Commodore 64 arrives, finding modern PSU replacements...

Thanks to my awesome friends and their generous baggage allowance on their trip to Japan, I'm now finally united with my auction purchase and more excited than a little kiddo on Christmas to finally be in possession of my breadbin 64!

Time for some unpacking and testing. The seller ensured me that he powered it up and all was still working fine, so hopefully there won't be any nasty surprises like the dreaded black screen of death welcoming me. Everyone online warned me about the danger of using the original power supply, though, and how it could fry your RAM chips and more. But Japan being on 100V while this PAL box came with a 220V PSU, I didn't have any use for it anyway. I purchased this Y-cable instead that lets you plug in a 9V AC and a 5V DC adapter separately. I already had plenty 5V DC adapters lying around and just ordered a 9V AC adapter from Rakuten.

To power the 1541-II floppy drive was a bit trickier, but fortunately people pointed out that you could get both 5V and 12V DC from old ATX PC case power supplies. I ended up ordered this AC adapter meant to power old IDE disk and CD drives. Sourcing the right 4 pin DIN plug that goes into the floppy drive proved a bit tougher, but some extensive Aliexpress searching revealed the right one eventually too.

That sorts out all the power needs, but getting the video to display in any meaningful manner will be a whole other story, so stay tuned for that...