Retro Computing
I found this collection of C64 graphics and wanted to share them with you. But it's not only a preview of great artists of the C64 scene, but also a demonstration for excellent programming. The most pictures shown here the C64's video controller isn't able to display. Normally the C64 has a multicolor mode with 160x200 pixels and a hi-res mode with 320x200 pixels, both with very complex color restrictions, and a palette of 16 fixed colors. But as you see the picure resolutions are looking much higher and the pictures are look more colorful than 16-color graphics. For more information about C64 graphic modes take a look here.
http://naquaada.na.funpic.de/naq/osx.../c64_coll1.png http://naquaada.na.funpic.de/naq/osx.../c64_coll2.png http://naquaada.na.funpic.de/naq/osx.../c64_coll3.png http://naquaada.na.funpic.de/naq/osx.../c64_coll4.png http://naquaada.na.funpic.de/naq/osx.../c64_coll5.png http://naquaada.na.funpic.de/naq/osx.../c64_coll6.png |
Quote:
There are several tricks to augment the number of colours though... (not easy...) |
These are pictures of my favourite C64 demo 'Deus Ex Machina' from Creat/oyron. You can see it in action here and here. Remember, it's running on a machine with less than 1 MHz (985 kHz to be exact), 9 K video RAM and one 5,25" disk with only 330K! Everything is pure assembler programming, 3D-scaling, multitasking (playing music, gfx animation, disk loading), and the cola bottle animation is calculated in realtime!
http://naquaada.na.funpic.de/naq/osx.../c64_coll7.png Here's another version, different quality. By the way, the pic in the upper right is using the UIFLI mode - this means Underlaid Interlace Flexible Line Interpretation. And it's really so difficult to program as the name sounds ;) |
Quote:
They were designed in such a way that they were cheap (which lead to the so called "unofficial instructions" which are mostly just a mix of some instructions...) The 64K of memory had to be used really efficient... If you think this is hard programming... just look at a programming manual of the Philips CD-I... It had the bigger bother of the commodore's CPU (68000) and ran OS8 (nothing to do with Apple). It also had some advanced modes of programming there too (including interlaced mode) but the custom CD's where very hard to implement... I once stripped the music of a CD-I for a friend (and had to learn all I could of the device to do so...) |
Yep, I know the unofficial intructions as 'illegal opcodes'. They even may vary inside the processor series, so it <could> be possible that programs using them run one one computer but not on another. But C64 software is very good programmed, there are nearly no compatibility problems although there were at least 5 board revisions and 2 revisions of the C128 (which had an inbuilt C64-mode).
Don't know about the CD-I... I think it came st the same time as Commodore's CD32 which already had a 32bit-68EC020 and the Amiga AGA chipset. But it wasn't able to play video CDs like the CD-I, only with an external module. It was the first 32bit video game console on the market (the most people don't know this) and was fully upgradeable to a real Amiga, that was the main advantage. I still preferred the CDTV, it was fantastic... I still have two, with SCSI-controller, black keyboard and infrared mouse. But the CDTV came too early - the people had no idea what do with a remote-controlled computer containing a CD-ROM which should be placed into the living-room... nowadays everyone wants to do this. But the hardware was really criminal. The single-speed caddy CD-ROM was a complete CD-Player, with components from Technics on it. You could play CDs with it even when the 68000 was removed, crazy. A friend developed hardware for the CDTV, I often heard his curses about that thing :D |
Quote:
Note: The C64's main CPU can be replaced with a 32-bit 68XX compatible... Yeah it's quite a cool console for the time... |
And the nicest fun part in the early C64 days was typing 4 to 10 pages of hex value listings from a magazine into your machine.:D
Thank god we later on had checksums. |
Quote:
|
The C64's main cpu can't be replaced with an 68xx-chpu, these are from Motorola. The Flash8 and SuperCPU accelerators are using a 65816 with 8 or 20 MHz, but they also work only in 8 bit mode. True 16-bit applications are very rare for the C64.
|
Quote:
|