Mark’s C64 Kick December 2020 – The Turbo Chameleon 64 (2015-2017) Special

#FPGA #TurboChameleon64 #C64

I am on a bit of a C64 kick. It’s my first real comuter and I do have a soft spot for it. The first system we got was a breadbin style C64 which later got replaced by a C64c as they couldn’t detect and repair a simple colour ram issue back then which I later was able to get fixed with help of a good friend also called Mark.

Over time I amassed C128, C16 and other C64s and then alternatives and remakes appeared. One of these add-ons is a cartridge for the C64 that functions as a cartridge but amazingly enough can also be a complete c64 on its own. It’s the ChameleonC64. They used to go for a pretty penny, still do – rev2.0 is out now which uses a slightly different FPGA and needs its own set of cores different from rev1.0 🙁

So one early morning on Spring of 2015 straight after a gruelling nightshift – After having been awake for 32+ hours its hard to wind down and sometimes you just have to make a video LOL – I shot a video on it with a lot of ahs and ums as I do but even more so when sleep deprived and trying to speak another language. And I was totally talking out of my arse when it comes to the techniques involved. So two years later in October and November 2017 I revisted the Chameleon in more concise videos still with a lot of ahs and ums as I do. But yeah it took a fair bit to come back to it on YouTube. Used it a lot in the mean time though.

They’re expensive bits of kits, still are. In 2015I obtained mine – actually at first just for allowing me to hook up a VGA monitor to my C64. I wan’t even aware of it actually being a complex FPGA system mimicking the entire C64 and the 1541 and even other systems at first. I got it very cheap from eBay and it was sold as faulty – no image. It turned out that all it needed was to have its firmware re-flashed and a compatible SD-card. So that was 40 euros well spend back then.

So in this video I made the 2015 video make more sense and put the rest of what originally was a set of 4 videos into one as part of my December 2020 Commodore C64 Kick. I’ve been playing, using a lot of my Commodore64 devices and have been watching a ton of Commodore videos on YouTube.

Individual Computers has a page up for V2 of this cartridge
https://icomp.de/shop-icomp/de/shop/product/Turbo_Chameleon_64.html

The Turbo Chameleon in this video was bought with my own money, this is not a paid promotional video and the opinons and views expressed in this video are my own.