During a brief period of being unsupervised, I may have bought two "untested" Commodore 16's, completely by accident of course. I already have two Commodore Plus/4's, but it's always nice to have more
The C16 was the little sister to the Plus/4, and was essentially the same machine, but without the 3-Plus-1 ROM's, and having only 16K of RAM, however it is possible to expand the RAM to 64K with a bit of internal modding
There were loads of games available for this machine, it was the most common machine from the TED platform, which means the vast majority of games were written for this machine with it's 16K of RAM, they would also run on the Plus/4 with it's 64K of RAM, there were a few games for the Plus/4 which used the whole 64K of RAM
Games were commonly distributed on cassette, there were a few ROM cartridges, but also on 5 1/4 inch floppy disk
Two photos of both the machines next to each other, hover over the photos to see which machine is which
Machine 1 has a crack above the number 1 key and does not boot, machine 2 boots ok most of the time, but has yellowed keys
We'll have a look round machine number 1 as it was the one I received first, it's the classic breadbin shape we all know and love
Round the back we have a cartridge port, RF out to a TV, the HL switch (avaliable in certain countries only), video out to a monitor, serial port, and the cassette port. The Plus/4 has more ports available
On the right side we have the mini DIN joystick ports, these are compatible with the Atari standard, but need an adaptor, reset button, power switch, and the 9V power in, it is centre negative like the Spectrum
Close up of the keys showing the graphic symbols
Photos after unboxing, ignore the usual kitchen detritus
Machine 1
Close up of the badge and crack on Machine 1
Just a quick check the chips are properly seated and there's nothing out of place
A quick test of the PSU, original Commodore PSU's are not the best, modern replacements are strongly recommended, the PSU is rated at 9V, but can show up to 15V unloaded, the regulation is inside the computer
Smoke test, remember these are untested machines
Looks like a faulty TED, or a BASIC ROM, unfortunately faulty TED's and CPU's are very common with these machines, but the CPU responds to the reset button
Heatsinking these chips is a very good idea
Machine 2
Checking the inside of machine 2, what's going on with those RAM chips..?
Smoke test BOOM! It boots, I used machine 1's PSU as I was too lazy to test the second one
Look at that RAM, this machine has clearly been modded to 64K, that would explain the RAM chips
I couldn't resist doing this, I am such a child
Anyway, I started doing this for some reason
TEDMON works, either by holding down the RUN STOP key on reset, or by typing MONITOR in BASIC, or by trying SYS1525 : 3-PLUS-1 like the F1 key does on the Plus/4
However the occasional boot gives screens like this, a quick power cycle returns you to the familiar boot screen
Accessories
I have another two Datassettes to add to the collection, one is boxed with instructions
Datassette cassette with the lid open and a close up of the MiniDIN plug
Two PSU's, one has been written on
Software
Check out my Commodore Plus/4 page for more software
King Size 50 (probably crap) games in one pack for your Commodore 16/Plus/4
And another copy of Icicle Works for the Plus/4
Update
I found a user manual for the C16 online, so bought it
?OUT OF MEMORY ERROR