Month: January 2019

1084S

I lucked out on this one! I discovered a 1084S on Yahoo Auctions. It was listed as untested, so I didn’t have a lot of faith that it would work. Consequently, I didn’t want to spend too much, so I assumed I wasn’t going to win the auction. But whether it was due to the unknown working condition, the misprint (it was listed as a 1984S, not 1084S), or the holiday period, I won the auction at 1000 yen (about $9), with shipping being set at a special low price of 1111 yen.

Post-cleaning. I always forget to take a “before” picture.

When it arrived, I was pretty nervous about whether or not it would work. It wasn’t a big financial investment, but if it doesn’t work, I don’t have the space for it, but I couldn’t possibly allow it to be thrown away. I certainly can’t fix it! But miraculously, it just worked!

It seems to only support NTSC, so it is a good match for my Commodore 128, but I am waiting on a cable for it. The cable was more expensive than the monitor itself!

Replacement Commodore 128

I recently bought another Commodore 128 on eBay. According to the auction’s description, this is an unused system. I have no way of knowing if that’s true or not, but anyway it’s in quite clean shape!

I bought this one because, even though it is less compatible, I wanted to switch back to NTSC, as I had used when I was a teenager. There are three reasons I wanted to go NTSC.

First, in subtle ways, it is more nostalgic. For example, the loading sequence when I start up Karateka is the way I remember it from my teens. Music also sometimes matches the speed of playback that I used to hear it.

Second, NTSC displays at 60Hz, which I feel leads to a much crisper picture. I don’t suspect you can tell by a still photo, and the second image is neither NTSC nor PAL, but anyway the picture looks great!

Third, with NTSC, depending on the game, it uses more of the available screen real estate. Borders are smaller. For example, in my favorite Commodore 64 game, Alternate Reality,: The Dungeon, the title screen goes nearly to the very top and bottom of the screen.

As I mentioned, I don’t know if it is truly unused or not, but the keyboard feels really smooth to the press and is easy to type on. I noticed a small amount of dirt here and there, so it really might have been used, but I knew that possibility when I bought it, and I am most satisfied with it.