COMMODORE 64
PROGRAMMER'S REFERENCE GUIDE

CHAPTER 5
BASIC TO MACHINE LANGUAGE

digital recreation by pesco

The PRG is a classic of C64 history and, I suppose, lore among its programmers. Chapter 5 is its longest and in my view most important chapter, introducing 6502 assembly language and the KERNAL. I have recreated it using the troff digital typesetting system, which even makes it period accurate in a way. :)

The main goals of this recreation were to reproduce the text exactly and to stay faithful to the original's layout, without going crazy over graphical details. A consequence of the first goal is that this version carries over several mistakes from the original, some benign and some more significant. I have taken careful notes and aim to post a corrected edition later.

All fonts used are not the originals, as I do not have the licenses. I have taken care to choose good alternatives, most notably League Spartan for the main text, a close cousin of the original's Futura, though not an exact copy. A more liberal choice was Trispace Condensed for the instruction mnemonics. I like this one and think it works very well.

The PDF files below all contain the same text, differing only in page layout. The first file has equal margins, suitable for reading on screen. The other two are prearranged for printing on A4 paper. One yields loose sheets that can be cut into A5 and put into a binder. The other produces 16-page signatures to be stitched and glued into a proper book. Bind it with an open spine so it will lie flat!

Finally, these optional cover pages are based on the scanned originals. Print on thick paper, laminate one side, and cut appropriately.

For reference, the scan I have worked with is available from zimmers.net. There are several others hosted at the Internet Archive, but I found this one to be of the best quality.


Note: This is not an official product. I did reach out to Commodore and as I understand they are fine with me releasing this to the community.