Oh the Commodore 64, this was the machine of my youth. The thing I learned to program on. And had so many years of great times with. It is such a fun system with a wealth of games made for it. Always dreamed of having a portable version of this iconic system. Over the years dreamed of ways to build such a device. And now it is possible
I am building my own C64 handheld based on the C64 DTV unit. This was a toy released in 2004. It was designed as an all in one game joystick and 30 games built in. Plug directly into the TV and play these amazing classics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C64_Direct-to-TV
The person that designed the board that went into these made it very hacker friendly. This board has solder points for adding a disk drive, extra joystick, and pretty much anything you need to turn it into a full blown C64 system. This makes it perfect for the main board for my handheld.
Now there is a device called SD2IEC. This allows you to use an sd card as a disk drive for the C64. These are compatible with this DTV device also. I purchased one of these for use in the handheld. This will let me have an SD card for all the games we will want to play.
And for the screen the use of a 4.3 in tft screen such as this https://www.amazon.com/Aketek-Rearview-Monitor-screen-Backup/dp/B005CFLMNC These cheap screens are easily modded to run off 5v. Making it pretty easy to use them a screen for the handheld.
I designed a case in sketchup for this system. As well in order to help with sizing and placement of the parts I took measurements of everything made spacing mock items to use in sketchup for my design. With these spacers I was able to come up a pretty cool retro design case that will be able to fit all the parts without issue. The design is also accounting for a TTRS cable so I can plug into the headphone jack and get video out also. As well a DB9 port on top of the system will allow for an external joystick to be used. So the system can be also used to be played from a TV.
This is all still in progress. I have the case design complete and a test printed. Now I'm working on testing the hardware and ensuring all this will work right. The first DTV board I got had bad battery acid corrosion and stopped working on me. I managed to get another one recently and will try and work on this again. very excited to see this project to completion.
