This is one system I still don't have in my collection. I actually think the changes they made to the ROM for the screen colors and default device number should have been implemented in ALL Commodore 64's. I always have this routine I do when I turn on any C64 where I press control-2 so that I can see the text more clearly. I think a lot of people do that. I also never realized the screen colors matched the VIC-20, although I should have since I've spent many hours behind a VIC-20. I always thought it was more similar to the Plus/4's bootup screen. But, after looking at your screenshots I realize it is not quite.
Yep ive always been a fan of the VIC colors myself so i was very pleased the first time i booted up the SX!. the Plus 4 was a purple on light gray with dark text. Not that similar. I'm thinking it wouldn't take much effort to modify an C64 Kernel to set the background/foreground/text color you want and flash that to an eeprom. Might be a cool little side project :)
Final Cardridge III did this very well. Fore- and background was deep blue, text was white Like in this video ruclips.net/video/dVIDULlJJU8/видео.htmlm45s
I had one of these when I was a kid, it was great. Having a computer all to yourself you could lug around from place to place was like living in the future. Sadly, the colors started flickering and I sold it at a lawn sale for like $20, along with a few hundred(!) game disks. Of course they were all pirated, I didn't even know you _could_ buy games at that point, but still there were so many games there. Little did I know that's probably an easy fix, but it's probably in a landfill now.
Horrible when we look back at some of the tech or games we used to have and probably threw out or gave away,now knowing how much they are worth now. It kills me 😔
I had one functioning out of purchased broken units from ebay literally 10 years ago...it still was not cheap to do. I think I'll change some capacitor's soon to get one going again...great video and a very rare machine. Back in the day I was an Atari fan until the Amiga, so I did not even know of this machine's existence till literally 10 years ago when I saught one out. It still amazes me how much as adults we will spend either reclaiming old tech favorites or simply vintage tech we could not afford as kids.
Great and fun video to watch! I love that you took it all apart, I think that's the first time I've seen a video of the internals. Great collectible, though I'm not too sure it had or has any real interest in terms of everyday use. Nobody was buying that back in the day to play games in their hotel room, they bought it because they used one at their business to do whatever book keeping or word processing they needed. That market was incredibly small as IBM dominated the truly professional work environments, the ones with a real need to use a computer on the go. Today? It would never leave the house and you'd be playing on a screen not much bigger than a gameboy. It does look beautiful though, I know you'll give it a good home.
Nice review and video! I'm fascinated by the commodore 64 itself though knew little about the SX-64. Shadow of the beast looks and sounds great on here!
I used to work on the NSW railways and one of our traffic inspectors, bought of these and would lug it and a dot matrix printer from one station to another or head office to do his work. I got to admit as a C64 owner back then myself, I thought he was nuts to carry something that heavy and with that tiny a screen with him everywhere. Now I can appreciate, he was really ahead of the curve with his work and could see the future of portable computers long before I did.
It's funny, when I initially got my own PS2, all i had for a TV Screen was a 5.5" CRT B/W Monitor from a karaoke machine I had gotten in previous years. My first game on the system was Burnout Revenge. You don't know how difficult it was to play a game like that on that display with the fast pace and with no color. I still had a blast, upgraded soon after though to a 13" CRT TV (with color! Ha!).
You guys need to see about the 64 computer and the 64-SX handheld console.You'll definitely be keeping up with the commodore.Share this with the world along with #IAdoreMy64 and bring back the legend
This was my first computer. It was great! I matched it with a 300 baud modem and an Okidata Okimate 10 color printer. Color printing so great you could almost make out the images!
What? If there's one weak point in the SX64 which I hate apart from the unpleasant handle it's the horrible screen. The geometry sucks (gotta have to love those top left and bottom right corners) and it's one of the very few machines where the monitor has a lower resolution than the computer itself. The fact they straight downconvert the VIC-II's S-Video to composhite doesn't help either. So in the end you get a morphed image with color and resolution artifacts - not very good.
I had an after school cleaning job and as I was only 11 they weren't allowed to pay cash so I got to play on one of these. Fast forward 30 years and I just bought one! Dead ram so it's in the shop with a hefty $500 repair bill but I'm looking forward to getting it home.
Wow, didn´t know that.. as for the ac problem: I would have taken advantage of ac outlets on the airport of course... and doesn´t a SX 64 fit into the overhead locker? ;-)
I remember reading about these back in the day. I never seen one though. Would love to get one but my computer collection is taking up away too much space already. So I'm going to build a hand held C64 using a Raspberry Pi Zero... well... that is when I can ever find the time to do so.
