"Split" Two-Part Commodore 64?

[TomXP411]

16 minutes ago, Perifractic said:

Good points. The only point I’d politely pick a hole in is about the plastics colouring. Commodore were renowned for wildly varying colour mixes and had more than one factory. That’s why there has never been a defacto established commodore 64 bread bin colourcode. But you make some good points for all the rest of it. It seems like it could just be an expensive third party fail. Now if I could just find an advert from before it flopped… 

Yeah, the case coloration is a bit of a stretch... but it's still markedly less yellowed than the computer. It just feels a few years newer, but I could be guilty of presumption, there. 

 

[Cyber]

I tend to thinking that this Split-C64 has a story similar to this modified VIC-20:

 

[TomXP411]

9 hours ago, Cyber said:

I tend to thinking that this Split-C64 has a story similar to this modified VIC-20:

 

I saw similar VIC on EBay last night. That one didn’t have the cover over the keyboard, but it was still almost exactly the same layout. The machine in question had an adapter bolted on to the User port - and I mean bolted. The adapter was physically secured to the machine with screws and a metal plate.

I suspect that computer was used in a POS system, since the number keys were all still there, and the other keys had been relabeled. 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/124876276748?hash=item1d1334c40c:g:WCsAAOSwmnlgsUtm

[Edmond D]

On 8/30/2021 at 12:04 AM, Perifractic said:

Good points. The only point I’d politely pick a hole in is about the plastics colouring. Commodore were renowned for wildly varying colour mixes and had more than one factory. That’s why there has never been a defacto established commodore 64 bread bin colourcode. 

Having worked in a plastics manufacturing plant, there is always "off-product/off-spec" made. Colour of the original plastic resin may have varied from shipment to shipment to Commodore. Plus the raw material used to make the resin would also have variation too. If the resin supplier had multiple factories that would account for variations as well. These variations can be minimized with a stringent quality-control program, but at a price. 



The plant I was in would keep any scrap resin around and find buyers who weren't particular in physical characteristics so much as getting a discount deal on price. It cost money to make plastic, so selling recoups some of the cost and avoids making more plastic. 

Does anyone know that the case molding wasn't outsourced to a sub-contractor?

If the prototype theory is correct, most likely it was made at a location that wasn't the main factory using perhaps a different supply of resin, and certainly not the operators on the main factory floor. Heat/bake anything for a longer time will most likely result in a darker colour. That might explain the differences in colouration from a stock machine.   



As for the industrial use theory,  perhaps it was a split unit so that the main electronics were in an enclosure for some reason (intrinsically safe?) , the keyboard external so that if something went wrong with it  it would be easily and cheaply replaced. 



Anyway just some information and speculation on this retro mystery. Take it for the entertainment value that it is. ?

 

 

[BruceMcF]

On the, "if it's for industrial control, why is it so clean?" front, it could be for Point of Sale, so the computer part can be secured in a padlocked enclosure so your low wage tellers don't sneak the C64 home to play games on.

[Edmond D]

35 minutes ago, BruceMcF said:

On the, "if it's for industrial control, why is it so clean?" front, it could be for Point of Sale, so the computer part can be secured in a padlocked enclosure so your low wage tellers don't sneak the C64 home to play games on.

Unfortunately very possible. I heard that a DVD burner was brought for a factory to do backups of PCs on the floor. It apparently 'disappeared' within a week.

[Strider]

As s continuation to the industrial use case scenario, not all industrial environments are dirty. In my case where we had done things like this is the past, the killer was moisture, not dirt.

The Filler Room environments in many beverage production facilities are very cool wet areas. All electronic or computing equipment had to be sealed in an expensive stainless steel enclosure to survive, especially during the cleaning process.

There were many instances where we had to run keyboards and/or mice/trackballs into the rooms from computers we setup outside the room for special runs, or as temporary solutions to a problem that popped up with the normal equipment.

In some cases, we would put the computer in one of those stainless boxes even though it was not made for it, and run the HID devices out from there. In those situations, the computers were not in their original cases, we had taken all the internals out and mounted them inside the box to fit. We would make "adapters" and trays to attach the components to, often out of Lexan, so they could be mounted in the sealed stainless enclosures properly.

As one last example of not all industrial environments are dirty, a friend of the family worked for a company called Jagemann Stamping, it's metal stamping. They make a lot of things there, including ammunition. Sounds like it would be a dirty environment, but the place is incredibly clean. Still, computers are isolated from some areas to minimize the chance of damage if there's an accident. It's a lot cheaper to replace a keyboard than an entire system.

[Oldrooster]

1)This is not a prototype commodore of any kind.

2)This is not a rare computer.

3)This is a standard embedded system.

4)The unusual extra case halves have nothing to do with commodore home computers.

5)This computer probably survived because it was still able to go back to home computer use after it's working life.

6)It had been adapted into a two part case for only one or a handful of machines.

7)The already existing extra box was chosen for it's close fit to the commodore, but has nothing to do with commodore home computers and probably nothing to do with commodore in any way.

8)It was chosen to keep the computer clean and protected as the motherboard had to be placed out of reach of the operator, probably on the other side of a metal case.

9)Dust and dirt do not account for the split system because the cable that spans between them does not have a socket and plug outside of both cases as far as I could see in the photos I looked at.

10)If dust and dirt was the cause then this would not be the solution, as dirt entering the keyboard would not be solved by separating the keyboard from the motherboard.

10a) any solution to prevent dirt entering the keyboard would not require separation of the keyboard in the absence of a plug and socket.

11)The separation indicates the machine being controlled from the edges, input, output, on the motherboard had to have the controller so close to it and protected that the operator couldn't comfortably reach it, and so this short extension for the keypad was made, and may have transversed a metal case wall of the machine.

12)EMI, ESD, RFI are likely the cause for this variant. The effects of electromagnetic interference, electrostatic discharge, radio frequency interference on the whole machine setup AND/OR the effects of EMI and RFI from the machine into the local environment, are the most likely cause for concern which led to this.

13)shielding the motherboard and the remainder of the machine were perhaps enough protection.

14) I don't actually remember and I'm not familiar enough with the C64's anymore, getting old, so I would ask, are the ferrite beads standard beads used in the 64 ?

15) the value is equivalent to about one C64, plus a generic extra case that fits it.

I numbered lines in case anyone wants more info on a point, this message is not a BASIC program, but you can try to run it anyway.

[OWG]

I had this exact thing back in the 1980s!  It was a kit you could mail order.  Pretty sure I got mine out the back of "Compute's Gazette" or "Run" (since those were the two magazines I had subscriptions to).  I think it was called "C64 Freedom" or something like that.  I wanted it so I could place the keyboard in a better position for typing without having to fight all the cables I had plugged into the computer.  I ultimately had to reassemble the computer because some of the wires in the flat cable broke inside.



I've been looking for pictures of that that thing for ages after trying to explain it to someone, and then I stumbled across these photos.  I've also been looking through the back of PDF scans of the magazines trying to find the advertisement from which I ordered mine, but haven't found the ad yet.  I was starting to think I'd imagined the whole thing.

[Perifractic]

Interesting. How sure are you that it was exactly this?

https://youtu.be/dTZonuUtbXw