Building an 90° angular power adapter for the C64

Some might know that I’ve been building a piece of furniture on my own to contain all of my retro computers, the “Retroaltar”, about which I might eventually blog in the future. Among these computers are two Commodore 64, a classic breadbox C64 and a C64-II. Unfortunately, when designing the shelves I only accounted for the dimensions of the C64 itself and forgot the joystick ports and power connector at the side:

Too narrow shelf for C64 and power adapter

The joystick ports are actually not a problem because the shelf is actually a pullout and to access the C64’s keyboard I need to pull out anyway, so I can just attach the joysticks when needed. As the power supply, however, is located at the rear side as shown above, I’ve been looking into building an adapter with an 90° angled connector towards the C64 so it takes less space.

From the German C64 Wiki we learn that the connectors used go by German norm DIN 45329 (superseded by EN 60130-9). I could source two angular DIN 45329 male connectors for the C64 side:

For the PSU side a straight socket will do. The one from Hirschmann (Belden) which goes by the name MAK70S (available from e.g. Bürklin, Distrelec or Voelkner).

Then we need some cable with 7 wires. I got this shielded LiYCY 7 x 0.34 mm² cable from Conrad Electronics mostly because they didn’t force me into buying 10 meters at once. I chose the 0.34 pitch to be safe with regard to whatever currents may flow and as it is the maximum allowed pitch with the Hirschmann Connector. However this made soldering the wires to the connector a bit tricky:

Careful with the C64-side connector’s orientation! You will need to rotate it because the default orientation is downwards (shown left):

Here’s the completed result: