Hello and welcome to another episode of - The 8-bit Guy?!
Just kidding.
It's Mike from the Geek Pub and today I'll be standing in for David,
while he takes a much-needed vacation.
And on this episode:
We're going to put a Raspberry Pi into a Commodore 64.
# 8-BIT GUY INTRO #
STATIC HISS
So before we get started, let's talk about this project as a whole,
because it might be a little bit different than you expect
So what we're going to do is:
take the motherboard out of this Commodore 64, and set it aside.
It's actually good, and we'll use it later for something else,
or someday put it back in the Commodore 64.
We'll be replacing its motherboard with a Raspberry Pi.
So if you're not familiar with the Raspberry Pi, I have some videos on that.
And there are several Youtubers that have some really great content on the Raspberry Pi.
But basically in a nutshell, it's a single board computer that runs on the ARM architecture.
And you can run Windows IOT, Raspbian, which is a form of Linux,
and some other stuff.
And one of the really cool things that you can run on there,
is a piece of software called RetroPie.
And RetroPie allows you to emulate all kinds of old operating systems,
one of them being the Commodore 64,
but you can also emulate arcade systems,
such as the old Pac-Man and Galaga and those types.
As well as old video game consoles, like the Nintendo and others.
And so we'll be putting that inside the Commodore 64,
as its main computer.
The second device that we'll be putting inside the Commodore 64,
is this device called a Keyrah (Key-ra)
and I believe that's how it's pronounced, so let me know in the description if I'm wrong,
but I think that's how it's pronounced.
And the Keyrah is a neat little device:
It is designed to match the port layout of the Commodore 64.
Though you can use this in the 128, the Amiga, and others, it's just not quite as elegant.
But the Keyrah matches the ports:
it gives you two joystick ports.
As well as a power button,
which will send an ACPI signal to the Raspberry Pi,
allowing you to turn it on and off remotely.
You just hold it down, it's a momentary switch, you hold it down,
-- sorry, I believe you hold it down --
Hold it in the UP position, for one or two seconds, and it turns the device on, or off.
The Keyrah has keyboard inputs for the Commodore 64, the Amiga's and others.
As well as places that you can solder on additional components,
for if you want to use like a Commodore 128 D, or something like that.
In addition: it has outputs for LEDs, and on-board USB for internal and external USB
- we'll come back to that in a second -
So...you can have the external power LED on the Commodore 64, to turn it on and off.
So when we turn the Raspberry Pi on and off, it'll be just like its the original computer,
like it's factory. That'll be really cool.
Ehm...
The other thing you can use this Keyrah for,
if you don't want to do a Raspberry Pi, and you want to just do something a little different,
you can grab this device. Like I think it's about 35 or 40 bucks, off the internet.
I had to order mine from Germany and ehm...
..but you can just install this in there, with no other devices,
and plug THIS, which is just the external USB port,
which will be where the power port is currently on the Commodore 64,
And it will allow you to use the Commodore 64 as just your keyboard,
for a regular PC, or Raspberry Pi, or some other console,
anything basically, that has USB keyboard support.
And so you could just have a Commodore 64 keyboard, for your PC,
using the Keyrah, so that's pretty cool, too.
But we're gonna use it together with the Raspberry Pi and our project and have a full working Raspberry Pi
Commodore 64.
Okay. So let's quickly illustrate how this is going to work,
first we're going to install the Keyrah into the c64 using the existing side plate.
Then we will install the Raspberry Pi model 3 into the center of the c64 using the mounts
we're going to 3D print. On top of the Raspberry Pi, we will install a power block. Now,
this is cool, because it will allow us to turn the Raspberry Pi
C64 off and on from a remote switch.
Follow that up with a remote HDMI output, a remote power button, a remote
micro-USB for powering the whole unit, and then connecting the Keyrah to the PI via USB.
Finally we'll attach the Commodore 64's keyboard to the Keyrah.
So now that all the screws are removed,
We just need to remove the motherboard and it just takes a little bit of pressure to pull it up and out of its place
and set it aside now.
My recommendation to you is, whether or not your motherboard works
flawlessly or whether it has problems or whether it's completely dead, is
to set it aside in a box and store it somewhere because they can be easily repaired and they're getting rarer every day.
So I would recommend that you hold on to that. But one thing that you're going to need to do for sure is to remove
this little side panel that covers the side ports because the Keyrah is going to mount inside that, and
that'll keep it very clean looking and very
fresh-looking when you put it back together. The Keyrah you can't - well see if it guys can see it there,
but the Keyrah does not come with the internal soldered
header on it for the USB,
so the only way to plug USB in is to plug it in to the outside.
What we're going to do is solder on that internal connector, so that we can run a
cable from internal to internal, so it's completely invisible.
So a couple of things: so number one, I do not claim to be professional at soldering by any means.
