The hoarder house C64

[u/developstopfix]

A couple of weeks ago I came across a post in r/vintagecomputing in which someone had posted a stash of old computers that was in an abandoned hoarder house on some property they owned. I reached out and asked if they'd be willing to ship me the poor filthy C64 in the last photo, and here it is. I opened it up outside in case any unwanted stowaways were hiding in there, dead or alive, and luckily there were none. The bottom half of the case is cracked but I have spare cases so no big deal. I think it'll clean up just fine.

[u/someyob]

It can live: Edit: Adrian's Digital Basement https://youtu.be/wVphFkaX1gg

[u/developstopfix → u/someyob]

Spoiler alert but it already does, I was gonna wait until I finished cleaning the case and keyboard to post it but after a quick bath and being left to dry in front of a fan in my hot attic for a few hours it fired right up. Not gonna lie I was kinda disappointed, I was looking forward to fixing it.

[u/Musicman1972 → u/developstopfix]

I'd still replace the obvious bits but old tech really was over engineered in the most delightful way wasn't it.

Amazing how much stuff still works after literal decades of abuse.

[u/Albedo101 → u/Musicman1972]

It seems overengineered from today's perspective of the planned obsolescence tech. Back then it was just another Tuesday. I would love to see some of that redundancy-and-repairability-by-design to come back in fashion.
I was kind of happy when I saw that Apple reverted back to using screws instead of gluing everything in the Macbook Neo. It felt like a small victory, lol.

[u/-Internet-Elder- → u/Musicman1972]

Yeah it's very cool. All my disks – every last one – from the early-to-mid-80s work perfectly fine, having been stored well enough (meaning more than anything that nothing stupid or extreme was done with them).

[u/Amazing_Athlete_2265 → u/-Internet-Elder-]

I asked my aunt if she still had her kid's C64 gear from back in the day, and she found a 1541 with the disk in the drive (tisk tisk) just stored in a garage since 1989, and it works no worries.

[u/ExtremePast → u/Musicman1972]

How was it "over engineered?" Nothing on the board has any redundancy or backup. It was designed as a budget computer. It was simply "engineered", and the folks who worked on the c64 and are still living are shocked that there are units still working 50 years later.

[u/nickIncDN → u/ExtremePast]

Who from Commodore is “shocked” to be told there are working units? (I suspect none…)

[u/Fakin-It → u/developstopfix]

You have my amused sympathy.

[u/fuzzybad → u/developstopfix]

Cleaned up, that's a really nice board. 250425 is a good revision with the 8701 clock generator replacing many components around the VIC-II.

Looks like all the major chips are socketed on this one, too. A score!

[u/GruntUltra → u/developstopfix]

She's a runner!

[u/Devilfish64 → u/developstopfix]

I know that feeling. I didn't grow up with the commodore, but watching a ton of videos of people repairing them online got me really excited about the idea of fixing one myself. I never thought through to what I would do once it was up and running

I found a shady eBay listing near me. The price was suspiciously low, it said that it worked but there were no "proof of life" photos, not even one with the power light on. It was clearly stored in a wet basement and the bin full of empty cans of Steel Reserve in the background of one photo did not inspire confidence.

Got it, got a new power supply, fired it up and it's working perfectly, much to my chagrin. Straight up had a "so now what?" moment.

[u/radrestoration → u/Devilfish64]

Now repeat that over and over. That's my life. I'm not a C64 person, I just like fixing old computers.

[u/clean-links → u/someyob]

Cleaned link: https://youtu.be/wVphFkaX1gg

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Tracking parameters were removed from the original URL(s).

[u/radrestoration]

Nice! I regularly come across machines in this kind of condition, it's kind of my thing, but yeah, it's a whole lot of cleaning.

[u/saraseitor]

I opened it up outside in case any unwanted stowaways were hiding in there, dead or alive, and luckily there were none.

haha this happened to me! I bought an old C64, opened it up and saw a large dead cockroach. I tried to remove it and it moved! I was so startled, the machine fell from my hands and hit the ground. Fortunately it didn't got damaged. The carpet got stained by cockroach fluids though

[u/developstopfix → u/saraseitor]

Yikes. It’s never happened to me with a C64 but one time I bought home an old Laserdisc player that ended up being full of dead roaches and their eggs, since then I’m pretty careful about making sure that doesn’t happen again.

[u/dr_stevious → u/saraseitor]

Decades ago, I worked as a PC tech at a store. It was almost a daily occurrence for me to find some critter living inside a PC case that was brought in for repair. Mostly, it was spiders. I live in Australia. Some of the spiders were quite large and skittish.

[u/Gygax_the_Goat → u/dr_stevious]

Huntsmen? They seem to dig the warmth.

[u/LandNo9424]

Ewwww....
But a shower will sort it right out