Damnit. Mission Impossible. Once again I'm reminded and wondering those few words at beginning. I just can't figure out what is supposed to be heard before "stay awhile, stay forever".
Even though I didn't have the portable one, this was a great flashback to my C64/QuantumLink days. Thanks for the video. BTW, it looked like that modem blocked the power cord socket a little? Or was it just REALLY close?
Awesome review. By the way, is there power-led on this Commodore at all? If there is, which color it is? There seems to be Caps Lock-led at least, which color it is?
I read so much about these, yet I never so one in real life. I guess few (if any) reached Eastern Europe. Does it work with Commodore 64 hardware expansion cartridges? With 1764 Ram Expansion, CP/M Cart, 80 Column Video Cartridge, Magic Voice Speech Module and similar expansion boards?
This is the perfect computer to use in the garage/man cave. I do wish people would stop referring to it as the RUNSTOP key. When you press shift, it becomes the RUN key, and by itself it's the stop key, it's not the runstop key. Interestinly though on the C16 the shift+RUN combo defaults to the disk drive even though the system shipped with a datasette!!!!
In the Netherlands on second-hand sides they pop up every month, going from 250 tot 350 euro's. If there really are only 9000 of them a lot of them are sold here, or a lot more are made then the 9000.
interesting. on the flip side ive never seen one here in the USA. the last time i saw a SX-64 was when i was a kid at the department store back in 1985
btw, if you do research on Commodore or Atari never miss to consult the German wikipedia even if you have to google translate it. As both these companies were very big in Germany in the 80s. A lot of innovations and leads came from this market (professional use of Atari ST, Commodore PC range, etc.).
I can confirm what galier2 said. I live in Germany and I still have a SX-64 which I bought mid 80's. Before I had a in germany called VC-20 and a C-64. The VIC-20 would in german pronounciation mean translated to english "Fuck twenty" ;-) So they changed it to VC-20.
RUclips recommended this video for some reason, I've seen it before and I've seen many other videos on this C64 version, thing is I noticed something now that is a bit of a bummer. If I had one of these how would I be able to use my Ultimate II+ with it? I don't think the cable that comes with the Ultimate II+ is long enough for this.
At the time, I was an Atari then Amiga fan, so I never discovered this machine till about 10 years ago...the unit is cool, but the keyboards designs were not created to last.
It was not the first portable. The Compaq Portable was released in January of 1983. It was the first COLOR SCREEN portable, but not the first PORTABLE. The Compaq portable wasn't just the first portable, but it was also one of the first, if not the very first IBM-PC Compatible computer.
Osborne 1 was the first portable, followed by the Kaypro II (both CP/M machines). You are right though, that the Compaq Portable was the first IBM-PC clone portable (as well as the first IBM-PC clone, period). SX-64 was indeed the first color portable.
I assume someone must have come up with a SSD and/or SD flash storage interface for C-64s by now and, if so, that would be a great add-on for this portable C-64.
Anyone noticed the writing error on the cartridge version of shadow of the beast? at 3:19 It says "Pysgnonis" while, of course the company's name is "Psygnosis"
It's quite logical that it didn't sell at that time. Too expensive for its core demographics i.e. teenagers. For its price, one could get a C64+drive and a decent TV-set and some spare money for blank floppies (har har).
Holy crap. I have an SX-64 and am familiar with most Commodore products, but I've never heard of an A500 in an SX case. The small screen always made the graphics look better imo.
Interesting that it has no datasette port, a big deal in the UK / Europe where a LOT of software was released on tape, whilst a lot of this was on diskette too it wasn't always the case,
I wish you mentioned the lack of cassette drive port,i wonder why commodore didn’t better about that??? But hopefully theres a way to emulate the cassette drive dataset trough a cartride wich should be in theory possible trough a cartride interface adaptor to fool the cassette drive thinking it’s connected to a cassette port while fooling the sxgs into thinking that it reads stuff from cartrides,would be really cool to see that happen.
the 80s, what a time. 5 years later they had this: ruclips.net/video/S2C6mGREgb4/видео.html the NEC ultralight It was a great time but I also think people would have had lots of regrets buying something that was outdated 2 years later and often unusable within a few years because everything went so fast
I've owned several of these. They are kinda cool, but to be honest, the screen is not great and the keyboard is terrible. The keys feel rough like flat primer, and the action is not very good at all. You always find yourself placing a monitor on top, and then what is the point! I even had one in mint condition with original box and manuals. I eventually sold them all. I realized that if I really wanted a portable C64 I'd just use an emulator on my macbook. I'd choose a 128D over an SX64. Not saying I don't still like the machine but I found it to be not very practical unless you don't expect to ever have a monitor.
