Some Assembly Required
The Commodore 64 Programmer’s Reference Guide contains a memory map with a complete description of the zeropage and system variables used by KERNAL and BASIC, but now that we have the original source, we know there are three typos in this table.
NES and SNES controllers support 8 to 12 buttons with only three data pins (plus VCC/GND). Let’s attach them to a C64 – or any 6502-based system!
We have previously visualized the physical layout of C64/1541 disks. In order to understand the encoding and potential read errors, it is more useful to visualize the disks sector-by-sector.
The “Video Supergame 64” is a Commodore 64 bundled with a joystick and three games on a cartridge, sold mainly in Germany in 1988/1989. Here are some pictures.
Many old Commodore 64/1541 disks have read errors, but this doesn’t mean the data isn’t recoverable – with the right nibtools settings and some cleaning.
“Magic Voice” is an expansion cartridge for the Commodore 64 that can speak 235 predefined words. Here are some pictures.
Thanks to Falk Rehwagen and Jürgen Heinisch, the original source of the TopDesk file manager for the GEOS operating system of C64/C128 is available.
The 1551 is the weird outlier in the family of Commodore disk drives: It is the only drive using the “TCBM” bus instead of Serial or IEEE-488. And what’s even weirder? 1541 and 1570 drives converted into 1551s!
There have been a few new interesting additions to the Commodore Source Code repository, including:
In the series about the variants of the Commodore Peripheral Bus family, this article covers the lowest two layers (electrical and byte transfer) of the “TCBM” bus as found on the TED series computers: the C16, C116 and the Plus/4.
In this episode of computer archeology, we deconstruct a very interesting case of borrowing code from multiple places – but first try this D64 disk image with any Commodore 64 emulator or a real C64:
The cartridge that makes a C64 a “dual processor” computer: Commodore’s CP/M cartridge for C64 contains a Z80 CPU and comes with version 2.2 of the CP/M operating system. Here are some pictures.
Here are some pictures of the outside and the inside of a Commodore Bildschirmtext II Decoder Cartridge for the C64 – a 6800-based computer connected to the expansion port!
After previously dissecting the firmware of alternate C64 disk drives, let’s now look at the hardware of one: This is the Blue Chip BCD/5.25.
Commodore 64 disk drives were usually connected through the slow serial bus. This article shows some hi-res photos of the Commodore “IEEE-488 cartridge”, which made the faster PET drives available for the C64.
The Final Cartridge III is great: It comes with a disk speeder, BASIC extensions, an excellent monitor – and an impressive, but ultimately useless GUI, because there are practically no applications for it. Let’s replace the FC3 GUI with GEOS!
Here are some hi-res pictures of the Commodore MAX machine (aka Ultimax or VC-10), a stripped-down game console variant of the Commodore 64 that was briefly available in 1982.
The monitor built into the Final Cartridge III is one of the best ones for the C64. Some of its unique features are:
In the series about the variants of the Commodore Peripheral Bus family, this article covers the lowest two layers (electrical and byte transfer) of the “Standard Serial” bus as found on the VIC-20/C64 as the main bus, but also supported by all other Commodore home computers.