C64 Archives

Everything about the Commodore 64, or C64 or CBM 64. Some even called him the VIC-64. I got mine in the mid eighties, used from a neighbour – complete with monitor and 1541 disk drive (vintage 1982/1983), and even a needle printer. I later got hold of a C16 Datasette (the dark grey one) which connected to my C64 via an adaptor. I used it until 1992/1993.

How to enter C64 Mode on a Commodore 128

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The Commodore 128 was marketed as being “three computers in one”. I guess technically they were correct when they made that statement. Although I’m very find of the native 128 mode, the system saw its uses mostly as a games machines in C64 mode. I don’t recall anybody ever looking at CP/M mode longer than half an hour (if that).

There are three ways to put the C128 into C64 mode. Two of which I always knew about, ever since my friend Frank Jagow bought himself a whole C128 system from his paper route money in 1986. But the third option’ve only recently learnt about – after over 30 years of being a C128 fanboy. How exciting!

Here are all three options.

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How to write a text input routine in Commodore BASIC

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In this screencast I’ll show you how to write your own INPUT routine in Commodore BASIC. This comes in handy when you want to reject certain keys from being used when asking users for keyboard input. In my example I’m going to allow all alpha characters (A-Z), as well as SPACE, RETURN and the DELETE … Read more

Flashing Border Colors on the Commodore 128 in Machine Language

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In this episode I’ll show you how to create the iconic flashing borders on Commodore machines. Back in the day, when the system was loading, this was a nice way to indicate that the computer is busy doing something rather than being dead. I’ll show you the principle both in BASIC and in Machine Language … Read more

Programmatic Loops in Commodore BASIC

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In this episode I’ll demonstrate how to use programmatic loops in Commodore BASIC. I’ll show you how to use the FOR/NEXT loop (available in all versions of Commodore BASIC), as well as the DO/WHILE loops (available on the Plus/4 and C128). Enjoy! https://wpguru.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Loops-in-Commodore-BASIC.mp3Podcast: Download (Duration: 11:33 — 10.6MB)

Flow Control in Commodore BASIC

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In this episode I’ll explain the concept of Flow Control in Commodore BASIC. It’s kind of a video update of a post I did a while ago. In essence, it means that we can tell the programme to take a different route in the code depending on a condition that’s met. We’ll explore the IF/THEN … Read more

How to run Commodore BASIC as a Scripting Language on macOS

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Did you know you can run Commodore BASIC v2 on your Mac and Linux systems as a scripting language? It’s true – thanks to the marvellous efforts of Michael Steil and James Abbatiello. They’ve adapted the original BASIC v2 as featured on the VIC-20 and C64 with additional routines so that it works natively on … Read more

Lottery Statistics in Commodore BASIC

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In this episode I’m adding statistics support to my previous lottery generator on the Commodore 64. I’ll add an array that is updated if my supplied numbers have been matched, and how many times over how many draws this has happened. I’ll also add an option to pause the programme and display the statistics before … Read more

Matching Lottery Numbers on the Commodore 64

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In this episode I’m amending my previous lottery number generator to take six lucky numbers from the user to match against the randomly drawn numbers from the Commodore 64. This will allow us to compare what the computer has drawn to the user’s input, as well as keep drawing numbers until the user input comes … Read more