Portable Commodore 64

On 4/21/06, John Foust <jfoust at threedee.com> wrote: That's not too bad for a working one. I used to get them for about $35 to $50 (I have two or three myself) in not-necessarily-working state ('though I did get hosed for shipping on one when the guy took it to Mailboxes, Etc., and sent it COD - I think the shipping was $75). The two most common failures in my experience are the PLA (82S100 - identical to the one in a standard C-64) and the keyboard. It's a cheap membrane affair - one of my SX-64 keyboards broke under the previous owner - intermittent contacts, I'd guess, and he tried to repair it - total mess now. Fortunately, I happened to have *1* spare keyboard out of a pile of parts I'd gotten from a defunct C= dealer. They also occasionally suffer from occasional internal interconnect problems - typically with the cartridge slot. Reseating connectors typically fixes that problem. Fun to tote around to club meetings and such, but can be a hassle to repair - there's a lot of stuff packed in a very small space - gets to be convoluted. One important missing feature for some add-ons... no cassette port (I think the cassette routines are patched around in the SX ROMs). While it doesn't matter for most things, there are peripherals that depend on the cassette port for power or power and data (like Marko Makela's CN232 serial adapter). $900, though, is, um, rather high. -ethan