The Wood Commodore 64C You Didn’t Know You Needed

The Commodore 64 is, quite frankly, legendary. It is the best-selling computer model of all time, and for good reason. When it was released in 1982, it had a reasonable price—which also dropped quickly—and very respectable hardware. Its 8-bit MOS Technology 6510 processor was similar to the 6502 that was found in many competing microcomputers, but the generous 64KB of RAM and VIC-II graphics chip put it ahead of most of the competition. The original Commodore 64 had the famous “breadbox” case, but the later Commodore 64C had a sleeker enclosure. Atilla Meriç recently constructed a new 64C case entirely out of wood, and it looks marvelous.

Unlike most of the other retrocomputing projects we have featured here on Hackster News, this is “just” a case mod. It doesn’t appear that Atilla has made any modifications to the original hardware, and instead put all of his effort into the carpentry. But that effort was more than enough to grab our attention, and every Commodore fan will be drooling over his creation. The finished case was made entirely out of wood, and its shape matches the original Commodore 64C case almost exactly. Even more impressive, that carpentry work was all done by hand.

When I first saw a photo of this case, I assumed it had been CNC-routed out of two solid chunks of wood — that’s what I would have done. In reality, Atilla cut all of the pieces by hand on a small table saw. It doesn’t even appear that he used a jigsaw for the small parts, but rather chisels and files. The Commodore 64C case isn’t a simple shape, so Atilla had to cut dozens of tiny wood pieces, especially for the grill on the back of the computer. Lots of gluing and sanding was required to assemble all of those pieces together. Atilla didn’t stain the wood, but just left it natural with the grain accentuated with a crayon. After applying a coat of varnish, the wood C64C was complete and now looks absolutely amazing.