25c3: The Ultimate Commodore 64 Talk

Christiaan008 · 159.6K views · 2010-12-11 · 1:01:15

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Overview

Michael Steil's 25C3 talk covers the Commodore 64's architecture, quirks and demoscene tricks in about an hour. It aims to convey everything about the machine in a compact, nostalgic tour.

On Hacker News

HN people treat it as the canonical C64 talk and rewatch Steil's 'Ultimate' series regularly.

Recommended by 3 HN people across 3 months · HN mentions 2011–2025

Topics

Demoscene & retrocomputing Computer architecture & CPUs

What people said

msarnoff · 2025-04 · Strong recommendation
Michael’s blog is one of my favorites. His “Ultimate Guide” talks are great and I rewatch them at least once a year. Ultimate Guide to the C64: [VIDEO] Ultimate Guide to the Game Boy: [LINK] Ultimate Guide to the Apollo Guidance Computer: [LINK]
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anyfoo · 2021-09 · Recommendation
Not exactly what you're asking for, but [VIDEO] while being 480p and rather noisy, was very sufficient for me to watch and enjoy the talk back in the day. The presented material does not suffer much on the relatively low resolution.
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psykotic · 2011-07 · Recommendation
> Back in the 80s, the Commodore C-64 had an intelligent floppy drive, the 1541, i.e. an external unit that had its own CPU and everything. I remember by the time I got a floppy drive for my C64 it was twice the price of a new C64, $400 vs $200. It was a real luxury item in those days. Obligatory link to Michael Steil's The Ultimate Commodore 64 Talk: [VIDEO]
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Sources

Video by Christiaan008, played through YouTube.

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