How do I connect a C64 to a PC display?

Question

A friend of mine has an old Commodore 64. It has a video output, and we are wondering how to connect the C64 to a VGA or DVI computer monitor.

Answer 1

Here's how to make an S-Video cable:

This is the C-64 pinout (the early version of the C64 only has pins 1 to 5):

The S-Video looks like this:

So the objective is to create a patch cable that goes something like this:

C64 Pin	S-Video Pin
2	1
2	2
4/6	3
1	4

If you have an early C64, you must use pin 4 as your chrominance signal. If you have a later 8-pin A/V connector, then you can use pin 6.

I already have a C64 to 1702 monitor cable. This cable breaks the C64 A/V port into three RCA jacks: audio, chroma, and luma (sync on luma). So I will cheat. I will make a crossover cable. The aim of the crossover cable is to take the RCA luma and chroma inputs from my C64 cable and cross the conductors to the S Video mini DIN output. I will do this by cutting up a pair of old RCA cables and a S-Video cable.

The resulting crossover cable looks like this:

Answer 2

The route I initially took with this question was to use a couple converters, something like RF to RCA to VGA. This gentleman was able to accomplish this with a little work:

http://www.commodoreserver.com/BlogEntryView.asp?EID=F4B967500A894E10BE4A104C65DB541E

Another route may be a converter box, which tend to cost a little more money but don't require the labor to get working. Something like this from eBay may be appropriate:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=120619073385

If you go with the converter box route, make sure it has either an RF or 8-pin S-Video input (I say 8-pin just to be sure even though RandInLA from the first article says pins 7 and 8 aren't even internally connected).

Answer 3

According to allpinouts.org the video jack only provides composite output like the RF jack, so what you are looking for is a composite to VGA or DVI converter.

Commodore C128/C64C Video Pinout:

Answer 4

Commodore C64's VIDEO connector outputs something similar to S-Video.

This 8-pin DIN in addition to having the composite video output on pin 4, also now had both a separate LUMA (luminance) and CHROMA (chrominance) output on pins 1 and 6.
At the time this was known as Commodore Video but what Commodore had done was to basically implement what would one day be called S-Video which improved picture quality dramatically from the RF and composite signals.

So buy a C64 8-pin DIN to S-Videos cable,

(at e.g. Ami64, Ebay, etc)

or a C64 8-pin DIN to RCA cable.

(at e.g. 8bitclassics, Ebay, etc.)

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Then a perfect monitor to use (if you can find one) is the Dell 2001FP

It is equipped with three analog ports:
S-Video, Composite, and VGA 15-pin D-sub

Use a C64 8-pin DIN to S-Video cable to connect the C64 to the Dell 2001FP.

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The Dell 2001FP also benefits from having an optional soundbar – it's an easy way to provide an integrated audio system for the C64.

Connect a 3.5mm mono to stereo cable (that converts your C64’s usually mono audio to "stereo" audio) between the C64 and a Dell AC/AS/AX5XX soundbar.