Adding HDMI Output to the Commodore 64
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 8 ก.พ. 2025
- In this video I remove the RF modulator from a breadbin 64 and replace it with a composite to HDMI converter. This gives me an HDMI output directly from the 64 without needing external parts. I found the HDMI converter on Amazon for like $10. The ribbon cable and HDMI coupler added about $15 to the project and for a grand total of about $25, I've now got a nice 64 that plugs right into modern TV's.
Just subscribed. No clue, how I’ve missed your channel so far! Hacker-brained you are! Love the idea of gutting that converter and making it a FINALLY useful thing to have in place of the RF noisemaker. The kawari is not commodore, I see it as a step too far away. Thank you for the video! I will jump right on this mod on my heavily modded breadbin C64.
On some if not all 326298 boards, R10 is 300ohms when it should be 120 ohms. Bridge it with a 220 ohm resistor or replace it with a 120 ohm resistor to improve the brightness. Remove C73 to improve the sharpness. It will look much better.
The day when my mental core melted like Chernobyl and Fugushima reactors combined went like this:
I went to see my mother like I do now and then to change the news and drink a cup of coffee.
Now the history of my Commodore 64 is that I got my own a way back in the summer of 1988. It was the second version C64 and first I had only cassette deck and few games but after all those years I had like every game that you can almost imagine and floppy disk and all. When I got my C64 I was 4 years old and I basicly learned to read and write with that C64. Also I learned to read and understand english language very early when I was 6 or so countles hours playing and coding with that amazing machine over the years.
After 90's I found out that my C64 is in a safe place at my moms apartment above my old rooms closet and there it was all the way to the year 2015. I had a habit to go and check it out about once a year, clean it and play some favourite games.
But this day was different... My mom was happy as usual and we changed our news and then I told her that "oh by the way, I came to check out my old computer stuff like I do every year"
My moms response was more or less different than usual "oh ok... "
It was "what computer?"
And I told her that I mean my old C64 that i have had from all the way from 80's and that I have kept it safe in my closet.
My mom: "OHH You mean those old junks and keyboards! Don't you worry honey, I cleaned you're closet for you and I threw away all those old junks to the carbage pin.."
............
After I survived inhaling the whole cup of coffee, with the cup into my left lung, I went to the closet and there it was. Empty shell with light plastic bag on it. Inside the bag was only the cassette deck and C64 power transformer.
I asked my mom that why did she kept these, she said:
"Oh those, they looked more or less important so I kept them for you to decide what to do wirh those. Last thing I want to do is to throw away something that is important for you..."
So the lesaon learned from this is, go to youre parents house and restorage everything important that is more than 10 years old, because youre parents will get old and...... 😂
Funny thing is that the cassette deck and trasformer is still in that bag, in that closet and its 2021 😜🕺
I will do the same with a C16. The PCB of the C16 is a bit smaller, so I gonna keep the RF-Modulator. And I try to use the HDMI-Connector directly without any adaptor-cable. And the next step will be integrating a SD2IEC-Module into the same case.
Thanks for the technical details.
Diehard and A Christmas Story can't be beat :) The commodore christmas demo's were great too.nice job. slick way to add Hdmi out.
Could have run a mini HDMIfrom one of the openings left by the RF modulator
That is a hell of a bookcase.
Why did you use composite instead of Y/C as your source for the converter? You could've gotten a much better image by tapping the Y/C lines. (A converter that accepts Y/C is not any more expensive)
No particular reason. There is definitely room for improvement.
@@thecommodoreroom4554 I’d love to see a video for that ! You already inspired me though, thanks.
Which revision of motherboard do you have? All the ones I know of needs the modulator in place to enable video out on the din connector. Yours seems to be an early version but even so I can't find a schematic that matches yours.
This is what I have in the video myoldcomputer.nl/technical-info/mainboards/commodore-64/board-326298-01-c64/ And you are correct, other revisions will need some other tweaks in order to remove the modulator and still get video out. I was just trying to get the Christmas demo on my TV, so I didn't really put any thought into video quality or other revisions of the board. I was thinking of doing a video on this with a 64c and show how to do it on that type of system, with better quality, etc.
@@thecommodoreroom4554 I knew it was an early revision but I have never seen one before KU-14194HB version. I'm surprised you modified such an early machine considering you have other less valuable boxes around. Love your videos and I'm currently catching up on your older videos. Keep up the good work.
Great video! Already got me with the die hard confession, got even better! Happy holidays and merry Christmas from germany!
Happy new year and thanks for watching!
Quick question : does this work on the c64c 250469 also?
I’m not sure. I’ll take a look at the schematic and see if it looks possible. I’m sure I have that revision around here someplace so I could test it out.
Based on the schematic you’d have to do a couple things once you pulled the modulator. But it should work with some tweaks. I was going to do an improved version with better picture quality so I’ll see if I have this board and I’ll use it.
you could do it but you'd need to add one of the RF modulator delete boards as well
The Commodore Room I hope you do, I’d be very interested in a newer board conversion.
