Talk:Commodore 64

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).
 This article is undergoing a featured article review to ensure that it meets the standards of a featured article. Please add a comment to assist the process and/or be bold and improve the article directly. If the article has been moved from its initial review period to the Featured Article Removal Candidate (FARC) section, you may support or contest its removal.
Featured article star Commodore 64 is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. If you can update or improve it, please do.
Main Page trophy

This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on October 6, 2005.
Famicom style controller This article is within the scope of WikiProject Video games. For more information, visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
Portal:CVG
 CVG Portal
Featured article FA This article has been rated as FA-Class on the assessment scale.
Mid This article is on a subject of mid priority within gaming for inclusion in Wikipedia 1.0.
This is a selected article of WikiProject Video games.
CVG To-do:


Peer review This page has been selected for Version 0.5 and the release version of Wikipedia. It has been rated FA-Class on the assessment scale. It is in the category Engtech.

/Archive 1: Sep 2003 - Oct 2005

/Archive 2: Oct 2005 - Aug 2006

Contents

[edit] Inclusion of VIC-64 as a variant name of computer

I had included a reference that the C-64 was sometimes unofficially referred to as the VIC-64 during its pre-release and immediately after its release, however this information was removed from the article. This name variant can be confirmed in magazine reviews, rumours, and advertisements ca. 1982/83 (i.e. COMPUTE! magazine). It was also a name that occurred in popular speech around that time, as people anticipated and talked about the new computer - and it stuck for a while afterwards. Anyone who was a Commodore user during the early 1980s could easily have heard someone refer to the new, mysterious "VIC-64". Seeing as this is a factual, verifiable and once popular variant of the name (although no longer in use), I think it should be included in the article. I am curious as to why this was removed, seeing as "C=64", which appears in the article, is not an "official" designation either. I can provide period magazine scans of this name in actual use if needed for the article.

VIC-64 also seems to be an official variant of the name in Sweden (Google search will provide examples) or this link: [1]

Perhaps since this name variant has fallen from popular use, it can be included in the Trivia section.

--205.193.82.252 17:03, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] That's a lot of links!

Unless i get negative feedback here, I'll try to clean up the link section a bit, and remove at least the most obvious plugs and unnecessary webpages. ("After a 64 game? Then find it here!"). All I did now was remove the "great commodore 64 link page" which was butt ugly and kept telling me my computer was full of errors.

--Virtualsky 16:12, 1 August 2006 (UTC) says:

Maybe some of the links could be moved to a section of the See Also portion of the page... like C64 Music Bands, or something like that. They could be given their own Wiki page, giving the phenomenon more exposure, while tidying up the C64 page at the same time.

I've gone and eradicated the extlinks section. Good riddance. How that got through FA review is beyond me. Chris Cunningham 10:51, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 'Quirks' of the VIC-II?

I have a bit of a problem with the description of more than 8 sprites visible and moving being due to 'quirks' in the VIC-II design. From my knowledge (taken from the Commodore 64 Reference Guide), this capability is not a quirk, but a feature. Multiple sprites were done using the vertical blank interrupt, by setting it higher than the bottom of the screen and using the IRQ routine to alter sprite pointers and/or other VIC-II settings mid-refresh.

The vertical blank register, which sets the scanline at which the vertical blank interrupt occurs is a documented feature of the chip. Although what it was supposed to be used for was not documented, but demo programmers soon found out that it could be used to do all sorts of graphical tricks, like switching modes partway down the screen and playing with sprite pointers and position registers to display more than 8 sprites.
I have edited the sentence in question accordingly.
Mvdwege 21:22, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
The VIC-II doesn't have a "vertical blank" register, per se. It does, however, have a pair of registers that report the current raster line being drawn (among other things) at $D011/$D012, and which are frequently used to create the various video tricks seen in C64 demos. Splitting a sprite is a small matter of either manually waiting for the proper raster line to arrive, or setting a raster interrupt to occur at the proper line, and updating the sprites' pointers to point to move them, point them to new images, change colors, etc. when the line arrives or the IRQ occurs. Fiddling with registers during vertical blank is generally used to turn off vertical borders, induce FLD and similar tricks, interlacing, etc.
Vanessaezekowitz 05:27, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Commodore 64 in the news

Not sure if this is worty of inclution here, reports about Wolfgang Priklopil (Natascha Kampusch kidnapper) using a Commodore 64 as his main computer, and that it's giving the police some trouble retrieving copies of his records have been cropping up all over the news lately [2] [3] [4]. --Sherool (talk) 09:23, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

I would guess the main reason why the police are having difficulties are because they're looking in vain for the C64's hard drive. Priklopil surely has several hundreds of 5.25" floppy disks containing files that might incriminate him, but the police are oblivious of the concept of floppy drives. JIP | Talk 08:34, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thinking the same

I added this as a line in the trivia section. What do you think? --Ceaser 12:26, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] History reorg

The different models should be incorporated into the History section. The article doesn't read chronologically just now.

The images should also be spaced around the article and appropriately captioned. Tying them to sections makes the article's image coverage spotty and disrupts page layout. Chris Cunningham 13:13, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Total number of games produced for the Commodore 64?

Can anyone estimate the total number, and size, of commercial games produced and published for the Commodore 64? I was wondering if they would all fit on a single 1 GiB USB memory stick. JIP | Talk 08:37, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

The best place to find this out would be on Gamebase64. This is the most accurate and full database of C64 games (both published and unpublished) on the Internet. Perhaps this site should be included in the External Links section? Jimbo 17:56, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
The site says they have recorded 18800 games. Assuming each of them takes up one Commodore 64 single-side floppy disk (664 blocks = 166 kiB) then the total size would be 3,120,800 kiB = (roughly) 3047.7 MiB = (roughly) 2.9762 GiB. So no, they won't all fit on one 1 GiB USB memory stick. But I came pretty close - they will fit on a 4 GiB USB memory stick, which are already commercially available. JIP | Talk 17:29, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Rationalizing the Trivia

Basically, I took the Trivia and divived it into two major groups. The software related issues were left in the same section but which was given a more accurate name. The two other points related to the high prevelance of defective C64s at product launch and to the homage paid to the C64 in GTA Vice City were simply moved to appropriate sections and contextualized.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Carambola (talk • contribs) 21:27, November 22, 2006 (UTC).

Excellent organizing, nice work! ▪◦▪≡Ѕirex98≡ 10:11, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../c/o/m/Talk%7ECommodore_64_5697.html"