In fact, I'm amateur at best. So for those of you who know what I did wrong, feel free to
troll in the comments and that'll be okay with me. I need a good laugh.
The second thing is: or I guess this is really part of the first thing, is
after you solder something like this,
especially if you're an amateur, just get a regular ol' meter out, put it in continuity mode, and make sure that none of
those pins are connected because they should all be independent. So the second thing is:
there could be some flux left over on the solder pads, and that can make a connection
electrically, so the best thing that you can do before you try to resolder or anything else, is to just get a
paper towel and some isopropyl alcohol and
Wipe off all of the contacts that you just soldered and all of the area
around it, and then recheck and that may take care of it right there.
And you should really do that regardless any time you solder. It's just to clean off that excess flux.
Okay, so we're not going to cover 3D printing in this episode. There's a lot of YouTube resources on that already
What I will do is quickly walk you through the items that I 3D printed, and these are freely available on Thingiverse,
and so I'll have links for those in the description, but the first one is
the cover for the user port and the tape port, and these will include the mounting locations for our
HDMI, our power port. Sorry - our HDMI, our power port and our
USB charging port and that one will go here.
The second item that we 3D printed covers the Commodore's IEC ports,
as well as the composite port, and this will also serve as the mount for the Raspberry Pi.
The last one is a 3D printed piece that covers the cartridge port, as well as provides a little bit of cover for some of the ports that are on
The side of the Keyrah, and it will just go here.
So, before we assemble everything we need to
install these little knurled hot set inserts,
and basically the way that works is, there's holes already 3D-
printed in all of the components, and we will use a soldering iron to heat these up and then they'll melt into the 3D printed
plastic, and this is what will hold in our Raspberry Pi and all of our cable components
with cap nuts on the backside. So let's go ahead and install those, and then we'll put everything else together.
Okay, so off-camera, I went ahead and installed
RetroPie on the Raspberry Pi, and for those of you who don't know, RetroPie is an
operating system specifically built for the Raspberry Pi
that allows you to
emulate old operating systems, arcade games, and the like, and so I have a whole video on how to do that.
So I'm not going to repeat it in this video,
but I'll put a link in the description for those of you who would like to watch it.
So all we have to do now is plug in the HDMI, the power cable, and a joystick, and we're ready to go.
So let's go ahead and do that.
So the cool thing about having a power block installed on a Raspberry Pi is that it allows you to have a remote switch
that will turn on and off the Raspberry Pi. Now,
you might not know, but a Raspberry Pi has to be shut down before you turn off the power,
but the power block actually
sends the shutdown command to the Raspberry Pi and then monitors the GPIO pins to make sure that the Raspberry Pi is actually completely powered
down before removing power.
It's a great little accessory and I highly recommend it for anyone who's a Raspberry Pi
enthusiast. But to go ahead and start, all we have to do is flip our remote switch and the Raspberry Pi will boot up.
And this is of course where things get really cool. So now that we have RetroPie running Commodore 64, we can
scroll through the menu and we have all kinds of things. I've installed some Nintendo ROMs, a Commodore 64 emulator,
MAME which I've installed Pac-Man and some other arcade games, but we're gonna go ahead and pick the Commodore 64.
Hit start. I've installed one game: Ultima 3. It's just the Ultima3 *.d64 file.
We'll click on that and RetroPie will go ahead and load the Commodore 64 emulator and
automatically start the process of loading Ultima.
So the cool thing is once you're in the emulator, everything works on the Commodore 64
just like it's a real Commodore 64. The Keyrah maps the Commodore 64 into a standard US or European keyboard.
And so we can play a little bit of Ultima
just like we could on the real c64. Oh,
we've been attacked. You can even boot into BASIC and write your own little programs.
Okay, so there's a couple of things that I would do differently if I redid this project.
The first one is: I would add an audio jack, and the reason why is
I realized after I'd already finished the project that the monitor I'm using does not have HDMI audio or even
speakers, so I had to kind of rig up some speakers here, and I made it work, but it's not ideal.
The second thing I would do is add a USB
jack or maybe a couple of USB ports to the back of the computer as well.
The reason why is the Commodore 64's keyboard is actually missing a lot of keys that a standard 101
US or EU keyboard has, and so when I'm going into the configuration for RetroPie
and trying to edit some of the text files, some of the keys that I need are really hard to use.
So I would I would add that. Well, hey guys, thanks so much for watching, and that about wraps it up
it has been a blast hosting The 8-Bit Guy's channel while he's on vacation.
If you're not subscribed to The Geek Pub, I'd appreciate if you subscribed on my channel.
I'm just about to pass a hundred thousand subscribers, and I would love it if you guys helped push me over the top.
Well, I'm gonna play some Pac-Man, and I'll see you next time.