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I'm looking for a guy (Europe) that can sell me a Commodore 64 fully working and in a good condition. (Possibly with manuals included too).

Anyone can help?

Give a good (computer) flea market a try, read classified ads or watch the offers at a well known online auction portal.

Been there done that. Strangely enough most sellers are based in US - and since I don't have a credit card available...

Ebay, my friend. www.ebay.com for USA/Canada (NTSC), and www.ebay.co.uk or www.ebay.de for Europe (PAL). Of course, if you want to view demos, you'll pretty much need a PAL one, and PAL display hardware (or a cheap TV-in card for PC).

And don't mess up the voltage!

i simply bought one at ebay.de... it wasn't really cheap (35€ or something), but it works fine. disk drives are usually a lot cheaper. which country do you live in?

Portugal. Humm - I guess I'll try ebay.de - I mainly want the C64 for watching demos and to get my Chip fix... (And possibly create some chip for others too).

Speaking of C64, how do you watch demos on C64 today? I mean, is it still possible to buy 5.25" disks or can you get a 3.5" drive?

Just to let you know I am the happy owner of a Commodore 64 - well I hope the seller doesn't rip me off ;). Thanks for the tips! (And no, it wasn't THAT cheap)

I am also searching for a C64, or actually waiting for a snailmail contacter of me to send me one (hope he got my letter).

front243: As far as I have heard, they still use 5,25" drives,.. hopefully I have kept enough old PC 5,25" disks to use. I have heard there is a 3,5" drive for C64, but it was buggy or something, as a hardware, so nobody uses it. Everyone still copies and swaps with 5,25" yeah right! I am glad I kept a lot of disks and bought more from a store selling old PC hardware..

i don't think you can write C64 disks on a PC 5,25'' drive... the way to go is hooking a 1541 to the parallel port via a special cable (X-1541 or XE-1541, there are different models). needless to say, i got that cable over ebay too.

transferring files is quite a hassle because it only works in plain DOS (yes, you have to boot). windows just isn't able to provide accurate enough timing.

(side thought: i guess BeOS would be an alternative here... they once demonstrated an interrupt based PC speaker digitized sound output routine - you need some damn accurate timing for that.)

optimus: just hope that most of your floppies are dsdd. (dshd won't work)

front: afaik some oldskool dealers still own huge amounts of 5,25" floppies, so when you search a little bit it should be possible to buy some even new ones.

I think I got a couple of c64s left, and some other puters, crap and junk like amiga500s , and some fine atariSTs too =)

jazzman:
Well, guess you're living in the very oldfashioned past...! ;-)
X-ferring disk-images to 'real' 5.25" disks via a conncted 1541 drive to the PC is not at all a problem if you don't have a real DOS anymore...
Yep, it even works perfectly under Windows XP!! ;-) Simply yous Star Commander and everything works fine in any situation!

C64 is _unstoppable_ !! Even Billy Boy can't stop this little machine to be able to x-fer it's cool software to its disk-drive using a multi-tasking environment! ;-)

C64 simply ruuuuuulezzzzzz forever! ;-D

Just wanted to let you and everyone else know... ;-)

I have heard about that Xcables, I guess that's what I will need to get next, but I didn't knew it's not possible to use high density 5,25 for C64. A guy in the store, told me I can possibly format them as double density and use them so. He also told me a trick that C64ians did, cutting symmetrically a second gap to be able to flip a disk and use it as two sided. Hopefully many of my old disks are double density but I have enough high density too, which I would love to use..

It's nice to see that StarCommander can be used to do this job under WindowsXP. However I still use DOS, so I won't have any problems. A similar disk image transfering programm, used for my Amstrad CPC and also AtariSt, called cpdwrite, also fuxx up under windows because of timing. In a friend it too, because he had overclocked his PC. To work, it needs DOS without overclocked CPU..

And yes, I have heard BeOS was a very promising, stable and strong multitasking system, more than windows or linux as far as I have heard. It's a pitty it failed.. (At least I have heard, the company stopped supporting it, or something..)

um, really, weasel? have you tried? the amount of smileys in your post confuses me ;-)

i haven't tried it in Win2K actually... should do that. does turbo mode work too?

Probably pretty useless for Blackie, but there's a store here in Amsterdam (about 100 metres from Central Station) that buys, refurbishes and sells vintage microcomputers and consoles. The starting price for a C64 was about 20 euros, 30 for a breadbox model. They had a couple of magnavoxes last time I was there :) Pretty good store for original manuals, controllers and games too.

If anyone's interested, I might want to dig up the name of that place ;)

jazzman:
sorry for confusing you! ;-) Wasn't meant to do so...
Sure! It works perfectly...I use it whenever I need to!
Still watching many 64-demos and stuff on the 'real thing' of course! And therefore I need to x-fer those d64 files to real floppies of course.
Also was very sad when in the very beginning star commander was no more working with windows (when DOS was skipped by the OS in the end...)
But there are tweaks and fixes to the tool meanwhile which make it work great with windows as well...
So if you have any problem with DOS...it's luckily no biggie anymore and you can still x-fer whatever direction you need to...
(ok...just to not hide it: sometimes it (still) loses timing and you have to restart the tool and/or the floppy drive...but it happens just sometimes..not all the time! ;-) )

optimus:
Well, it's true! Most of the times HD disks don't work with a 1541-floppy drive of a c64... :-(
So gather as many DD disks as you can still find! You'll surely never regret that in the future!
The 'gap' for being able to flip the disk has nothing to do with HD or DD..it's just for flipping the disk. Nothing else ;-)
Hope I could help...

Like I said previously I already bought one. But thanks for you guys help anyway!

I guess, I am the only one now that is waiting for his C64 and my letter friend has not sent me anything back yet..

with the gap you could use a SSDD (single sided...) marked disk as DSDD (double sided), if you were lucky. :) but i seriously doubt you can find any SSDD disks anywhere...
so now, this is useful only for flipping the disk. but that's an useful feature, if you don't want to lose one side completely :)

how much would you offer for a one including rob hubbard signature? :-)

Optimus: Relax - I still haven't mine too. Mail services go crazy by Xmas time...

You see the trouble in buying old computers is that people who have them are normally emotionally very attached to them - and either they simply don't sell or do at unrealistic prices. I had possible local C64 deals but everyone goes like "Gee, my father gave it to me Xmas 198? - I can't sell the damn thing, it's a part of my background..."

Hell, I wouldn't part with my Speccy too (even though the keys don't work anymore)! (Actually there's a replacement for them costing 20€ but hey I just bought a fully functional +2 for a little more.)

I *had* to give my Amiga to a cousin though (sniff, sniff).

Still there are a lot of people who sell their C64 for cheap prices at Ebay (of Germany, or UK, or USA as far as I have checked,. but we have a small Ebay style in Greece which has very rare C64 and very expensive and many people who get them from me :P), a lot of other C64 go to the garbage, lot more remaining in stores,. much more than the ones that nostalgic people don't want to share. Afteralls, I think C64 is the microcomputer with the most sells around the world. I think too many of them were sold in Germany, but I don't remember the exact numbers. I have read that in Guiness records. There are still a lot of C64 to find. I haven't used foreign Ebay to get a C64 for me yet btw, cause I was afraid of that and preferred to search through Greece for the moment. But my mail contacter said he will still send me one and I will pay only the postal costs..