The Commodore 64 outsold every other computer model ever made, and four decades on, people still refuse to leave it in the past. YouTuber Retro Dad's newest build makes the case in a way you can hold in both hands: a complete C64 experience crammed into a portable enclosure, running on a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B.
The handheld combines a physical keyboard, dedicated gaming buttons, and authentic 9-pin joystick ports in a single case. Everything is open source, so the printable case files, wiring diagrams, custom firmware, and a full build guide are posted for anyone who wants to copy it. Retro Dad salvaged an Xbox Chatpad PCB to serve as the keyboard and pulled a D-pad and buttons from a dead USB controller, then wired in a speaker and a small amplifier module so the thing can blast chiptunes on demand.
How the joystick trick works
The clever part is the joystick problem. Those 9-pin D-sub connectors were everywhere on 1980s machines but almost nothing reads them today, so a Raspberry Pi Pico sits in the middle and translates the old joystick signals into something the Pi can parse over USB. The Pi itself runs an Arm chip, not the original 6502, which means genuine C64 cartridges will not boot. Retro Dad worked around that with the VICE emulator and set the OS to boot straight into it, dropping you at that blue blinking cursor. A small HDMI screen and a USB battery bank finish off the internals.
Build it yourself
You can clone this without ever picking up a soldering iron, since nearly every part connects over USB or plug-in headers. Grab a Raspberry Pi 3 (a 3B+ works too), a Pi Pico for the joystick bridge, a small HDMI display, a USB power bank, and a controller you are willing to gut for its buttons. Flash VICE onto the Pi, wire the Pico to your D-sub ports, and set the Pi to autostart the emulator so it lands on the C64 prompt every time. The full parts list and GitHub repo are linked from Retro Dad's writeup at Hackster, so start there before you print the shell.
Originally published on blog.circuit.rocks.
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