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0 pointsbandoti9mo ago0 comments

There’s a lot more to it actually. When given the knowledge of today, a lot can actually be done with vintage computers. I would say it’s an artistic medium.

Take a look at the Commodore 64 developer manual and quickly realize that without much difficulty, one can learn the full assembly instruction set along with all BASIC commands.

https://www.commodore.ca/manuals/c64_programmers_reference/c...

The machine is completely open to experimentation. You can write to memory anywhere including the active display terminal. The chips are easy to mix, match, swap. Hardware and software is malleable, not a locked-down black box of complexity and TPIM modules!

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bombcar9mo ago

That’s the second order fascination which comes less in the actual original hardware but in rebuilds and equivalents and other “not collector but operational”.

Those are how younger people are going to get excited for the hardware - the software is available to anyone willing to run an emulator.

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