Do you know why the serial number on the main board is not the same as the serial on the back of your SX-64? ruclips.net/video/CIGjT-RjNbk/видео.html (You will see a serial on all boards)
Hmmm my SX-64 looked different inside .. It had a single pc board on the bottom like a regular C64 .. Monitor power supply ...mine must have been a later model when the simplified the design
Are you keeping up with the Commodore?
Oh yeaah |:V
....cause the commodore is keeping up with you.
Modern Vintage Gamer yup... Have a commodore 64! It is one of my first old pc's and i want to collect Some more.
You can see mine on my channel!
As of a week I'm the proud owner of an SX-64.
Oh yes I am
This is one system I still don't have in my collection. I actually think the changes they made to the ROM for the screen colors and default device number should have been implemented in ALL Commodore 64's. I always have this routine I do when I turn on any C64 where I press control-2 so that I can see the text more clearly. I think a lot of people do that. I also never realized the screen colors matched the VIC-20, although I should have since I've spent many hours behind a VIC-20. I always thought it was more similar to the Plus/4's bootup screen. But, after looking at your screenshots I realize it is not quite.
Yep ive always been a fan of the VIC colors myself so i was very pleased the first time i booted up the SX!. the Plus 4 was a purple on light gray with dark text. Not that similar. I'm thinking it wouldn't take much effort to modify an C64 Kernel to set the background/foreground/text color you want and flash that to an eeprom. Might be a cool little side project :)
Well, I actually did just that on my Commodore DTV. I changed the start color to white, but I left the blue background.
i love the original c64 classic colors.
Final Cardridge III did this very well. Fore- and background was deep blue, text was white
Like in this video ruclips.net/video/dVIDULlJJU8/видео.htmlm45s
Do you still not have this machine?
I had one of these when I was a kid, it was great. Having a computer all to yourself you could lug around from place to place was like living in the future. Sadly, the colors started flickering and I sold it at a lawn sale for like $20, along with a few hundred(!) game disks. Of course they were all pirated, I didn't even know you _could_ buy games at that point, but still there were so many games there. Little did I know that's probably an easy fix, but it's probably in a landfill now.
flickering colors is an easy fix :( oh well, if we only had access to the internet back then hehe
Horrible when we look back at some of the tech or games we used to have and probably threw out or gave away,now knowing how much they are worth now. It kills me 😔
So sad making such huge mistake as a kid but we simply just didn’t knew better untill it was too late,ouch🥲🥲🥲
Great video - love the advert at the start there! What a clever bit of advertising!
I had one functioning out of purchased broken units from ebay literally 10 years ago...it still was not cheap to do. I think I'll change some capacitor's soon to get one going again...great video and a very rare machine. Back in the day I was an Atari fan until the Amiga, so I did not even know of this machine's existence till literally 10 years ago when I saught one out. It still amazes me how much as adults we will spend either reclaiming old tech favorites or simply vintage tech we could not afford as kids.
Great and fun video to watch! I love that you took it all apart, I think that's the first time I've seen a video of the internals. Great collectible, though I'm not too sure it had or has any real interest in terms of everyday use. Nobody was buying that back in the day to play games in their hotel room, they bought it because they used one at their business to do whatever book keeping or word processing they needed. That market was incredibly small as IBM dominated the truly professional work environments, the ones with a real need to use a computer on the go. Today? It would never leave the house and you'd be playing on a screen not much bigger than a gameboy. It does look beautiful though, I know you'll give it a good home.
Nice review and video! I'm fascinated by the commodore 64 itself though knew little about the SX-64.
Shadow of the beast looks and sounds great on here!
I used to work on the NSW railways and one of our traffic inspectors, bought of these and would lug it and a dot matrix printer from one station to another or head office to do his work. I got to admit as a C64 owner back then myself, I thought he was nuts to carry something that heavy and with that tiny a screen with him everywhere. Now I can appreciate, he was really ahead of the curve with his work and could see the future of portable computers long before I did.
I am impressed by how well the colours pop on it's tiny CRT. Almost makes it look a generation ahead of it's time.
I had one of those up until earlier in the year when I finally sold it. I learnt programming on it back in the day :)
valcarni1 I cut my teeth on this model, too.
I've long wondered if these machines have video-out capability. Thanks for your review, nice video.
It's funny, when I initially got my own PS2, all i had for a TV Screen was a 5.5" CRT B/W Monitor from a karaoke machine I had gotten in previous years. My first game on the system was Burnout Revenge. You don't know how difficult it was to play a game like that on that display with the fast pace and with no color. I still had a blast, upgraded soon after though to a 13" CRT TV (with color! Ha!).
