Pizza Box C64

I became curious about what would be the best way to put the Commodore 64 inside a pizza box shape, to save a bit of table room and to have some fun.


Board orientations

Common sense says the circuit board should be tucked away at the backside of the box, but I wanted to explore other logical possibilities too, and bloat the blog post for what is essentially a very simple case project.

1. Board at front, backside to front

The cartridge port and devices would be very accessible, but the front would look messy. I'd have to take a lot of care to make the openings neat and still it would likely look quite bad.

Joysticks and power would be quite accessible at left side. Different connectors and the cables would  eat up table space which is not very desirable.

2. Board at front, backside inwards

Clean front, but the cartridge port would be hidden and unaccessible. Joysticks and power would be highly accessible at right side, near the computer front. Not that bad really, if I am sure I rarely remove the cart. Perhaps the cart buttons could be wired to the side or front.

In a situation like this the SD2IEC could be pulled to the front panel.

3. Board at back, backside inwards

Seems clean all round, but the wires would have to come out somewhere, most likely the back, which would somewhat defeat the purpose of this position.

Pulling some of the cables & connectors to the front would be neat & easy. The cables could compromise the creative uses for the empty space, though.

Again, the cartridge would be quite unaccessible.

4. Board at back, backside outwards

Like the normal Commodore 64 setup, the joysticks and power are at the right. Unlike the C64 they are quite far away from the computer front.

This is perhaps the most preferable orientation, cables are tucked away at the back like they should be, and the cartridge can be accessed even if a bit far away.

Sideways

I also considered some sideways orientations, although I did not expect them to be useful they are in fact not all that bad:

5. Right side, backside inwards

Again, less accessible cartridge port, joystick ports would be awkward at the back. The cables could be pulled out from the backside, which is a plus of this position. 

Also, there would be nothing at the front of the computer, perhaps SD2IEC access.

6. Right side, backside out

Would give the joysticks and power to the front, and extra access to the cart. The cables would fall out from the side which would take room on the table. Depending on the position on the table this would not be that bad, but the power cord and joystick obviously are a bit bluntly at the front.

7. Left side, backside out

The same problems as with 6, but almost none of the advantages. Cables would pour out from the side and yet the cartridge and joysticks would be quite far.

8. Left side, backside in

How about no? Well, ok the cables can again be pulled out from the back but the power cord would come out from a fairly ridiculous point, something that was about bearable in 6.

So, the verdict is there's not that much to improve on the initial idea, represented by the orientation 4. But positions 2 and to some extent 6, did give some food for thought so it's not the only viable solution.

Although 4 gives the idea that the port configuration resembles the c64 mostly, actually 2 has the joystick/power positioning closer to the breadbox original in relation to the front side of the computer.

Did not explore: Upside down circuit board. Diagonal circuit board. Circuit board at the centre of the box (and all 4 variants)

I'm also not considering a tower now although I was a bit attracted by the upright position as inspired by Sinclair Janus(Pandora?)/Atari Microbox/Sony PlayStation2.

Going for size

By the way, what are real Pizza Box sizes? Google says 16" is for extra-large which translates to 40.64cm. This would be enough to house the 390 x 136 board.

I figured dimensions 410 x 350 x 50 would be a good starting point, it's the real C64 width, the monitor (1084) base depth, about the height of the C64C at the highest point.

The above image collects some of the initial ideas about how the box would be sized in relation to the monitor and the things inside. Top image is front and the bottom image is a sort of "section" from the side.

Based on this image I already found some reason to position the board a bit further away from the backside, the legs might get in way of the board.


Building the box

At first, I placed the circuit board over the bottom, to have an idea what of the real size. Then I drew the screw positions with a pencil, drilled the holes and put the board into place.

There are a couple of bolts on each screw so the circuit board doesn't touch the chipboard, and a few of the screws are capped with bolts so the board won't fall out if upside down.

The legs had so short screws I could not fasten them, I'm just hoping they stay put in the drill-holes.

Then I'm just adding the junk chip board all around, using wood glue although it won't have the proper effect as the boards are already painted.

The four-player adapter fits rather nicely here although I did not think about it at the beginning. The board is kept slightly inwards, not because of the rubber feet I was talking about previously. (The feet were much tinier than I remembered)

The SD2IEC is taken out of its previous cover. I would have rather ordered a new SD2IEC, but I was impatient so the cover will have to find later use.

There's a lot of room inside the box, which is one benefit of moving the computer to a larger case. I'm toying around with the idea of housing a Raspberry there, with no connection to the C64 whatsoever.

I'm not going to lie, the material looks awful ugly at the moment:

Some prettification is in order, but it'll have to wait until next time. This was already one session's worth of work for me.

The size ended up as 405 x 300 x 55, so all around slightly different than what I envisioned. It turns out the 1084S base is really less than 300, and not 350 at all. I could still use a less thick top get to the 50 height though. The SD2IEC went to the left side instead of right.

Oh, where's the keyboard? I have already an idea or two, but again, some other day. The SD2IEC interface and Final Cartridge menus can be operated with a joystick, so for the time being this is a limited C64 "game console".

-> Story continues here