And here are some of the "architectural oddities":
Flicker free 320x200 high res on C64 (flicker free starts at 42s):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vcm0ecni5d4
This one's flickery, but still pretty nice:
I never knew the C64's built-in BASIC had no high-level graphics (and, seemingly, audio?) interface. It seems like a crazy thing to leave out but doesn't appear to have affected the popularity of the machine (to say the least).
Brian Bagnall’s “Commodore: A Company On the Edge” covers the history of the PET, VIC-20, and C64. There was no master plan that anyone could stick to for more than six months (the management stories are horrifying) and the C64 was a last minute whiptogether. They didn’t have enough time to add the better BASIC that they’d already developed on another project, so it shipped with the same lousy BASIC as the VIC-20 had. If you fondly remember Commodore from those days, the book is worth reading. It made me appreciate how much was achieved despite an inadequate CEO and board.
Sweet, thanks, I picked it up. also /wave!
/wave back ... Dude, LONG time!
Re:C64 Keyboard Prototype
by beamatronic on Sunday May 06, 2018 @04:30PM
(#17008341)
I seem to recall a command on the Commodore 128 that was like PLAY “FFGEFG” to play musical notes.
Interestingly, by abusing some architectural oddities, people have been able to create new graphics modes on the 64 that support more colors than the original 16 and in hi-res. But it's still not as easy as set pixel (x, y).