Hey all,

I'm a brit living in Switzerland and having recently moved house and now having a bit more space, I decided to blow the dust of some of my old Commodore gear. Surprised to see my original 64 still works, despite being 27 years old!

I have 8 or 9 64's, a few VIC's and two SX-64's (or will have soon, when I retreive them from my parents loft at xmas.) Also have a C16, Plus 4 and an early Amiga 1000. Much of this stuff I acquired around 86/87 when I was lucky enough to actually work at Commodore's plant in Corby during my school holidays.

The serial number on my original 64 is quite a low one, WGB 2790 and has one of the first PAL boards, the KU-14194HB. It's been through the wars though, not many of the original chips survive, only the basic rom and the VIC are from 82. I also have a home made kernal switcher and ubiquitous reset switch installed.

I also dug out a box with hundreds of chips, much of them for various C= machines. I seem to have around 10 Vic2 chips for C128's - I have no memory as to why - I'm not sure I even owned a 128. Anyone need one?

I have around 20 eproms which were my homebrew kernals usually used for cracking games. I need to get my old eprom programmer up and running - there may be some gems in there somewhere. Seem to recall I have a c64 kernal with a M/C monitor crowbarred into it somehow!

Also found my 1541's, both with 3/4 boards, one with the Alps and the other with the much better newtronics mechanisms. They're also modded with WP bypasses and device number switches.

Really looking forward to getting back into this stuff at the age of 39

Would love to hear from any other C= users from Switzerland, although be warned, my German is terrible!

Rob

One of the primary reasons that Commodore built the Corby plant was that they got significant grants from the goverment as Corby was a depressed area following the closure of the steel works. They opened the plant in 1984 but by Summer of 1986, they were winding up. There a local story that one of the main reasons they moved out of Corby was because of the amount of gear that went walkabout through the staff entrances. Having grown up and going to school in Corby, I can well beleive it.

Having sniffed around the factory and occasionally filching stuff out of the skips, a friend and I walked into the factory one morning and asked for a job! A chap called Lou Fine had bought the contents of one of the warehouses to sell in his chain of shops in London. We were employed for the princely sum of £7 per day doing inventories, splitting compendium packs up, sorting through bins of hardware and manuals looking sellable gear etc. It's a huge pity that as a 16 year old I didn't have the foresight to think about what might be valuable in the future. One of the items I had was a 264/Plus4 prototype board complete with wire-wrapped chip sockets - sigh....

Anyway, I made a nice sideline selling vic's, 64's and 128's to my school mates at the time and still have boxes of Vic cartridges still in their shrink wrap in my parents loft. One day I'll get round to putting some of the stuff on ebay.

Rob

Hello crock,

At last a KU-14194HB owner!
The KU-14194HB board has 5-pin A/V out?

Thanks,
Gona

dunno how i missed this post? - sorry

no, my board has the 8 pin out.

rob
_________________

Thank you!

According to C64 service manual:

VERSION___CN5-Video port___PCB ASSY#___SCHEMATIC#
Original_____5 pin board______326298______326106
A (CR)______8 pin board______250407______251138
B__________8 pin board______250425______251469
B-2________8 pin board______250441______251469

The KU-14194HB has not mentioned in C64 service manuals even in the March 1992 version:
ftp://arnold.c64.org/incoming/c64_sm92.pdf
(page 17)

Although 326298 also available in PAL version:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/w...rboard.jpg
(so it is the first PAL version) but I was curious what is the first PAL version with 8 pin A/V out (so with separate video signals like S-Video).
And the 250407 come out in 1983 but KU-14194HB come out in 1982, so the KU-14194HB not only the first in the PAL platform!
Now the secret is out: the KU-14194HB was the first Commodore 64 board with separate Y/C video signals (and it is a PAL only board)!

Hi welcome -

I'm about the same age as yourself, talk about a dream job as a 16 yo! Lucky you!

Will be great fun messing about with all that gear again.

Dear Rob,
I live in Luzern/Switzerland, 29. I can teach you some Swiss-German if need be! Switzerland has been a lonely turf for me commodorewise. It be thrilled to meet you on a rainy day! give me a call at 5343913 (with prefix of Luzern!). My email tamor at gmx ch.
- Andre