on the menu today wait a minute do we have a previously never seen before commodore 64?!
no don't worry we won't split you in half oh hello chip dippers
welcome to another quick bytes a retro recipe without all the bells and whistles
thank you mm chicken lips anyway she is right to be whistling about commodores because
commodore 64 was of course the best-selling home computer of all time still is according
to the guinness book of world records that's right it sold around 30 million
units and you might have seen this week on ebay flea bay this very strange looking split level
commodore 64. it's a commodore 64 that's been essentially cut in half separating out the pcb
to the back half and the keyboard at the front on its own but i don't have any idea what this is i
also reached out to bil herd of course was the designer of the plus four and the one two eight
he doesn't know either what this beast is and i also reached out to the nine-bit guy
sorry (LF: 8-bit guy!) oh sorry yeah i have to stop saying that
uh the eight bit guy the extra bit was for parity um even he doesn't know what it is there is one
yes not boring and totally mind-blowing theory that i'm gonna share with you uh i still can't
quite believe that could be true but we'll we'll see so there's only one way to solve this puzzle
i bought it yes i ordered it on ebay ebay um i'm getting funny looks from behind the camera
of course if you do want to support the channel to help with these kind of purchases you can check
out our patreon or youtube channel memberships but all that remains is for me to wait for it to
arrive i just heard that it is out for delivery today but yeah i'm not i'm not that excited to
get it i mean it's just a really rare commodore 64 that nobody's ever seen but i i buy things on
ebay all the time i'm i'm not excited at all are you DOORBELL it's here oh my god it's here come on
okay i guess i'm turning this off
get the lizard
gotcha! say bye to lizard
right just unravel these wires before we open the box just unravel these
i guess i'll do that another time but inside here is the special commodore 64.
is it plural it's a c64 split in two inside here is the special commodores 64s yeah
oh no
that's disappointing
well let's open her up or him then
and while the bases are plastic these parts to hold the ribbon cable
next to the case opening are fashioned from wood which makes this feel like it
perhaps wasn't a commercial product it's weird it's like a bit of both
but having some experience in factory manufacturing products i can say these
bases are definitely injection molded this nodule here is where the liquid plastic is fed in through
the tooling and to make that tooling would have cost them about thirty thousand dollars
which completely rules out this being a one-off homebrew hack and actually both
these plastic pieces are identical this gap that sits above the joystick ports on the base piece
when flipped 180 degrees to go under the keyboard top piece
becomes a slot for the ribbon cable to come out of it's actually quite clever
and inside it's just a regular commodore 64. the motherboard is the common revision number 250407
and these codes on the chips are date codes so we can see for example that the sid chip
was made in week 34 of 1983. nothing unusual in here though i can confirm it wasn't made by
oh thanks harley fractic from the game closet channel i've got competition speaking of which
check out pcb way's new pcb design competition and their great pcbs from just five bucks
because as we all know pcb stands for prototype commodore boxes well we'll see
in a second first let's put it back together and see how it might be used in a real setup
before we try to discover what the beastie even is
now it could be used in this stacked configuration allowing easier access to the ports at the front
for hot swapping game cartridges for example for more of a games console feel but what i think
makes more sense is putting the central processing unit behind the keyboard just like a commodore
128d which is what happened when commodore took the c128 and separated it out in the same way
adding a five and a quarter inch disk drive no disk drive here of course but we'll come to that
so let's add a monitor to see how a commodore 64d might look and it's actually quite nice isn't it
the main benefit of this setup of course is it moves all the cables to the back of your desk
instead of trailing across it but would people really dissect their commodore 64 on mass
for that small benefit either way i can't quite get used to looking at this
the best-selling home computer ever in the guys somehow never seen before in nearly 40 years
and let's complete that business look oh mustn't forget the paper
okay so enough teasing what is this thing and why does it exist well i have two theories and i'm
going to start with the most exciting in april 1989 long after bill heard had left commodore
meaning puppy frantic was right he wouldn't have heard rumors started flooding the computer press
that commodore was creating a commodore 64 d yep a split level commodore 64 packaged like
a commodore 128d with a motherboard built into a separate console from the keyboard
sound familiar and courtesy of home computer museum in the netherlands
here's a look at an aftermarket conversion kit the compute case of 64d released when it became clear
that commodore were never going to manufacture their version but how close did they get
well another separate rumor surrounding the 64 d name was that it would be an all-in-one machine
like the amiga 500 with the disk drive built into the keyboard part that was of course actually the
commodore 65 before it too was sadly scrapped during development in favor of the amiga itself
though of course the c65 is now being brought back to life as the fantastic mega 65 project but
while a handful of prototypes do exist for the c65 where are the prototypes for the split level c64d
i mean someone at commodore had to have mocked something physical up right even
just a proof of cool wait a minute do we have a previously never seen before commodore 64.
having realized this possibility walking back to where i left it
with a completely new perspective on what it actually could be was an incredible feeling
feels cheesy
now clearly it isn't a full prototype there's no disk drive but it's just possible it could
be a proof-of-concept mock-up commodore would definitely have made one as a first step wouldn't
they and for a company that had sold 30 million c64s turning over 17 billion dollars out there in
the market throwing 30 grand of tooling to see how separating things out felt and worked isn't that
far-fetched perhaps if that's what we have here whilst it wouldn't be as important as say an apple
one it's still an incredible thought a commodore one need that apple not don't eat that apple
you know what i mean indeed on the forums when i presented some pictures of this machine
a lot of people voiced the same theory that that's what this could be but of course there's another
theory also suggested by commenters this could be an aftermarket third-party product designed
perhaps for those seeking a tidy desk or for factory environments where it would be desirable
to move the motherboard away from a dirty work area and behind glass whilst the business end
with the keys on was exposed to the elements one commenter saw something similar in a cnc tooling
factory though he said that one was made of metal and another person thought he saw a different but
similar thing had a paint sprayers but if this was used at a factory why is it so darn clean but my
real problem with that theory is apart from the ebay seller not a single soul has ever seen this
product before and despite me and others spending days searching magazines on the internet archive
there isn't even an advert for one of these which is almost unthinkable if a small company spent big
money to mass produce it i mean where did the masses go why have i never seen one why is the
nine bit i never seen one big guy or was this two just a stalled prototype from a third party
well call me biased you're biased but i'd love to believe it is a one-of-a-kind proof-of-concept
prototype crafted at commodore hq and not just a product made with expensive tooling
that was then helping to make more tooling machines making machines how perverse!
so there it is what is this thing well i think for the first time ever i am completely 50 50 like she
is about staying as to what we've got here i literally don't know if this is a third-party
aftermarket product or a really rare prototype i better put it down properly so i don't drop it
i'm hoping somebody other than bil herd or the 9-bit guy (LF: 8-bit guy!)
sorry will know what it is and if you do please comment below and i will pin your comment if we
do get an answer other than that it just remains for me to say thanks for watching
as always please subscribe and support below and cheerio
compucase 64d was released in 1987 by a dutch company called (long dutch name) PF: bless you!
what means management consulting it's not made to you know last for 30 years or so anyway
BOING!