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Comment by dec0dedab0de | Hacker News Reader

Last year I was really into non-ebay auctions. Basically traditional auctions that were also online.

I got super excited when I saw a Commodore 64 was coming up soon, until I noticed the starting price was around $100,000. It was actually for a collection of unreleased digital art from Andy Warhol, and they were throwing in the computer for free. Apparently there is a lot of it that they still haven’t sorted through.

I don’t know anything about art, I was just bummed it wasn’t a cheap retro computer.

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Yeah I have a couple of commodores in my storage left there for 25 years, probably even more, I can’t even be bothered to make time to go there to throw them away

You might check capacitors and it’s possible the power supply is bad.

If they're Commodore 64's you definitely don't want the use the stock power supplies. Their voltages can drift and can destroy otherwise working hardware.

Every serious retro collector has become an expert on power supplies and capacitors. It is very cool to see and I'm glad it is the power supply and not the more delicate components, at least so far.

The Commodore C64 supplies must not be used. As they age, they will spike their voltage and destroy the C64.

Today every such PSU is aged, and every such PSU is simply a C64 destroyer.

Please don't throw them away. Someone will be more than happy to take them off your hands. They are like gold to some people. If you're in the Los Angeles area I'd pay you to "go there" to let me take them off your hands.

Although C64 and Amiga are not rare by any means (although the Amiga, if you're in the US, wasn't that much of a success in the US compared to the UK/EU), they're highly thought after items. There's no reason to throw them away: just message a forum/board and say "free Commodore in XXX, must come pick them" and some shall gladly give them a second life.

Or take a look at ebay. Filter by already sold.

Even in non-working or untested condition, they fetch quite a bit of money.

Well, they fetch some money. Still not more than the sticker price when they were new, generally, definitively not more than the inflation-adjusted price!

> I can’t even be bothered to make time to go there to throw them away

This made me physically cringe with sadness. I’d love to even find one and people are just tossing them.

I'm sure if you had one you wouldn't even connect it to the power, it has a command line, some GUI and prince of persia, which you can play now even on modern PCs with emulators, it has really no use, rather than, I don't know

You'd be surprised. Why do people drive classic cars?

Man, I'd love to, once, run a program from a cassette again just for the nostalgic hell of it!

It was pretty fun that we could actually run games from ~40 year old tape. It impressed my son. It also impressed me actually, because I remember how often those things broke...

This is simply not true. There is a very active retro computing community these days and multiple vintage computer shows each year.

https://www.youtube.com/@The8BitGuy

https://www.youtube.com/@adriansdigitalbasement

https://www.youtube.com/@LGR

https://www.youtube.com/@TechTangents

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