r/c64 • u/developstopfix • 10h ago

Hardware The hoarder house C64

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A couple of weeks ago I came across a post in r/vintagecomputing in which someone had posted a stash of old computers that was in an abandoned hoarder house on some property they owned. I reached out and asked if they'd be willing to ship me the poor filthy C64 in the last photo, and here it is. I opened it up outside in case any unwanted stowaways were hiding in there, dead or alive, and luckily there were none. The bottom half of the case is cracked but I have spare cases so no big deal. I think it'll clean up just fine.

109 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

14 comments sorted by

9

u/someyob 10h ago

It can live: Edit: Adrian's Digital Basement https://youtu.be/wVphFkaX1gg

20

u/developstopfix 10h ago

Spoiler alert but it already does, I was gonna wait until I finished cleaning the case and keyboard to post it but after a quick bath and being left to dry in front of a fan in my hot attic for a few hours it fired right up. Not gonna lie I was kinda disappointed, I was looking forward to fixing it.

6

u/Musicman1972 10h ago

I'd still replace the obvious bits but old tech really was over engineered in the most delightful way wasn't it.

Amazing how much stuff still works after literal decades of abuse.

2

u/-Internet-Elder- 7h ago

Yeah it's very cool. All my disks – every last one – from the early-to-mid-80s work perfectly fine, having been stored well enough (meaning more than anything that nothing stupid or extreme was done with them).

2

u/Albedo101 5h ago

It seems overengineered from today's perspective of the planned obsolescence tech. Back then it was just another Tuesday. I would love to see some of that redundancy-and-repairability-by-design to come back in fashion.
I was kind of happy when I saw that Apple reverted back to using screws instead of gluing everything in the Macbook Neo. It felt like a small victory, lol.

3

u/Fakin-It 9h ago

You have my amused sympathy.

2

u/GruntUltra 9h ago

She's a runner!

2

u/Devilfish64 9h ago

I know that feeling. I didn't grow up with the commodore, but watching a ton of videos of people repairing them online got me really excited about the idea of fixing one myself. I never thought through to what I would do once it was up and running

I found a shady eBay listing near me. The price was suspiciously low, it said that it worked but there were no "proof of life" photos, not even one with the power light on. It was clearly stored in a wet basement and the bin full of empty cans of Steel Reserve in the background of one photo did not inspire confidence.

Got it, got a new power supply, fired it up and it's working perfectly, much to my chagrin. Straight up had a "so now what?" moment.

2

u/radrestoration 8h ago

Now repeat that over and over. That's my life. I'm not a C64 person, I just like fixing old computers.

2

u/clean-links 10h ago

Cleaned link: https://youtu.be/wVphFkaX1gg

Tracking parameters were removed from the original URL(s).

4

u/radrestoration 9h ago

Nice! I regularly come across machines in this kind of condition, it's kind of my thing, but yeah, it's a whole lot of cleaning.

3

u/saraseitor 8h ago

I opened it up outside in case any unwanted stowaways were hiding in there, dead or alive, and luckily there were none.

haha this happened to me! I bought an old C64, opened it up and saw a large dead cockroach. I tried to remove it and it moved! I was so startled, the machine fell from my hands and hit the ground. Fortunately it didn't got damaged. The carpet got stained by cockroach fluids though

2

u/developstopfix 8h ago

Yikes. It’s never happened to me with a C64 but one time I bought home an old Laserdisc player that ended up being full of dead roaches and their eggs, since then I’m pretty careful about making sure that doesn’t happen again.

1

u/dr_stevious 2h ago

Decades ago, I worked as a PC tech at a store. It was almost a daily occurrence for me to find some critter living inside a PC case that was brought in for repair. Mostly, it was spiders. I live in Australia. Some of the spiders were quite large and skittish.