November 2017
A small add appeared on the Dutch Marketplace. Several Commodore 64’s, books and a lot of cartridges for sale. My eye caught something unusual, a device with MAC64 printed on it. I tried to find any info on that one, and the only thing i could find was the following article:
I seems that i found an oscilloscope, volt meter and logic analyzer for the Commodore 64!
Decided on bidding, and for three hectic days i was bidding against some other interested buyers, ending up with a final bid of 170 euro. Quit promising.
Seller Jan was selling this set from Vrieschel00, norther part of Holland (very nothern part…). A two hour drive, and that after a long day of work. Had a nice chat and a cup of tea with Jan and his wife. They moved over there from Noord-Holland and he was selling the set for a friend over there. If I remember correctly I ended up with four big boxes full of Commodore related goodies to take home!
Although the MAC64 cartridge was working, i was missing the actual probe for measuring. Since the actual company which made them back then was still in operation, I contacted Rob of Maris Electronics. He still had one available, after 30 years and it is now being shipped to the Netherlands, thanks Rob!!! Upon receiving i can test the device. The unit was complete including all documentation.
With the collection came some Commodore PET books, which i could immediately sell for 60 euros, which was a nice surprise. Was not expecting that those books where valued that much.
Second surprise was a “silver label” without a silver label 😉 One of the C64’s was an rather low serial number (WGC5072) with a board KU14194HB. Together with the 326298 boards they are considered the “silver labels”, early ’82/’83 C64’s. The SID chip was broken, but replaced with a working ’82 one which i still had. The actual silver label itself was replaces by an rainbow one. This could mean two things, either the upper part of the casing was replaced, or the C64 came back from official repairs (RMA). Commodore replaced the actual silver label back then with the rainbow one after repairs. I took a better look at the board, and noticed some soldering repairs at the power switch. Guess it was an RMA, but still very happy with this one.
All the programming books went to Dion in Leiden, he is more into the programming aspects of the Commodore 64.
Jan informed me a week later that he had another Commodore 64C, boxed, with quit some cartridges, about 8. He shipped it to me for 50 euro’s. Besides the “normal” Power Cartridges and Final Cartridges, I got the Viditel Telesoft Terminal 64, a light pen, a Com-in 64, eprommer, userport extender, cartridge port expander etc. Forgot to make any photo’s of the whole set!
The Com-In 64 is communications interface for radio communications, manual included and written, again, by Rob Maris (MAC64). This one is sadly enough incomplete, seemed that a the actual I/O board is missing.
I published a short message on Facebook about the MAC64 , and the next day the guy who was bidding against me contacted me. He would like to buy some of the books which already ended up at somebody else, weird story. But I guess he was expecting to buy some Apple Macintosh stuff due to the name “MAC64”. Otherwise it is just weird why you want to offer 170 euro for just some books.
In the end he bought a C64C and 1541-II drive set from me last month, came by train and that is some dedication to get a C64!
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