For 10 years I ran my Commodore 64 on a power supply that was slowly killing it

I stumbled into a retro computing forum last week and someone posted about the voltage on the C64 PSUs drifting over time. I checked mine with a multimeter and it was pushing 6.2 volts instead of 5. Has anyone else fried a vintage machine from a bad power brick that looked fine?

3 comments

3 Comments

beth2761mo ago

I read somewhere that the Commodore 64 power supplies are known for that voltage drift thing. It's because the voltage regulator inside them gets old and starts failing over time. The 5 volt line creeps up slowly and you don't notice until something blows. I think I heard from a guy on Facebook who lost two SIDs that way before he figured out what was happening. It's wild how something that looks totally fine on the outside can be cooking your machine from the inside like that.

ivan_murphy801mo ago

@the_piper knew exactly what he was talking about. Everything old is slowly betraying us.

the_piper1mo ago

Sounds like a ticking time bomb wrapped in beige plastic.