How to connect a C64 with a PC display?

A friend of mine has an old C64, it has a video output and we are wondering how to connect this with an VGA or DVI computer monitor?

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3 Answers

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:

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:

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).

Here's how to make a 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 or 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:

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According to this 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.