Just a little while a ago i ordered a µIEC (without daughterboard) at Jim Brain’s Go4Retro.com with the intention to use this a a mass storage device on one of my C64’s. The idea of having a SD card and the ability to install other cartridges was very appealing to me. At first i was looking into installing this into a 1530 datasette but as i don’t want to carry around with various devices and cables i decided to install this into my C64.
First i needed to have a drawing on how i will arrange the wires. So i made a little sketch up.
To start out i created a template and drilled some holes into a plastic ‘casing’. With a Dremel i drilled holes and started beveling the holes to fit the screws. Using two bolts are holding the screws to the plastic plate.
To prevent the contact of the metal bolts to directly contact the µIEC PCB four paper-like rings are stacked on top of the bolts.
One of the paperish rings needs to be cut a little for a snug fit. Here is the bottom view of the construction:
On the top of the µIEC card i also added a plexi-glass plate to the stack.
Due to the height of the transistor i also drilled a hole into the top plate.
Buffing up and cleaning (using ‘pure’ alcohol) the plexi-glass first and the hot glue gun helped me fixating the construction to the memory expansion bracket.
Here you can see that the glue was spread out really wel.
After measuring multiple times this the chosen position. This was the most time consuming job.
Here you can see the wires as i soldered them on the back-side of the C64 PCB to the header of the µIEC.
Bottom side of the C64 main PCB. On the left side the µIEC wires and on the right side the audio/video modification wires.
Down here you can seen the same µIEC wiring loom to the µIEC PCB.
Cutting and filing the plastics away left me with a gap to insert a SD card.
Maybe i need to file a little away on the left side for more symmetrical esthetics.
Does it work? Eureka! The LEDs blink… so far so good.
The already installed JiffyDOS helped me to see the µIEC as the default drive and requesting a directory output resulted into this:
YEAH!
Also writing Prince of Persia directly from SD to EasyFlash worked (as long as your turn off the EF fast disk loader). Please note the two little black buttons for .D64 file swapping (using the AUTOSWAP.LST feature).
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lovely(excluding “memory expansion” inscription destruction 🙂 ).
60$ for this sdadapter is pure madness, though..
Nice installation into case. The thought of putting uIEC into Datassette sounds like a fun idea! 🙂
Nice to show how it’s done, don’t really get the plexi, I guess you want to be able to remove the uIEC but then again you’ve already made a hole in the shell so why not glue it directly with no plexi and screws?
No need really to take 5V from the tape port, you could just as well have a wire directly to the powerbutton, would have been closer.
Those knobs BTW, aren’t you supposed to cut the axle of the pot enough so you’ll cover the nuts with the knob?
Handy way of slimming things down though and protect the uIEC without having to make your own mini-1541-shell or something like that.
Such an awesome modification. I also like what you did with the SID2SID. I installed one in a different C64 I use only for music. It works well, but the additional sound output is just dangling form a wire out the back. I need to drill a hole in the case and mount it properly.
Excellent job! Looking forward to watching (and hopefully copying!) your projects.
I did something similar, and I’m loving it! Here’s the link. (btw, I’ve since installed swaplist buttons and the exact same spot as my uIEC but on the other side) … http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUekZ3vd3Xo
Can you also show is your uIEC wiring?
Thanks for inspiration and instructions on how you mounted your uIEC internally. I did this myself and the following is a picture of it (with a little description with it):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/64687432@N05/8228222440/in/faves-andysretrocomputers/
Hehe.. really cool. I love the 1541 faceplate. Where ever did you get that?
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Thanks — this was helpful when doing my own internal uIEC/SD project. Video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQNo58TdaWI
Perfect! For the drillling of the slot, i used a conus poor man’s dremel to cut away the bare minimum of the slot. Just enough to get a small flat file and now the manual labour begins.
This method gives, IMHO, the best result.
Coming up next: uIEC install in my SX-64 incl complete JiffyDos replacement kit. So stay a while…. Stay forever!
Thank you for documenting this. Your excellent pictures and diagram really helped me make this mod to my c64. I’m glad you used rainbow cable to do this, or I would not have been able to figure out where to solder to the motherboard! Thanks again!
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