Commodore 64 Guides

Wow, nice job. I spent so much time inside the Programmer&#x27;s Reference Guide as a teenager. My copy was completely wore out with pages falling out.<p>Writing machine language by hand on the C-64 is the closest I&#x27;ve ever felt to the hardware as a programmer. 3 registers, some flags and interrupts.

He reproduced the entire PRG and User’s Guide by hand. I’m always amazed by the incredible things people get up to.<p>The PRG is such a great book and flipping through his version of it brought back some happy memories of my roughly 11 year old self.

Thanks for the effort, this is great! Amazing some of us still can remember some of the special SYS and POKE addresses by head: sys 64738 (hex FCE2, reset) poke 808,234 (disable runstop&#x2F;restore) graphics memory 0x400-0x7e8 and $a000-$bfff basic rom memory<p>You could basically visualize the entire 64k in your head.<p>Good times!

It is a shame lulu couldn&#x27;t do spiral bound versions. Being able to lay these flat or completely folded over was part of their appeal.

My original VIC20 manuals were in French, and I didn&#x27;t even know English at the time. Still managed to learn stuff from here and there. I can&#x27;t imaging what I could have done if I had something like this 35 years ago... It&#x27;s really nicely done.

How come the code listings seem to have removed spaces between keyword tokens? Like, for example, on page 185 you have lines like:<p>&gt; 50 IFHF&lt;0THENEND<p>Which clearly, from context, are supposed to be:<p>&gt; 50 IF HF &lt; 0 THEN END<p>Is this a typesetting error or did the original text do it that way for some reason? Just to emphasize that BASIC&#x27;s interpreter didn&#x27;t care?

Incredible. Thanks so much for this. Just wondering, do you think you’ll do the schematic at some stage?

OMG, memories come back. My father brought a C64C back from Germany in 1991, complete with a German edition of the User’s Guide. The sample programs ring a bell. I distinctly remember a 7yo version of myself typing in code for the balloon sprite one.<p>Sadly, I never had the Programmer’s Reference Guide. I did, though, own „Commodore 64” by Bohdan Frelek, sometimes considered _the_ C64 Polish bible.

Very nicely done. In a similar vein, the Apple 1 manuals have been recently reproduced (though it seems you have to buy the printed copies and the PDFs are not freely available)<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.retroplace.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;feature&#x2F;operation-manually&#x2F;162" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.retroplace.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;feature&#x2F;operation-manually&#x2F;162</a>

Yes, total childhood flashback, thanks for putting in the hard work &amp; sharing it with us!<p>(PS: You may know SYS 64738 but have you tried SYS 4222?)

An invaluable action for preserving heritage.

registered as well just to say amazing work. i did own a c64 which provided an unmeasurable amount of fun, learning and pure joy for many, many years, not just for myself and my brother but also lots of friends.<p>the guide looks beautiful, sharp and fresh. great job preserving it for future generations.

Thanks! It is from you that I first heard about Lulu and looks like their price is pretty reasonable (600 page A5 Hardcover only costs 20 bucks but probably a lot more for CAD). I have quite a few manuals and pdfs that I would like to convert to books.

Very impressive. What&#x27;s the estimate cost of a print?

People like this are absolute legends. It brings me so much joy to look at this and I really appreciate the hard work that went into this. Thank you!

I remember typing in the animation routine that bounces a ball once at the bottom of the screen. The ball was so bright and glowing.

Very nice! I do hope he releases the document source to allow for collaborative correcting and improving.

Registered to say, amazing effort. Never owned one but I want to read this now, strangely.

Nice work. Just recognizing a labor of love for the exemplary product is!<p>That is all.

Still have my spiral-bound copy on my shelf.

Aren’t these books copyrighted?

Amazing work