Fantastic job! Can you and a link the converter in the description please? Fantastic job
Is there any signal or output lag now? i read about 3 seconds lag if you using that kind of hdmi converters? would be awful if you do a jump & run and the lag is feelable.
There is about a 2-3 second lag on power up in which the screen is blank but beyond that I haven't noticed anything. I've played quite a bit of Mr. Do (my latest addictive game on the 64) and it's perfect. I have noticed some HDMI lag on some TV's with other systems, but I totally forgot about it until I saw your message. So I guess this particular cheap converter works very well!
@@thecommodoreroom4554 Thank you so much for the helpful answer. Now i need to find the same converter in Germany.
A nice mod!
My question is why my av2hdmi dont work on the C64, but it works on the Zx Spectrum?
Beacuse the signal coming from C64 is far from "right in the spec" of input parametres AV2HDMI accepts. It is notorious for C64 that video signals are problematic for many displays due to 15kHz, luma singnals "out of" range, noise from modulator etc. Zx Spectrum on the other hand can be easily modded to composite and produces nice and strong, acceptable signal. But don't quote me on Zx Spectrum case - i use ZX-HD and ZX-VGA-JOY for Zx but in the 80's i was using home-made Interface-2 compatible device with bult in AV mod to connect old CRT monitor mass produced in Poland ( before it was RF and color-TV ). I'm annoyed with C64 because my old breadbin is nasty with video. I tried Lumafix, i tried HQ cables with S-video and the quality is s**t. I'm going to remove RF modulator and try agaun with modern-digitised counterpart if not HDMI as shown above :)
Video stupendo,un lavoro perfetto con l'HDMI del C64,bravo!
Very surprised to see there are revisions of the c64 that will output video without the modulator.
About 7 different boards, over the years, iirc
Also jam in 2 new WDC 6522 replacements. $11 each.
Why wouldn't you turn the board 90ª so you could plug an external HDMI cable directly into the board thru the case?
I would have had to drill at least 3 holes into the main PCB which I was trying to avoid. With the circuit traces I’m not sure drilling would have been possible. Also due to the positioning of the hdmi connector on the converter, the connection have have been recessed more than I wanted.
All that being said, there is a lot of room for improvement.
I would find the 5 volt point on the board and solder a cable to it.
An S-video converter is even better.
@The Commodre Room - do you think it's possible to go from HDMI to RGBI ? I have a Commodore 1902A monitor that I'm going to connect a digital source to. I can go HDMI->Composite easily enough, but I was just wondering if I could use the better quality RGBI input? (this is for an "art project" so to speak, I'm not just looking for a good CRT monitor to use, I want to use this 1902A for a specific project I have in mind)
Hi, you should be able to do that without too much trouble. I'd have to look up the 1902A inputs, but RGBI is a component-type input so you'd just need an HDMI converter that outputs the RGB components. A quick amazon search pulled up a few. I've never tried it so there could be some hidden details I'm not thinking of... Obviously if the HDMI is carrying a lot of information, you may lose some (i.e. the 1902A isn't a wide screen monitor). Another thought would be to look around for "hooking up HDMI sources to older monitors"...good luck, sounds interesting ;-)
@@thecommodoreroom4554 ok great thanks for the tip. I didn't think it would be as straightforward as just being component video
P.s. the RGBI is a DIN input by the way, not separate RCA inputs like component
@@jeffmccloud905 RGBI is not appropriate for the C64 as the CGA color palette is not the same as the C64 color palette. If you convert C64 graphics to RGBI at best you get the wrong colors (CGA colors), at worst 2 colors become fused into one RGBI color or noise from the VIC-II causes the converter to flip between two colors.
,
EDIT: To show what I mean, here are the two VIC-II color palettes (old one with 5 luminence levels -- counting white and black, new one with 9): ilesj.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/c64-luminance-comparison.png
Here is the RGBI palette: 1.bp.blogspot.com/-EpD1P8gDZVg/Vy7QCJ_KemI/AAAAAAAAGP8/PxBCVjq4mhMe6631jhA5TW6PnOPUgldvACLcB/s1600/Untitled%2B0.png
@@jeffmccloud905 The issue becomes apparent, even if you're not trying for exact colors, when you consider that RGBI has two levels of cyan while the C64 only has one, two levels of magenta when the C64 doesn't have magenta at all, while the C64 has violet and orange, which RGBI does not have at all. C64 violet could map okay to one of the magentas and not look totally terrible, but close color for C64 orange (#DD8855) in RGBI is Brown (#AA5500), which is already busy handling the C64's brown (#664400).
So if you converted C64 output to RGBI all the colors would look wonky and orange and brown would map to the same color.
10:50 A genuine "UniBit" (by Irwin tools, 1, single relief flute) is faster than "whittlin" with a knife
What a cool project. I hope you make a video about the pi project at the end of this video.
You need to use S-Video even on a full size 300 bucks well respected converter never mind some mini converter, which is probably doing a worse job than the terrible digitiser used inside my 65 inch 3D Plasm (most expensive TV when released lol).
