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it's on the internet, they could go one further than just simple narrative choices. sticking with the 80s-ish theme: alter ego for commodore 64. or, they could also go 1984-esque in a facebook-meets-google-meets-nsa way and really tailor the characters, locations, story, and possible choices and consequences to the viewer.

I assume that the parent means "built-in basic" on both machines.

CBM BASIC was MS 6502 BASIC under the hood. The C128 even included a Microsoft copyright message. There is an easter egg in basic v2 on the PET which displays "Microsoft!" on the screen. The story goes that Bill Gates had an argument with Jack Tramiel and wanted to be able to prove that it was MS basic.

See here and here

According to the first link, the basic on the Apple II was called integer basic and was written by Woz. Though MS basic was available on tape and built into the Apple II Plus.

Don't forget the C16, C116 and Plus/4, which were C64 compatible too.

Also, don*t forget the Educator 64 / PET 64 / CBM 4064-

The C65 did not make it beyond the prototype stage, it was never released.

Commodore 64 cartridges could include a circuit that switches different pages of ROM into the 16 KiB of address space available to a cartridge. For example, if writing to cartridge space ($8000-$BFFF) instead writes to an octal D flip-flop (e.g. 74HC373/377) that controls A14 and higher address lines of the ROM, this would allow (in theory) up to 4 MiB of ROM. Similar techniques were common on Atari 2600 (which originally topped out at 4 KiB ROM) and especially on NES (likewise 32 KiB). But cartridges were underused because they were more expensive for game publishers to replicate than tapes and floppies.

The Commodore-64 doesn't have a yellowish-orange color. You'd have to overlay a hi-res sprite to dither colors.

That sounds like the ON .. GOTO that was in BASIC 2.0 on the Commodore 64, and I suppose many other BASICs.

http://www.c64-wiki.com/index....

I remember reading that the Commodore 1541 disk drive has the same CPU (6502?) and ram 64k as the main machine

Apparently it does have a 6502 (the C64 has a 6510, which is a slightly enhanced 6502) but it only has 2KB of RAM.

That sounds more sensible- I'd have been gobsmacked if they *had* put 64K in there as well. 64K might be peanuts nowdays, but it was a *lot* of memory (and still not cheap) when the C64 launched, and would probably have been overkill for a disk drive.

The Atari 810 and 850 (disk drives for the Atari 8-bit computers) use the 6507 CPU, which is internally identical to the 6502, but with fewer external address lines. Ironically, even though that's a lower spec on paper (though I don't know the clock speed(s)), the performance of the drives was better because the C64 / 1541 was hobbled by a flawed interface design.

protecting the inventor yet again! Attaboy USPTO!
Whoda thunk you could put circuitry in a stylus? NOT ME!!
http://www.c64-wiki.com/index.php/Light_pen
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/electronic+stylus
http://www.youtube.com/all_comments?v=4gpN4EILwz8
etc
etc
etc

No.

OK, well this is C64-specific because it relies on C64's PETSCII table.

http://www.c64-wiki.com/index.php/PETSCII

\ is at 109, / is at 110.
According to the wiki, "Codes 192-223 as codes 96-127" so the program could've used 109.5 instead of 205.5.

CHR$ 205 prints \
CHR$ 206 prints /
RND(1) returns [0 to 1), so adding the value to 205.5 and truncating the float either makes 205 or 206.
PRINT with ; does not move to next print zone
: separates statements
GOTO 10 loops

iirc LOAD "$", 8 would work better for you. Just ,8 was definitely needed when loading any BASIC programs but ML programs would usually be ,8,1. Also I cut the solder to make my drives 8, 10, 11, and 12. :-)

http://www.c64-wiki.com/index.php/LOAD probably has more information than you care for.

Assembly Language for Kids
(Awesome illustrations in that book b.t.w.)

A quite expensive casemod. What's the point of putting an underpowered PC that won't even be able to run a proper cycle exact C64 emulation into an impractical case? Commodore doesn't exist anymore. It's just a brand name now, an attempt to sell overpriced crap under an emotional name. Others do the emulation in a more practical setting, others do the peripherals for the real thing better, others do the keyboard computer thing better.

I agree especially since there was technology decades ago which allowed very primitive CPU's to animate little blocks in real-time... I'm not sure why it doesn't exist in more "modern" systems. http://www.c64-wiki.com/index.php/Sprite

C64 sprites, IIRC, used dedicated hardware. That doesn't sound quite like the right solution to me.

Obviously, modern PCs and smart phones have graphics hardware too, but one problem is that Flash's rendering model doesn't fit modern GPUs all that well.

I agree especially since there was technology decades ago which allowed very primitive CPU's to animate little blocks in real-time... I'm not sure why it doesn't exist in more "modern" systems. http://www.c64-wiki.com/index.php/Sprite

It's from the game Bruce Lee for the C64. That I recognized it has to be worth at least one geek point. ;-)

http://www.c64-wiki.com/index.php/Bruce_Lee

I wouldn't be surprised if someone has built an flash-based storage device for them.

Yep, there's plenty of flash-storage solutions for the C64. I'm using MMC replay (http://www.c64-wiki.com/index.php/MMC_Replay) and uIEC (http://www.c64-wiki.com/index.php/uIEC)

I wouldn't be surprised if someone has built an flash-based storage device for them.

Yep, there's plenty of flash-storage solutions for the C64. I'm using MMC replay (http://www.c64-wiki.com/index.php/MMC_Replay) and uIEC (http://www.c64-wiki.com/index.php/uIEC)