I notice you have an SD2IEC attached to this computer. Do you mind if I use its oscillator to make some UI features work better?"

I have a left-over brown keyboard from the original pile of parts that only works so-so. In a nice bit of fortune, the friendly folks at the Kennett Classic computer museum threw a spare empty breadbin case my way, with some broken bits on the inside. A good bath, a bit of glue, and a skosh of craft foam, and I'll have something that looks like a breadbin C64, even if it (obviously) doesn't do anything. It makes for a nice display piece, at least.