Commodore 64 Programming Languages and Operating Systems

I'm a long-time collector of programming languages and operating systems for the Commodore 64; this page lists some of the more interesting items in my collection. It's not meant to be an exhaustive survey of what's out there (for programming languages, we have Dan Fandrich's Commodore Languages List). I'm also not interested in cross-development tools, because real men code on their Commodore 64s! Most of the items on this page include links to disk images and/or documentation, but some haven't been imaged yet. If there's something you're interested in that I haven't provided an image for, you can email me (cenbe at protonmail dot com).

I've given a number of talks on Commodore 64 programming languages and operating systems at various retro shows; you can find slides, code examples, and videos at the link.

Commodore 64 Programming Languages

These are some of the more interesting languages in my collection. For the most complete listing of programming languages for the Commodore 64 (and related machines), see Dan Fandrich's Commodore Languages List.

As far as I know, I have all the major Abacus compilers (just search on "Abacus").

Some of the images here are ZipCode six-packed because they are lightly copy-protected; the advantage of ZipCode is that you don't need a modified drive to write the disk from the image. You can find a copy of ZipCode here. When extracting six-packs, after the first three files have been read, you'll get a 62 error (file not found); insert the disk with the second three files and hit Return. For the files on this page, the encoded filename is the D64 name without the "-123.d64" or "-456.d64" suffix.

There are also some images in G64 format. This requires either an emulator or the proper hardware to write such an image back to diskette (e.g. ZoomFloppy with nibtools).

Many of the manuals here were scanned by the indomitable DLH. His site is the best resource for Commodore manuals.

Assemblers

BASIC

Abacus Basic 64:  G64 image  /  manual
Abacus Video Basic 64:
ZipCode six-pack   files 1-3   files 4-6  /   G64  /   manual
Becker Basic (GEOS):  D64 image  /   manual
Blitz! BASIC compiler:
DotBASIC (from the editors of Loadstar):   ZIP file   with disk images and PDF manual
geoBasic (GEOS):   D64 image   manual

Note: geoBasic was an unfinished project from Berkeley Softworks, released by RUN magazine. It has enough bugs (serious enough to corrupt your project as you're editing it) to make it unusable. However, if you're a language geek and are interested in reverse-engineering and debugging it, you would surely be rewarded in the afterlife. Here's a text file by George Wells listing known bugs and possible workarounds; it also includes an extensive errata list for the manual.

geoCom: D81 image (German) D81 image (English) / manual (English)

(and many other BASIC compilers and extensions)

Forth

LISP

Pascal

Abacus Pascal: D64 image / manual
Abacus Super Pascal (like USCD Pascal): ZipCode six-pack files 1-3 files 4-6 / G64 image / manual Abacus ZOOM Pascal: D64 image / manual

ZOOM Pascal is licensed from KMMM Pascal, as noted in their manual: "ZOOM Pascal is a subset of KMMM Pascal. It came into being when Abacus Software agreed to take level III of KMMM Pascal, rewrite the instruction manual, leave out the Editor/Compiler and distribute the resulting package as ZOOM Pascal." The version of KMMM Pascal below is level IV version 6E.

G-Pascal: D64 image / manual

see also 2011 article (archived copy) with source, 2012 comp.sys.cbm post with cc65-compatible source (cc65 source provided by Chris Baird, original web site no longer available)

KMMM Pascal: D64 image / manual

This compiler is protected by a cassette port dongle; the copy here was cracked with help from Tarnyko. Thanks!

Kyan Pascal (cracked): D64 image / manual
Oxford Pascal: ZipCode six-pack files 1-3 files 4-6 / manual (PDF)

other languages

Abacus Ada Training Course:  ZipCode six-pack   files 1-3   files 4-6  /   G64  /   manual
Abacus COBOL:   D64 image  /   manual
Nevada COBOL (requires CP/M cartridge):   D64 image  /   manual
COMAL:   COMAL 0.14,   tutorial disk,   Power Driver (with docs)
COMAL-80 cartridge:  image and docs
Abacus Fortran:   D64 image  /   manual

Nevada FORTRAN (requires CP/M cartridge): D64 image / manual

Thanks to Richard Atkinson!

Logo (Commodore)
NanoVM (mininal JVM):   ZIP file containing D64 image   /   announcement/instructions
Vanilla Pilot:   D64 image   manual
Prolog:   D64 image  /   manual (PDF, German)

Even I was surprised to see this on the '64... thanks, ski!

PROMAL (see separate page)
Redcode: D64 image / docs

Yes folks, it's Core War for the Commodore 64! You'll want to turn off JiffyDOS to run this one. In addition to the disk image, I've included the contains online docs, which I extracted from memory after the program decompressed itself, then converted to ASCII.

Commodore 64 Operating Systems

ACE (Craig Bruce)

ACE is a UNIX-like operating system for the Commodore 64 and 128. It is distributed as six SFX (self-extracting) files; the first three contain the operating system and the second three contain documentation files (which are available as HTML on Craig's site). You can make your own copy of ACE by LOADing and RUNning the SFX files; here they are on D64 images (three on a side):

side A (first three SFX files) side B (second three SFX files)

The whole thing won't fit on a D64, so here is a D81 image with all six SFX files extracted to it.

If you do a manual copy to a 1541 disk, you can get a bootable copy of ACE. This D64 image was copied from a 1581 without the '128 binary or the docs (including the first few documentation files that are in the third SFX). It just barely fits (26 blocks free). Make sure to start it with LOAD":*",8 and not ,8,1 before typing RUN. You can get an 80-column screen with the command eighty.

Here's a tarball of the documentation files as text if you'd like to read them on your PC.

Asterix (Chris "Polar" Baird) D64 image

To start, enter this command: disk ?boot ; sh < boot

For a brief introduction, enter this: disk ?starter ; page starter

UPDATE: Chris saw the video of my GeckOS presentation at VCFMW, and noticing that I mentioned Asterix and was looking for the source code, sent it to me. Here's the tarball!

Chris says: "Asterix came about after a discussion with a friend that one of the core features of Unix-like operating systems was a reentrant shell, so I had a go at realizing it by making something that had a boot script. Unfortunately, University studies & exams got in the way of making Asterix a self-hosting assembler environment." There's a lot more information in the tarball, including some correspondence of his during the development of Asterix.

CP/M (Commodore Business Machines) D64 image of CP/M 2.2 (requires CP/M cartridge) manual

DOS/65, a CP/M workalike (Richard A. Leary) bootable disk / empty disk (see web site for docs)

GEOS (see separate page), a GUI operating system (Berkeley Softworks)

GeckOS (see separate page), a Unix-like operating system (André Fachat)

LUnix, a Unix-like operating system (Daniel Dallman et al.) D64 image source code

LOAD":*",8 and RUN to start. F3 brings up a second console with a system prompt; you can type l sh to get a shell, and ctrl-D to exit back to the system prompt. F1 to return to the first console (shift-Commodore also works to switch consoles). Type cat .lunixrc ! more to see examples of how to load modules at the system prompt. Type e.g. help ls for help on commands.

WiNGs (Jolse Maginnis) Requires SuperCPU, SuperRAM. Here's a screen capture of WiNGs playing a video!