That'd be silly. The point of getting one of those is running classic Mac programs that never got ported to other systems, like many games by Ambrosia and Pangea.
Old Hardware Thread
Liam Adams
Lucas Johnson
Are there any vintage laptops with some basic wireless networking capabilities? I want to get the oldest laptop I can that can run OpenBSD on it and use it for emails via mutt, lynx browsing, and other simple things. Found a Thinkpad 365x but I doubt I can get that thing on the internet.
Luke Ramirez
ThinkPad T23 had a integrated WLAN option, or you could get a Pentium II era laptop with PC Card and use a 11B WLAN card.
Aiden White
For some reason I thought that the original c64 had the 6502 chip and that the c64c had the 6510 chip. But of course you are right and all c64 had 6510. But how can the 6502 be faster than the 6510? It can't be, right? This is what wikipedia says:
"MOS Technology 6510/8500
@ 1.023 MHz (NTSC version)
@ 0.985 MHz (PAL version)"
en.wikipedia.org
"MOS Technology 6502
@ 1.108404 MHz (PAL)
@ 1.02 MHz (NTSC)"
en.wikipedia.org
Ethan Hernandez
The problem with old built in wireless gear is it's always just WEP. You will have to find a PC Card that supports WPA2.
William Hernandez
The 6510 is a custom 6502 with added IO lines. Commodore was able to do cool shit and lower chip count because they owned MOS. Everyone else had to work with off the shelf parts or spend big money to have custom chips made. CBM just had to pick up the phone and call their fab. Thats why Commodore machines are full of IC's that where only used in those machines.
Jeremiah Cox
All of the things that could have come from them having a fab, and they did nothing with it. It still makes me mad that Commodore could have flexed their muscles and utterly dominated the market (or at least drastically change it), and instead they just sat around with their thumbs stuck up their asses.
Eli Flores
I don't know what you mean by this. They did dominate under the Jack Tramiel years and they drastically changed the computing world. The c64 was the greatest selling computer of all time. Before that it was the vic20. All loaded with MOS chips. The Amiga was also loaded with custom chips made in house. And they had their competitors all coming to them to buy the 6502. Look at all the machines that where based off of that cpu. If you purchased an Apple2, Atari, Acorn, etc then CBM got paid. They also licensed the design to companies like Nintendo for the NES.
It is amazing though how quickly Irving Gould killed CBM. MOS actually emerged from the CBM implosion but the US EPA shut them down because a trichloroethylene tank leaked.
Wyatt Cox
Ethernet -> small wireless router or something maybe?
Daniel Garcia
I remember some programs here in PAL land switching the C64 into NTSC mode to be faster. This would kill graphics output which was acceptable though. I don't remember if it make an actual difference or if the program authors just thought it would. I actually don't even remember if this actually was a hardware hack or something that could be done by software. (hey, it was a long time ago)
A small guide for the prospective Zig Forums C64 owner:
There was a worldwide shortage of 74xx TTL logic ICs in the 80s for a bit, MOS spun their own then to keep up with the high demand for Commodore machines. They love to break and are a very common defect in C64s. Thankfully, they're easily replaceable.
Commodore's CIAs are so failure prone in the C64 because they weren't protected in any way by users' shenanigans, static discharge at the joystick ports (by touching them with your fingers when fumbling in the dark for the power switch, for example) or some careless electronics engineering at the user port was enough to kill them. Same goes for the SID which also has direct lines to the joystick ports for paddles and an audio input at the video connector which not many people know about these days. My tip is to buy plastic caps to put on the ports if nothing is plugged in. The early SID also literally cooks itself to death sometimes with die temperatures exceeding 90 degrees Celsius, so I'd always heatsink it. There's a huge variance in these chips, even in how they sound.
What many people who buy replacement ICs don't know is that the Amigas' CIA (which break far less often as they're integrated differently into the computer) can be used in an C64 without problem, as they're basically the same chip. Commodore never changed that design until the end in any dramatic way. Doesn't work the other way around though.
The massive death of PLAs in early C64 models was almost certainly a manufacturing error, a failure to bond the ICs correctly, so they'd literally rot away internally. In early days they were replaced by EPROMs (as the PLA is basically a truth table) which pretty much worked in most cases but is not a good replacement and might or might not be bad for other ICs. It's better to use a modern PLA replacement these days.
Chips that come afterwards in how often they seemed to fail were the RAM (there always certain manufacturers like MT) the color RAM for the VIC II (which was later integrated into the PLA) and the VIC II itself. The RAM chips should still be easily available from electronics suppliers. The color RAM can be replaced with a static RAM part which uses less power and is less prone to go defective. The VIC should get a heatsink. Some models of the C64 came in a metal cage which metal pieces pressing down on these chips, making the metal cage act as heatsink. There were tons of revisions of the C64 mainboard.
I've rarely seen a 6510 fail and usually it was because of users' shenanigans. That's probably why nobody yet came up with a way to replace the 6510 with anything else. (except in the accelerator cards, obviously) There simply was no need.
In general the later, cost reduced C64C/II board is better as it is a lot less susceptible to failure. Commodore had aced the game of manufacturing C64s and it's ICs then, they're also much more highly integrated machines and the ICs were done in a different manufacturing process and don't get so hot. The VIC II in those late machines produces a clearer, less reddish picture, but has it's own bugs and particularities you can google. (You'll also never get a completely clear picture out of a C64, no matter how much stuff you replace, there's crosstalk directly on the die of the VIC) The later SID had a bug (actually no, it had a bug fixed the earlier SID had) which made sound samples produced through a trick a lot of earlier software used inaudible. It's reversible by a small hardware hack though.
Source: I used to repair these things for a living.
Usual Amiga failure points were Paula (Paula did the serial ports and floppy drives besides sound, also buttons at the gameports - lots of chance for that chip to get murdered) Denise (video) and the CIAs, defects were a lot rarer here though and usually operating mistakes by the user. We are all used to plug whenever and however with USB ports now, but with these old machines it's not a good idea. If you want to pull something out or plug something in, turn them off first. That's how you'll avoid most of the damage you can cause. Also static discharge. These old ICs are not well protected against it. You can rub a modern PC mainboard on the carpet and probably nothing will happen, this old stuff is a lot more susceptible though. These machines are not idiot proof, so use common sense. If I had to choose a computer for reliability I'd choose an Amiga 500 or 2000. (with their power supplies reworked) Well taken care off they'll survive you.