On my quest of collecting as many commentaries on the Commodore 64 ROM at pagetable.com/c64rom, we have gathered Lee Davison’s excellent commentary, the German de facto standard by Data Becker, and an adaptation of Bob Sander-Cederlof’s Apple II ROM commentary, all in the same cross-referenced HTML format.
Now that Microsoft’s original source of MOS 6502 BASIC is available, I’ve added it as the fourth commented disassembly, with the standard disassembly on the left, and the original source, both assembly and comments, lined up correctly on the right:
As always, the HTML version is available at pagetable.com/c64rom, while the raw txt files are maintained at github.com/mist64/c64disasm.
While this may be the best set of comments for the BASIC part, we’re not done yet! There are many more (either direct or indirect) commentaries on the C64 ROM in existence:
- Original C64 KERNAL Source Listing: A scan of a printout of Commodore’s original source, with comments.
- Original CBM 5/6/700 Source Code: Orignal source by Commodore, with comments. BASIC source and comments derived from Microsoft’s.
- JIFFYDOS Commented Disassembly: Based on KERNAL comments from “‘The Bible’, Commodore Reference Manual”.
- Apple III Business BASIC 1.3 Source Code Listing: The commented source of a late Microsoft BASIC derivative by Apple, based on the Microsoft’s source and comments.
- Schineis, R., & Braun, O.-M. (1984). C 64: ROM-RAM-I/O Assemblerlisting ; BASIC u. Operatingsystem ; ausführl. dokumentiert mit Crossreferenzlisten. Bayreuth: Hard + Soft R.S. Microcomputer: A 1984 book with a complete German commentary of BASIC and KERNAL.
Please contribute to our collection by helping convert one or more of these sources into the common format! Send me an email if you are interested!
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