Commodore 64
Mar 01 2026
I came across an advertisement over the holidays about the Commodore 64 Ultimate. I was amused at the time and thought, while neat, it wasn’t worth getting. Compared to anything modern, the Commodore 64’s hardware is obviously underpowered. With a 1 Mhz MOS 6510 and 64KB of RAM, no modern OS could run on it. And yet, that limitation is intriguing.
It was in the back of my mind and I kept thinking about it. I missed out on the sale that the advertisement was about, but eventually I did order one. And thus began my journey into researching and learning more about this historic computer.
A few goals came to my mind after ordering the Commodore 64 Ultimate. The first relates to just learning. Older systems such as the Commodore 64 are ultimately simple enough to learn the majority of with a reasonable amount of time and effort. In a world where we’re pushed to learn less and do less with the advent of AI, diving deeper into a tech can be a wonderful experience.
As a lifelong programmer, the second thought was about writing programs. I had only dabbled in BASIC and never touched 6502 assmebly. The constraints of the system sounded interesting however and I wanted to know what could be done using modern software and techniques on retro hardware.
The third goal was to use the C64 as a bit of a detox platform, which Commodore themselves promote their brand as being. Social media is terribly draining, and the world in general feels complicated. Our phones pick away at our time in an overly addictive yet ultimately unfulfilling manner. I love computers and technology, and I would never back away from them completely. However, I think it beneficial to time travel and remind myself of the wonder that I had which originally set me down this path. That is what this post will be about. Using the constraints of old hardware with a modern mindset to both expand my mind and also revel in the simple joys of computing.
Learning the System
Today, computers and software are so advanced that they are starting to write themselves. Young people who have had access to computers often use them as utilities, understanding less about their inner workings than those of us who came of age during the 80s and 90s. It makes sense, you don’t need to know as much about them to use them effectively today. It’s similar to how the generation before me really understood their cars, how they worked, and how to fix them. In my generation it became less common, and is more rare today. When a technology is new, you need to know a lot about it to use it. Later, it gets streamlined and becomes easier to use and more commodified, and the required knowledge goes down.
Having access to a Commodore 64 in 2026 is an interesting proposition, however. You’re given the BASIC prompt. You have to know commands to load things. Programming a C64 requires patience and knowledge. You have to fit things in a small amount of memory. I’m sure you can vibe code your way to something, but assembly is tricky, and BASIC is slow. Living with such constraints makes it more interesting than the modern computers where we can brute force solutions with enough CPU, RAM, and GPU. There’s an elegance in conforming to those constraints.
In that regard, I’ve become interested in what was possible in 1982 using advancements in software that we’ve gained in the last 40 years. What could have been possible if you had only access to hardware of the C64 era, but with today’s software tools and knowledge? That question led me to an interesting project: Vision Basic.
Vision Basic
Vision Basic is a fascinating project written by Dennis Osborn and released in 2022. Its purpose is to create a custom version of BASIC which compiles to native code, enabling them to run faster. Such compilers existed back in the day in the form of the Blitz, however Vision Basic also allows you to combine BASIC with assembly, using custom functions along with quality of life improvements like textual tags in place of line numbers for goto references. The whole thing runs on an actual Commodore 64 and is its own programming environment, which is drastically different to use compared to our modern systems.
Purchasing Vision Basic was an interesting experience. It’s a piece of software that you can only buy physically. It comes in a physical box with a physical manual, and the software itself comes in a 5.25" floppy! Though there’s also a USB included in case you don’t have a floppy drive, as most people do not. It’s so odd to recieve software in a physical box with a large physical manual (over 350 pages). While there is a way to get a digital download of Vision Basic, you can’t actually get a copy of the manual digitally; it’s only available in print. I suspect it’s to reduce copying, but I also think it’s a good idea to preserve that feeling of how software was distributed back in the 80s and 90s. In fact, the software being included on a floppy means that if Vision Basic existed in the 80’s, it would have worked and probably be very well received at the time.
The manual is fascinating. It begins by describing how Vision Basic came to be originally in the late 90’s as a personal project that Dennis worked on while sitting in hospital waiting rooms, having been diagnosed with cancer. He had a lot of time on his hands and a notebook, so he wrote portions of it during that time. He stopped working it it after getting married and having children in the early 2000’s, but picked it up again in 2014. He describes wanting to use his favorite language, BASIC, but have it run faster like assembly. And the piece of software that he made is remarkable. If you yourself pick up a Commodore 64 Ultimate and are interested in programming it, I would recommend giving it a go. Just the novelty of packaged software with a real manual is itself a treat, but the language and compiler itself are quite extraordinary.
