Friends, Rejoice With Me!

The SX-64 has not arrived yet. It's like counting down the days until Christmas! I created my first 'hello world' program in machine language the other day, and I've been working on fixing up an SFD-1001 that, at present, only reads from the bottom side of disks. That endeavour alone deserves its own post. My wifi modem and user-port RS-232 adapters all arrived, still waiting on a EZ Flash III cartridge and a Super Graphics Gold - lots of C64 tinkering going on these days but as yet, not on the SX-64. Probably early Feb I am thinking? We shall see...

I can now say that owning my very own Commodore SX-64 is simply amazing! The whole thing is in excellent condition, with only a few minor imperfections, not at all unusual for an instrument of this age. I've already called a couple of BBSes with it, listened to some demos on it and tested the disk drive - everything is in working order. I did notice some odd cutting in and out of one of the SID voices in some songs, and the convergence drifts away slightly in the bottom right-hand corner of the CRT, (I only noticed it when I was typing and the RGB colors of my characters started to diverge once I reached that corner.) The screen is bright and clear otherwise though, and the keyboard types very well - all the keys are working and it is VERY clean! I love the blue trim around the face plate. It's sitting here beside me as I write this and I can't stop smiling as I gaze lovingly at it! Haha

I have waited a LOOOONNNNGGGG time to own one of these... I even wrote one into a story I was authoring over the summer of Grade 5, my "Suitcase 64". I didn't even know what the model number of it was at that time, but that sounded like an appropriate name for the "portable Commodore 64" I'd seen in a store down in the Colorado while visiting cousins, so that's what its called in my story.

I'm also thrilled to say that I have two other *significant* items of Commodore lore on their way to me as we speak, components I used to dream about having but never actually thought I would own. Picture a kid back around 1995/96, gazing at a catalog of Commodore accessories - mostly made by third parties. What would your dream system (particularly for running a BBS) have looked like? The answer to that question might well be a solid guess as to what is on its way to me now... ;-) Stay tuned! (But feel free to call out your guesses...)