Reconnecting

I was at the NDC conference in Oslo this week, and happened to meet up with an old colleague and friend of mine, John.

We chatted, and geeked out, and ended up talking about old computers. I mentioned that my first computer was a Commodore 64 (the bread-box). And he told me that he still has his (I don’t), and he’s actually making stuff for it!

One thing led to another, and he showed me how to program a C64 -emulator with Visual Studio Code (VSCode)! Definitely a fun thing I want to play with!

Here are some links he shared with me:

ACID64: a C64 music-player designed for playing SID -tunes (the famous sound-chip on the C64 was the 6581 SID -chip, Sound Interface Device)

VICE-emu: C64 emulator, for those of us who are currently (temporarily) without C64 hardware.

C64 Debugger: an actual debugger for the VICE emulator!

CSDb: most (all?) of the demos released on the C64 – there are a lot.

Finally – Kick Assembler 8-Bit Retro Studio: a VSCode extension to build programs with the Kick Assembler.

I haven’t programmed anything for the C64 for over 30 years, and that was at the level of bouncing balls, repeating my name and painstakingly failing to enter code I didn’t understand from magazines.

I am intrigued and slightly intimidated! Let’s go!