Programming The Commodore 64
As I’ve stated, part of my fascination with the Commodore 64 in 2026 is as a programmer. It is something that I think I can appreciate now so much more than I would have had I owned one as a child. Having been a programmer for over 20 years, that experience makes the device’s limitations more interesting to me than they would have been when I was younger. Beyond Vision Basic, the Commodore 64 comes with two main ways to program it that were included with the device itself. The first is of course BASIC, which loads every time you turn it on. The second is MOS 6502 assembly, a much more difficult yet performant way to code.
When you bought a Commodore 64, it came with a fairly large spiral-bound user manual. That manual not only contains the operating instructions for the computer but also a primer on BASIC programming. It does not touch on assembly, being primarily intended for home use. However, a similar book was created that one could buy called Commodore 64 Programmer’s Reference Guide. Unfortunately these are rare and often in poor condition. However, a wonderful individual in Scotland who has a site called Pickled Light has recreated the Programmer’s Reference Guide and User’s Guide in a printable PDF along with instructions on how to have it professionally printed for relatively little cost. He reformatted all of the original text in order to be printable. I did this myself and the results are pretty remarkable.
All of this old tech and programming practices are fascinating to someone who didn’t experience them as the main way of interacting with a computer. I don’t know what types of programs I plan to make for the Commodore 64, or if I’ll even finish any that I start, but I do know that I’ll find it interesting to partake in the journey of learning about it. Hopefully I will share some of that journey at Developer Aspirations in the coming months. I also plan on sharing those learnings with like minded individuals at a variety of retro social media that is probably different than you’d imagine.
The Commodore 64 for detox
Too many mornings I wake up and the first thing that I do is pick up my phone and scroll through news, reddit, bluesky, and other social media systems. I think to myself that it’s to become up to date on news or to read some of my favorite comics. And while that’s true, the nature of those systems makes it hard to turn away or put down without giving a benefit commensurate with the time invested. In addition, the connection that I once felt to others when going online has been missing. Posts and interactions feel hollow and less personal. I rarely connect to friends and never make new ones. This is in stark contrast from the Internet I grew up with in the mid to late 90’s.
The first bit of Social Media I used was probably BBSs. A friend of mine in High School ran one, and they were always really fun to discover and connect to. It turns out, old style BBSs still exist. Often, they even run on original old hardware including Commodore 64s; just now with connections to the Internet rather than purely relying on phone lines (though a select few do still have dial up support!). I found a great list of them called CBBS Outpost that lists a lot of still running BBS systems. There is hardware and software to get a C64 to connect over the Internet to these Bulletin Boards and they work basically the same as I remember. The communities on each are small, but still passionate and interested in what everyone else is doing. It’s a refreshing way to connect with strangers over a shared interest.
In my research, I also discovered a small project to bring an old school chat service to the Commodore 64 called Chat 64. They developed a cartridge that would work on a C64 and include a Wi-Fi chip to get the system online. It is programmed to specifically connect to their chat system where you can go and chat with people using original C64 hardware, or a recreation like the Commodore 64 Ultimate. It does require a physical system rather than an emulator, so while I’m excited to try it, I will have to wait for the real system to be delivered.
In addition to social media replacements, software replacements are also something that I think might have value today. Writing an article using bare-bones text editors, or making a silly old style greeting card I think could also be a lot of fun. Obviously, old games from that era still exist and new ones for the hardware are still being made today.
Conclusion
I never had a Commodore 64 growing up, though I was exposed to them. In my Aunt’s basement there was one with a few games. At school, we used C64s to learn how to type before DOS and Windows eventually took over. I remember having an Intellivision, and later on an NES, Genesis, and eventually a Windows 3.11 PC. However, the Commodore was always a fascinating machine to me, with its esoteric commands for loading programs and the BASIC prompt that invited one to not just run programs, but to write them as well.
There was a book I remember using when I was young that had a bunch of BASIC programs in it. I remember having my mom type in a program from that book which took hours. Or maybe less. I was young, so 20 minutes probably felt like hours. In the end, it would create a picture of a house that had a chimney with smoke coming out of it. The smoke was animated and I was captivated that the words she typed somehow made an animated house. I don’t think it was a Commodore 64, but it was some early computer that could run BASIC that you typed in, and lost all data when the computer was turned off. It was one of those early experiences that caught my imagination and made me want to work with computers for the rest of my life.
I know that that right there is nostalgia calling and that there really isn’t a way to recreate that feeling exactly. When we’re young, new things can feel wondrous and we might chase that wonder as time goes on. However, I think that either reliving some of those moments or recreating moments like those do have a lot of benefits. To smile and feel connected. To have a sense of wonder and amazement, joy and excitement. And most of all, reigniting passions that may have become dulled or muddied in the swamp of modern living.
Those are the reasons I ordered a Commodore 64. Even though I still await its arrival, I look forward to pretending I’m once again a child in the 1980’s and discovering wonder again.