20 Apr
2006
20 Apr
'06
11:49 p.m.
On Friday 21 April 2006 01:25 am, Ethan Dicks wrote:
Yeah, there were some significant hardware differences since in this unit
everything worked off one power supply rather than the two separate supplies
you'd have in a c64+1541.
See my other nearby comment about fixing that. :-)
Hmm.
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin
On 4/21/06, Roy J. Tellason <rtellason at
blazenet.net> wrote:
I never saw one of those, but heard rumors from time to time about them being
sold in Canada, or maybe in Europe.
On Thursday 20 April 2006 10:37 am, Philip
Pemberton wrote:
> In message <200604201407.k3KE7RrK018110 at floodgap.com>
> Are there any custom ICs in there - custom defined as "not found in a
> garden-variety breadbox Commodore 64"? Hardware-wise, how do the two
> machines compare (besides the obvious "the SX64 has a built in monitor
> and disc drives")?
Disc drive, singular. There apparently was a plan to offer a
dual-drive unit (DX64), but the PSU wasn't up to it (and perhaps the
passive cooling as well). > I know
there's the SID and VIC; I was wondering if the drives were
> implemented as "guts of a 1541 strapped to the chassis" or custom ICs
> integrated onto the mainboard.
The maintenance manual should be on funet, but ISTR the disk drive is
implemented on its own board, but is not exactly the same board out of
a 1541 (based on, yes, same part, no). One of the
ROMs is a different part number, which gives slightly
different default screen colors, but I know that in repairing one the
ROM out of a C64 can also be used. There are also differences in the
drive, for sure, but it's been long enough since I've been into one
that I don't remember what those are off the top of my head.
Yeah... think the differences only matter for fast loaders and such.
The trickiest thing I ever ran on an SX64 was a later version of the
Infocom interpreter that asked if you had a real 1541 or not (so it
could play tricks with the drive-to-CPU comms - a software speed
loader, IIRC).
The C-64 ROM works in an SX64, but, of course, the cassette stuff
doesn't, since the SX64 doesn't provide a cassette port. I do have a
service manual for those around here someplace, I used to
fix them, along with a lot of other C= stuff...
http://www.zimmers.net/anonftp/pub/cbm/schematics/computers/c64/sx-64/index
.html
(apparently funet has been relocated...)
Anybody looking for any c= parts? Drop me a note
off-list.
Doing fine there - one of these days, I should go through my stacks of
stuff and offer it up- I have several tackle-boxes of upgrade parts
from that C= dealer... ROMs (all of which are imaged on funet AFAIK),
various rev video chips, etc. Never enough time...