Commodore 64

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Commodore 64 (C64, C-64), a home computer produced and market by Commodore International in January 1982, which became the best-selling single home or personal computer model of all time.

=Hardware= The C64 features a MOS Technology 6510 processor, which was a 6502 with the addition of an 8-bit general purpose I/O port, also used for memory bank switching, 64 kibibytes of RAM and 20 kibibytes of bank-switched ROM containing a Basic interpreter, kernel, and character images. A MOS Technology VIC-II video interface chip for 320 times 200 pixels with 16 colors, and eight hardware Sprite per scanline, and a RF modulator created a NTSC or PAL signal for direct plugin into a Television used as computer monitor. The C64 further utilized sound chip with some synthesizer capabilities. An external datasette tape drive, later a floppy disk drive was able to store programs and data.

=Software= The built-in Basic with 38 kiB RAM was available on start up. The Commodore Basic Interpreter did not include specific kernel commands for sound or graphics manipulation, but required to use the POKE command to access the graphics and sound chip registers directly. RAM could be mapped over the ROM locations, also by copying and manipulating the character ROM into RAM. Most professional programs and chess programs were written that way in 6502 assembly, using a machine code monitor or an assembler.

=x64 Resurrection= In April 2011, the Commodore 64x was released by Commodore USA, which consists of an Intel x86-64 processor, bundled with Linux aka Commodore OS, as well as an emulator to run the original Commodore 64 software. The computer is x86-64 PC compatible and able to run alternative operating systems such as Microsoft Windows.

=Chess Programs=
 * Category:C64

=See also=
 * Amiga
 * Commodore 128

=Publications=
 * Ward Douglas Maurer (1985). Commodore 64 assembly language: A course of study based on the DEVELOP-64 assembler/editor/debugger. Computer Science Press » Assembly

=Forum Posts=
 * The great challenge of the 8-bit by Roberto Munter, CCC, April 22, 2013
 * Legacy hardware emulator chess championship? by Stan Arts, CCC, November 20, 2014

=External Links=
 * Commodore 64 from Wikipedia
 * C64-Wiki
 * 64'er Spielesammlung - C64-Wiki


 * Aart's Commodore 64 Page by Aart Bik
 * Coding 64 | Commodore 64 coding and reverse engineering by Sebastien Mametz
 * Commodore 64 - Old Computer Collection, The Spacious Mind
 * Commodore 64 Vice for Windows Emulator, The Spacious Mind
 * 2009 Commodore 64 8 Bit Open Chess Computer Championship, The Spacious Mind
 * Commodore 64x from Wikipedia
 * Starring the Computer - Commodore 64
 * Starring the Computer - Ground Zero (1987)

=References=

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