MATRIXSYNTH: The Picadore 64


Wednesday, January 10, 2007

The Picadore 64


I just saw this on one of my favorite blogs, Retro Thing. Check this bad boy out! A Commodore 64 mini laptop/PDA. Title link takes you to the source thread on the Petscii Forums. I grabbed the shots and backed them up here so we don't lose them.

Some details from the thread:

"Here are a few pics of my own DTV Hummer project. I had an old PSOne LCD screen lying around and I thought I'd make a C64 laptop. Actually, it's more like a C64 PDA! It measures 6.5 x 6 x 1.5 inches (15.5 x 16.5 x 4 cm) when closed. It can run from an AC wall adapter or 6 NiMH AA batteries. The keyboard is hacked from a portable folding keyboard for a Jornada PDA which outputs RS-232. I'm using a PIC 16F88 to decode the signals and re-encode them to PS/2 (that was an ordeal to figure out). The PIC checks to see if an external PS/2 keyboard is connected on power up. If one is hooked up, it will route data from that instead. There is an internal ampilfied speaker as well as connections for audio and video output on the back. There's a serial connection for a disk drive and an SD card slot in the side for a 1541-III but I haven't been able to get that to work yet. I also have a connection for a userport/joystick. The joystick in the picture is a hacked Atari keychain joystick. The mini joystick wasn't in the original plan but after I accidentally discovered it on ebay, it seemed perfect."

3 comments:

  1. Not all DIN-5 jacks are MIDI you know...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yep. Just about to update the post. Hence the words in the new Atari post.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I'm always amazed by the people who can do that sort of shit. Much respect!

    ReplyDelete

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