Omg they fucked up spelling Psygnosis on that cart. Classic!!!
Shadow of the Beast!
Lol. I also had to rewind few times to be sure. There's been quite high QC on that game :D
Love my SX-64
You guys need to see about the 64 computer and the 64-SX handheld console.You'll definitely be keeping up with the commodore.Share this with the world along with #IAdoreMy64 and bring back the legend
This was my first computer. It was great! I matched it with a 300 baud modem and an Okidata Okimate 10 color printer. Color printing so great you could almost make out the images!
Fantastic piece of hardware.
I love the screen!
What? If there's one weak point in the SX64 which I hate apart from the unpleasant handle it's the horrible screen. The geometry sucks (gotta have to love those top left and bottom right corners) and it's one of the very few machines where the monitor has a lower resolution than the computer itself. The fact they straight downconvert the VIC-II's S-Video to composhite doesn't help either. So in the end you get a morphed image with color and resolution artifacts - not very good.
@@1337Shockwav3 You could probably create a Y/C mod the bypassed to composite encoding/decoding, wouldn't fix the low dot pitch though. xD
I had an after school cleaning job and as I was only 11 they weren't allowed to pay cash so I got to play on one of these. Fast forward 30 years and I just bought one! Dead ram so it's in the shop with a hefty $500 repair bill but I'm looking forward to getting it home.
That´s what I would have done back in the days: sitting at the airport waiting for my flight blasting power drift on my SX 64.
Wow, didn´t know that.. as for the ac problem: I would have taken advantage of ac outlets on the airport of course... and doesn´t a SX 64 fit into the overhead locker? ;-)
@@verficationaccount you don't want to put your prototype in the overhead locker in case of turbulence
I remember reading about these back in the day. I never seen one though. Would love to get one but my computer collection is taking up away too much space already. So I'm going to build a hand held C64 using a Raspberry Pi Zero... well... that is when I can ever find the time to do so.
Damnit. Mission Impossible. Once again I'm reminded and wondering those few words at beginning. I just can't figure out what is supposed to be heard before "stay awhile, stay forever".
"Another visitor."
Great video, really well done. Thanks
This giant portible beast is a classic, thumbs up if you still use it for business as business man anno 2017.
Even though I didn't have the portable one, this was a great flashback to my C64/QuantumLink days. Thanks for the video.
BTW, it looked like that modem blocked the power cord socket a little? Or was it just REALLY close?
I dream of finding one of these. Commodore SX-64
"at twice the price" sounds as if the commodore was twice the price of the pc and apple
This is my favarite looking retro computer it looks like some kind of hospital tool
Awesome review. By the way, is there power-led on this Commodore at all? If there is, which color it is? There seems to be Caps Lock-led at least, which color it is?
Another great video bud!
I read so much about these, yet I never so one in real life. I guess few (if any) reached Eastern Europe. Does it work with Commodore 64 hardware expansion cartridges? With 1764 Ram Expansion, CP/M Cart, 80 Column Video Cartridge, Magic Voice Speech Module and similar expansion boards?
This is the perfect computer to use in the garage/man cave.
I do wish people would stop referring to it as the RUNSTOP key.
When you press shift, it becomes the RUN key, and by itself it's the stop key, it's not the runstop key. Interestinly though on the C16 the shift+RUN combo defaults to the disk drive even though the system shipped with a datasette!!!!
really enjoyed watching this video mate !!
ive not been on RUclips much , hope things are good your way buddy ? :)
In the Netherlands on second-hand sides they pop up every month, going from 250 tot 350 euro's. If there really are only 9000 of them a lot of them are sold here, or a lot more are made then the 9000.
interesting. on the flip side ive never seen one here in the USA. the last time i saw a SX-64 was when i was a kid at the department store back in 1985
According to the German wikipedia more than 49000 sx-64 were built and they prove it by serial number ranges. They cite 049807 as the highest SN.
btw, if you do research on Commodore or Atari never miss to consult the German wikipedia even if you have to google translate it. As both these companies were very big in Germany in the 80s. A lot of innovations and leads came from this market (professional use of Atari ST, Commodore PC range, etc.).
I can confirm what galier2 said. I live in Germany and I still have a SX-64 which I bought mid 80's. Before I had a in germany called VC-20 and a C-64.
The VIC-20 would in german pronounciation mean translated to english "Fuck twenty" ;-) So they changed it to VC-20.
Adjusted for inflation that's close to $2300 today.
For that same amount or less you can get a great gaming laptop with 2 1TB Solid State Drives and max memory upgrades.
