FWIW, I got the "Inside the Commodore 64" book with all the innards exposed, just as the Public Library was chucking it out. BASIC interpreter in 6502 assembler - too bad I haven't really gotten into assembler ... ;) I started learning MC68HC11 assembler at the Polytech in 1993, but there was so much going on that year it wasn't funny ...
At $2.00, it was a bargain. Wesley Parish On Sun, 03 Apr 2005 11:06, Jim Cheetham wrote: > On Apr 2, 2005, at 7:01 PM, Robert Himmelmann wrote: > > On the CeBIT last year they had an exhibition of old computers. There > > was one, I think it was a Commodore C64, which had only BASIC as ui, > > programming language. You had to use those old audio tapes for saving > > your data. It is hard to think that someone wrote programs on such a > > "computer". I wonder what people of my age will say in 30 years when > > they see a box similar to the ones we are using in a museum. > > It's hard to think that someone like me actually wrote some very large > programs in C64-Basic, and got paid for the "pleasure" :-) > > Data saved via the audio channel was uncompressed - there was a floppy > disk drive available, but that was pretty slow too. Eventually some > bright spark came up with a data compression routine that worked for > the audio channel, and all of a sudden it was faster to use cassette > tape than a floppy disk. Go figure :-) > > The C64 was generally programmed directly in machine code, for > efficiency. BASIC was fine for non time-sensitive tasks, but games > needed speed. And the C64 had separate chips for specialist tasks, like > the SID sound chip and VIC-II for graphics (not to be confused with the > Vic-20, another Commodore computer). The VIC chip handled graphics in > units of "sprites" - you defined your graphic item, and gave it a path > to move on, and then the CPU could forget about it, the VIC would keep > it moving across the display. Compare that philosophy with current > video cards competing on the strengths of their 3d processing gpu's :-) > The SID chip produced multichannel sound, similar to MIDI stuff today, > and some very talented musicians spent a lot of time on that platform. > > Have a squiz at Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64 > > -jim -- Clinersterton beademung, with all of love - RIP James Blish ----- Mau e ki, he aha te mea nui? You ask, what is the most important thing? Maku e ki, he tangata, he tangata, he tangata. I reply, it is people, it is people, it is people.
