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Are there many.... ANY SX-64 owners here?

C

CanadaPhil

Experienced Member
Joined
Oct 4, 2014
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Location
Toronto
I never actually owned one back in the day. I had Vic20 (first EVER computer!), 64C, 128, PC-10, etc, etc.

But for whatever reason, I have been bitten by the Commodore Reminiscing bug (if there is such a thing! :blush:) and have been going a little nutz lately reacquiring some stuff like a Mint Boxed Vic20, a 1901 monochrome monitor and other little odds and ends.

My 128 system was really the only stuff I kept over the years. I really regret getting rid of my PC-10. Seems impossible to find any of those now.

Anyway, I purchased an SX-64 off Ebay in the last week. I basically clicked the Buy-it-Now as soon as the listing appeared!!. I have not received it yet, but I'm hoping for good things. Well, the pics showed it is in very good condition cosmetically and appears to have a good functioning CRT, but the seller described it as not being able to load anything from the drive. I picked it up knowing it was as-is. I figured a sub $200 find was worth the gamble for me.

I have been visiting Ray Carlsen's personal pages. What a cool dude! :) I have also located as much concrete info as I can find on the net regarding the SX64 like schematics,etc. but is there an actual in depth original Commodore style 80's service manual that can be found anywhere? Does one exist? I can seem to find every other single in depth service manual for Commodore products but NOT the SX64.
 
I have two. Both needed repairs of varying degree, but for the most part, the repairs were fairly straight forward. Blown PLA, a bad memory chip and a couple of bad 6522s. Primarily is issues the keyboard, which might need a good cleaning. It's a completely different keyboard so it's not interchangeable.

I have a couple of posts on the keyboard, and other repairs that I've made, perhaps they'll be of use: http://www.azog.org/?s=sx-64
 
Yes, I've got one. Mine had a faulty RAM chip when I took ownership of it, but I managed to fix that with the help of Ray Carlsen's excellent docs.

Great to have as an artifact of those days, although not particularly useful for either business or gaming. I do like the elegant design and blue trim though.

Here's a video I made on it.

Tez
 
Picked up one a couple years ago. As already said, I also had to take the keyboard completely apart and clean it. Worked a champ for a couple months then drive hanging up. One of many projects to strip it down and clean it.

Tom
 
Yes I also have a Commodore SX-64 addiction.

Four units later and I have had to stop, one was too good a price to let it pass me by, one was a spare for my main unit.
One was for a dx-64 conversion but I couldn't do it because it seemed wrong to strip a good machine!
 
Sure- I've owned and restored a dozen of them over the years, and still own two complete working models.

Usually they have bad PLA or ROMs, or the interconnects aren't plugged in all the way is all.
Occasionally they'll need a monitor degaussing due to how someone stored one, but those are cheap now.
Missing parts suck, so hopefully you don't have that problem. The "lost" keyboard cable especially.
 
Hey everyone!

Thanks for the replys. I had actually posted this almost 2 days ago but it was in "moderation".

I can see by my item's tracking that it is now on its way from California.

I knew it was going to need a bit of work, but figured I would go for it. Hopefully it will not get busted any further enroute!

Even if I don't get it functioning quickly, I can get around to it as a future "project". At the very least I think its a collectible even in its current state.

I wonder how many of these are actually left Worldwide today from the original 80,000-ish from 30 years ago?
 
I have one which I bought a few years ago. I had no idea how common they were until I got it. One of the tabs that holds the keyboard on was broken when I got it, the other didn't last much longer. Someday I'm going to find a way to permanently fix that.

I use mine quite a bit. I have a battery pack and an inverter to make it completely portable. I want to build a case for that that matches the SX/64, in fact it's quite tempting to find an SX/64 and gut it for that. I can't bring myself to do that though.
 
By the looks of that TPUG Starbucks video link posted in another topic, half of ALL the SX64's are in those guy's hands!
Hahaha.

I would think that long term, that little CRT is going to be an issue. Its already 3 decades old! Maybe I should think about looking for a 5" TFT LCD on Ebay (as an eventual replacement) while there are still some to be found in the 4:3 aspect?
 
The CRT in mine is just fine, though I donc't know why it wouldnc't be. i sure would expect a small CRT to long outlast an LCD.

it is a bit hard to read, and you may find an LCD that is sharper. i have not. all the small LCDslike that that ic've found are terrible.

If nothing else, an LCD would significantly lighten up the weight.
 
I used to have a SX-64 a few years ago, but as I didn't give it as much love as I should, I traded it away for about the same amount as I once acquired it.
 
I bought one some time ago. It had a blank screen but the CRT worked. I took a normal C64 and started to replace major chips until it worked. I needed two chips including the Kernal (that is specific to the SX-64 but if you use a C64 kernal, it will boot looking like a C64)) and I think the PLA chip. I was able to get it sub-$100 and I had to wait a little while for a proper SX-64 kernal chip to come up for sale. Works like a charm now.
 
One thought...

Do you guys think me picking up one of those Commodore "DEAD TEST" diagnostic carts would be worthwhile?
 
I have one too. It was a no-handle, "the screws and panels are in a box but it's free" ordeal. HAd to build a new keyboard cable for it and the clips to hold the keyboard to the front are long gone but it's all there. I don't really like it over a proper breadbox. The screen is too small. It might be better for those people with deep desks and who want to put additional machines under their monitors.
 
CanadaPhil said:
By the looks of that TPUG Starbucks video link posted in another topic, half of ALL the SX64's are in those guy's hands!
Hahaha.

I would think that long term, that little CRT is going to be an issue. Its already 3 decades old! Maybe I should think about looking for a 5" TFT LCD on Ebay (as an eventual replacement) while there are still some to be found in the 4:3 aspect?
Click to expand...

I have about 5 SX machines in various states (and yes, I'm a TPUG member, but wasn't in that video... so maybe you're right! LOL). One of my machines has a bad monitor and I did try looking for an LCD to replace it. I found a few that use composite video but had no luck finding one that would take s-video. I was concerned about the sharpness at that small size. I noticed that the bezel around the 5" crt is quite large, so you might even be able to use a 6" LCD screen for a bit better view.

Steve
 
I did see a YouTube vid a short time ago while surfing where someone had rigged up a working LCD replacement in a SX. It was one of those zero commentary vids where the guy just pans the camera around his work to basically prove he had done it.The captions state it is wired for Chroma / Luma (or S-Video).

Its cool since you can see an entirely big empty cavity where the crt had been! I will try to find that again.

I don't have my SX yet to open up and inspect personally, but Im going to guess you could make use of a 7 inch widescreen set to 4:3 mode and that would probably give you something close to the original 5" Square image.
 
sjgray said:
I have about 5 SX machines in various states (and yes, I'm a TPUG member, but wasn't in that video... so maybe you're right! LOL).
Click to expand...
I've only got one, but I wasn't in the video either ;-)

I might be dreaming, but I think I might have a 5" open frame colour monitor somewhere; I'll have a look around next time I'm in the dungeon.
 
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