Just Obtained Vintage C64 need help

[irishmike]

Greetings:

I just traded some old hardware I had for a Commodore 64. I have 3 drives with it, one has something loose rattling around inside, so I assume that is non-working. The C64 itself is missing a key, but I plug her in and get a power light and no video signal on what I assume is the composite jack (the single RCA jack in the middle back). Having never owned one back in the day, I am unsure of how things should be fixed up and I assume I may actually have a dead or partially working unit in the first place.

I could use some idea on what to do. I have a 1084S Monitor (which I use with my Amigas) and I am wondering if This one is just parts or what not. Of Interest, I have an original 1541 Disk Drive that appears to be in great shape, I of course will have no idea if it works until I am able to hook it to a working C64 and on that note, I am needing a cable for that drive... will a regular DIN cable work, or was there a special pin out?

Thanks for any help on this and hopefully someone can hook me up with needed items or another working C64 :-)

EDIT: Apparently I need a special video cable for the C64 to hook it to my 1084, So I need to find someone who has one or a way to construct one.

Thanks,

Mike

follow up question: How to get .c64 disk images back to real floppies?

[NathanAllan]

There's a program out there called Star Commander that will let you adapt a pc's parallel port to the disk drive's cable. There's a special cable that you can buy or build and the program's free (last time I checked). It's a dos program and has been reported to work well. I never used it, personally. You take the disk images and it sends them to the drive. It's been a while since I had a commodore, so a few details might be wrong.

As for a monitor, you can go to radioshack or even walmart maybe and get a tv/game switch (I've been seeing that they're getting common again) or a games store, they might have one, and get a composite video cable. The cable I think has better shielding than a regular rca cable, better for video.

As for the drive cables, I think it's just pins 1-5 in that order to the corresponding pins-- a regular din5 should work. Just has to be very good and shielded. If you have to go with a normal like, keyboard cable for it. wrap it in tinfoil for shielding.

Hope everything works out! If you can get a joystick, DO! The games are great fun on the breadbox:)

[carlsson]

The C64 [..] no video signal on what I assume is the composite jack (the single RCA jack in the middle back).
No, that is RF output, which you connect to antenna input on your TV.

1541 Disk Drive [..] needing a cable for that drive...
You "only" need a straight 6-pin (not 5-pin) DIN cable. There is some video editing equipment and perhaps other sources where you can find one, unless you can get ahold of a genuine Commodore cable or make your own. No magic, just that all six wires preferrably are connected in both ends.

EDIT: Apparently I need a special video cable for the C64 to hook it to my 1084, So I need to find someone who has one or a way to construct one.

Here you have a pinout how to make a cable with separate luma/chroma (which most versions of the 1084 monitor takes):
http://sta.c64.org/cbmmonc.html

Notice that the 8-pin DIN is of the type 262 degrees (there is a 270 degrees version that doesn't fit physically).

You can also make a simpler cable for composite video, by using only pins 2 (GND),3 (audio),4 (video) in that diagram. If you do so, a 5-pin DIN will work and also be functional with a series of other contemporary computers. However the picture quality is not as sharp as when you use separate signals.

follow up question: How to get .c64 disk images back to real floppies?
Nathan is correct, you need a X-series cable. Preferrably a XM1541 or better (XA, XP). The XM cable is the easiest/cheapest to build and functions on the majority of PCs (or rather parallel port chipsets). Its older brother is the XE cable which is almost identical but two lines swapped which makes it impossible to use on modern Windows and Linux systems.

http://sta.c64.org/cables.html

For software, you can use Star Commander (DOS) or cbm4win, cbm4linux and so on. If you browse around on that page, you will hopefully find most what you need.

http://sta.c64.org/winprg.html

[irishmike]

Thanks guys for all the help :-)