I got this converter as a bonus from some chap with Super Famicom. Its quality is bad. Like the quality cheapest composite video grabber bad. Hence I consider this project in the video as absolutely idiotic. Especially since even if it was for which TV didn't have composite video input one could just put the converted behind the TV and power it on from usb port which TV's tend to have these days.
@@e8root My 2000 EURO (when new) Plasma TV has horrendous composite video digitiser inside for conversion. Composite video always needs broadcast quality HDMI conversion equipment to feed an LCD/LED/OLED/Plasma screen, garbage in garbage out as they say.
@@madcommodore I can easily imagine this to be true, some TV's have horrible composite inputs. I am just not approving your choice of the converter because if you do this kind of mod you should get proper solution eg. Retrotink 2X Mini would do much much better job and at 79 bucks it is not prohibitively expensive. Retrotink is designed for 240p/288p signals and can resolve sharp per-pixel details, not to mention it supports separate luma/chroma smf has near zero input lag. Cheap composite HDMI converters are designed to allow run of the mill monitor to input 480i/576i signals and do not even know what 240p/288p signals are and they also add as much latency as typical TV composite input adds. It would make sense to put the best stuff in to your Commodore, wouldn't it?
@@e8root I don't like using anything below native SCART RGB analog based consoles/computers on LCDs/Plasma anyway. CRT tubes also generate the images in a completely different way so I'd rather spend 80 quid on a CRT TV for retro gaming lol that's how those graphics were designed.
@@madcommodore Obviously CRT is the way to go for retro, especially for hardware where games/demos ran 50/60fps as those will only look truly as sharp when things are moving on CRT. As for RGB or not-RGB for me it all depends on system and context. I like using original retro hardware the way it was intended to be used and for something like NES or C64 I would never consider RGB mods and C64 I might even choose Composite. Otherwise if actually really got in to C64 recently on Mister FPGA and here I have it in is in FullRGB glory :) I did however change color palette to colodore and added very slight hanover bar effect to break monotony. Not sure why but I immediately felt C64 needs it.
Nice! Creative solution.
Hi
Links to these components? 👍
Why wouldn't your orient the adapter such that the HDMI is aiming out the back of the machine?
The hdmi converter is mounted fairy securely but not enough to hold up to plugging and unplugging of the cable. Turning it would have required drilling some holes and I didn’t want to get into that just yet. There is a lot of room for improvement for sure.
Just subscribed. Neat project, but as others have noted, it works only for certain models without additional circuit changes. I was worried that you'd be stuck with stretched video but in the end you seem to have gotten to aspect ratio right. Stretched video is unforgiveable!
Yeah, I really don't like stretched video either. I do have a 64C that I modded in this way with the required changes to remove the modulator. I'll post that one when I get a chance. Thanks and take care!
Hello, what about imput lag on videogames?
I’m sure there is some but it’s not noticeable. That’s why I choose this particular converter. Some of the others I tried the lag was significant.
Try from luma chroma 😉 Copperdragon have the component-rgb mod
The video output from the HDMI looked a little soft, or was that the camera focus?
It is. I really was just trying HDMI and wasn’t focusing on image quality. I have some tweaks to sharpen the image. That’s coming in an upcoming video.
For a better picture quality get a RetroTINK 2X Pro. It is outstanding!
I'll have to check that out, I'm not familiar with that one. Thanks for the info!!
I can't bring myself to cut up a collectable computer
Nice video , but this mod would be perfect for an ATARI. PLZ do such a video.
Very interesting. I think I'll try this with my shop/test 64
Buongiorno video e idea bellissima anche per le spiegazioni dei contatti ma ogni Commodore cambia nel mio assy 250407 i contatti sono diversi e non so quali siano audio video ecc. Devi fare un video anche con il il mio assy 😂😂scherzo cmq complimenti
So OBVIOUSLY there is NO simple way to do this, without having to taking shit apart and soldering components, etc!
I have this adapter and it is not even remotely good. Pretty much the kind of quality that TV composite input tend to have
i want rgb from my 1701
thank you for the video, food for thought! i might try this :-) liked and subbed - look forward to the next video
Awesome! Thank you!
Why would you do this?
Masterpiece! Greetings from POLAND!
Great video, Lige! Can this be done the same way on a C64c?
Thanks! And sadly no. But I have looked at a couple schematics and will post an update with the 64C and also with better video quality. From what I’ve seen it’s not a big change but you can’t simply remove the modulator in most of the motherboard revisions.
@@thecommodoreroom4554 th-cam.com/video/Qb9n6S4cKuk/w-d-xo.html
Well done and just in time for the season lol
Sorry, I am a purist. I am sad to see this c64 moded.
Understood. I have many 64's (an embarrassing number if I'm being honest). I like to have each box, with the original machine in pristine, original condition, even down to the original plastic they were wrapped in...a few even have the original receipt!. The others I tinker with...which helps me learn and repair as needed. Thanks for watching.
HDMI sucks.