Bring a Commodore 64 back to life with Arduino, LEGO and Raspberry Pi

An increasing number of computer enthusiasts who grew up in the 1980s are now returning to their childhood machines or dreams and enjoying time with machines from the era - such as the Commodore 64.

However the machines themselves may not have lasted the test of time, and need some major renovating - or the user needs to spend a few hundred dollars on buying a working unit from ebay or other marketplaces. 

Instead, you can substitute new electronics for the old motherboard and use a working keyboard, and this is what instructables member RaspberryPiPioneer has done.

They've fitted a Raspberry Pi (to emulate the C64) and an Arduino (to interface between the classic keyboard and the Raspberry Pi USB interfaces) to bring the breadbox back to life:

And to make it even more awesome, LEGO has been used as internal structural mounting to hold everything together. This will allow for many years of fun gaming and BASIC programming all over again, or whatever else you want to run on the Pi:

To learn more about this utterly fantastic project, visit the instructables page. 

And if you're interested in frankensteining your own C64 - PMD Way has you covered with Arduino Micro-compatibles, Raspberry Pi packs, LEGO-compatible enclosures, panel mount HDMI and network sockets, and more.