BUILDING A BETTER COMPUTER
Christian Simpson tells us about his Lego tribute to the C64
fully working sprung mechanical Lego keyboard. After I absorbed my shock, I found it types beautifully, as you see in the video for part three.
Was sourcing the different Lego bricks expensive?
Yes, the biggest obstacle has been the price. These bricks are rare [and] command a higher price. Overall,
I’ve put a couple of thousand dollars into the project, which wouldn’t have been possible without my wonderful Patreons and Paypal supporters. They’re the ones who really built this, and I make sure they’re well rewarded, in retro style of course!
The other obstacle was time, but it was important to me to make my final design free and open source for the retro community to use, so it’s simply donationware. Anyone can download the master file and order their own parts. I always loved the idea of that when I would send away for donationware floppy disks back in the Eighties.
That hard work paid off. How many pieces did you use in the end?
The latest version has 1,836 bricks, weighing in at a solid 2.2 kg/4.8 lbs, and is a little over 1:1 scale.
What build parts are you particularly pleased with?
There were many happy surprises along the way. Most was when I realised that Lego 2x2 bricks with an axle hole somehow magically fit onto the axle shape of C64 keyboards, and so I created a keycap set to go along with the Lego cases and you can see them all at bit.ly/brixty. My plan is to turn this into the world’s first replacement keycap set (of sorts) featuring real C64C key and PETSCII symbols, to fit onto real Commodore 64 keyboard bases to replace broken key sets.
That’s the Holy Grail and missing puzzle piece in creating a completely new real Commodore 64. There are new cases, PCBS and keyboard bases, but so far nobody has commercially released the actual keys (which are kind of important.) My ambition is simply to keep these special machines alive and relevant for future generations.
Are you using an original Commodore 64 board within your design or a modern computer like a Raspberry Pi?
I wanted to make two versions: a fully Lego Brixty Four, and just a
Lego replacement case so you could install a real C64 motherboard into it, and use the real C64 keyboard in the Lego case too. As you can see in the videos, though, this was the most difficult aspect, but with some time and patience you can accomplish anything. It supports the C64 Reloaded, Ultimate64, Raspberry Pi & more. The Lego LED is even powered by the real C64 power switch. This and the Lego keys fitting Commodore’s keyboard still amazes me and I think Lego and Commodore might have been in cahoots all along!
of course, i had to name it the Brixty Four. the commodore 64 is my favourite retro machine Christian Simpson
How is your design faring on Lego Ideas? Is there much competition? There’s no direct competition, but we’re one-fifth of the way towards the goal of 10,000 votes needed for Lego to consider mass-producing this. If my fellow Retro Gamer readers would like to see a full-size Lego Commodore 64 on the shelves of their local shops, and pick it up to give it a shake, please vote as we can’t do this without every one of you! Head to lego.build/2qwq4lw. Thanks for the chat and going brick to the future with me.