kinifi

At work someone hosted a c64 development group. We are just getting started so we haven’t done much but its been pretty cool leading up to it.

New C64’s are being made today in 2023.

There are a few brand new PCB’s being made. The only piece that hasn’t been replicated is the VICII chip. Which I find interesting. I’m sure its only a matter of time because someone does something with FPGA.

I bid on a new C64 Sixty Clone and its absolutely beautiful.

Look at how clean this is pcb! I’m excited to put it inside my breadbin case.

Couple of other Hardware pieces I picked up for the C64:

• Ghostbuster Cartridge
• A New Power Supply from a company in Poland
• SD2IEC – making it easy to read as if I had a floppy disk drive

Learning How to Program On A 64

• Assembly isn’t fun but it sure is fast. I’ve been learning this from random youtube videos but mostly c64bites has been an insanely good resource. Parts of assembly feel familiar but for the most part its so different than “higher level languages” like what I use daily (C) that I’m glad there are plenty of resources out there
• Vision Basic – this project is super awesome. It brings Basic into 2023 and is FAST. The biggest problem of using BASIC on a C64 is how slow it is. I’ve been prototyping in Vision Basic and I am so impressed! https://visionbasic.net/

Community

• Freeze64 is a great c64 magazine that I use to be subscribed too back in 2018 and its been great picking it back up again and reading some of the newer pieces.
• Lemon64
• Youtube – I’m surprised at how many people have made videos with the c64, showing younger people like me just how to do things. It feels like the c64 is coming back just because we can make brand new hardware, cartridges and games so easily today.