Good review..
RUclips recommended this video for some reason, I've seen it before and I've seen many other videos on this C64 version, thing is I noticed something now that is a bit of a bummer. If I had one of these how would I be able to use my Ultimate II+ with it? I don't think the cable that comes with the Ultimate II+ is long enough for this.
At the time, I was an Atari then Amiga fan, so I never discovered this machine till about 10 years ago...the unit is cool, but the keyboards designs were not created to last.
It was not the first portable. The Compaq Portable was released in January of 1983. It was the first COLOR SCREEN portable, but not the first PORTABLE. The Compaq portable wasn't just the first portable, but it was also one of the first, if not the very first IBM-PC Compatible computer.
Osborne 1 was the first portable, followed by the Kaypro II (both CP/M machines). You are right though, that the Compaq Portable was the first IBM-PC clone portable (as well as the first IBM-PC clone, period). SX-64 was indeed the first color portable.
I assume someone must have come up with a SSD and/or SD flash storage interface for C-64s by now and, if so, that would be a great add-on for this portable C-64.
thats what the 1541 Ultimate II cartridge is used for :)
There is: SD2IEC, a tiny floppy drive replica in which you put an SD-card.
Any Vegan Software availible for SX 64, CPM options ?
Anyone noticed the writing error on the cartridge version of shadow of the beast?
at 3:19
It says "Pysgnonis" while, of course the company's name is "Psygnosis"
It's quite logical that it didn't sell at that time. Too expensive for its core demographics i.e. teenagers. For its price, one could get a C64+drive and a decent TV-set and some spare money for blank floppies (har har).
whats this driving game played at the end of the video?
PowerDrift !
thx!
I still have on of these in my closet.
I have SX-64 :) There was single SX-500 unit Portable A500!!
very cool. yep i heard Dale Luck has a prototype Portable A500 in his warehouse. that would be amazing to see!
Holy crap. I have an SX-64 and am familiar with most Commodore products, but I've never heard of an A500 in an SX case. The small screen always made the graphics look better imo.
I had the chance to purchase this model of c64 just last week, but someone had picked it up already.
I have one of these too.
Man, what I wouldn't give to own an SX-64. PAL, of course. But yeah... nice to see them still around and kicking.
Mission Impossible..great game
P Y SGNOSIS?
Interesting that it has no datasette port, a big deal in the UK / Europe where a LOT of software was released on tape, whilst a lot of this was on diskette too it wasn't always the case,
They even misspelled their company name as "pysgnosis" ^^
I think I only vaguely remember this. Interesting... 👍
does anyone else get stuck in graphics mode when using SX64 emulation in vice?
The cursor won't delete or even move. Shift doesn't do crap
Wow...its 2019 now...is your unit still working today?
Nice:)
I wish you mentioned the lack of cassette drive port,i wonder why commodore didn’t better about that???
But hopefully theres a way to emulate the cassette drive dataset trough a cartride wich should be in theory possible trough a cartride interface adaptor to fool the cassette drive thinking it’s connected to a cassette port while fooling the sxgs into thinking that it reads stuff from cartrides,would be really cool to see that happen.
Beautiful.
OMG!
the 80s, what a time. 5 years later they had this: ruclips.net/video/S2C6mGREgb4/видео.html the NEC ultralight
It was a great time but I also think people would have had lots of regrets buying something that was outdated 2 years later and often unusable within a few years because everything went so fast
I've owned several of these. They are kinda cool, but to be honest, the screen is not great and the keyboard is terrible. The keys feel rough like flat primer, and the action is not very good at all. You always find yourself placing a monitor on top, and then what is the point! I even had one in mint condition with original box and manuals. I eventually sold them all. I realized that if I really wanted a portable C64 I'd just use an emulator on my macbook. I'd choose a 128D over an SX64. Not saying I don't still like the machine but I found it to be not very practical unless you don't expect to ever have a monitor.
The SX-64 was the first color portable computer, and it lacked the cassette-port....
Is it actually "PYSGNOSIS" scrolling across the screen ??? 🤣 (PSYGNOSIS!!!)
Do you know why the serial number on the main board is not the same as the serial on the back of your SX-64?
ruclips.net/video/CIGjT-RjNbk/видео.html
(You will see a serial on all boards)
:)
This nigga has a good channel
What are with these commercials?! If I have this Commadore computer I can jog and hook up with hot chicks?! LOL!
Hmmm my SX-64 looked different inside .. It had a single pc board on the bottom like a regular C64 .. Monitor power supply ...mine must have been a later model when the simplified the design