RetroTechCollection

Second Book of Commodore 64

COMPUTE!'s Second Book of Commodore 64 is a 1984 collection of games, applications, utilities and tutorials for the Commodore 64 from COMPUTE! Publications of Greensboro, North Carolina, many of them reprinted from COMPUTE! and COMPUTE!'s Gazette. ISBN 0-942386-44-2. The printing line shows the hosted scan is the second printing.[1] The Library of Congress record gives the extent as vi, 289 pages (call number QA76.8.C64 C67 1984).[2]

It includes Charles Brannon's SpeedScript, a machine language word processor (pp. 3-40), together with a spreadsheet, a mailing list, educational games, Jerry M. Jaco's "Working with SID", custom characters and sprites, Sheldon Leemon's "Adding New Keywords to BASIC", the SuperBASIC 64 extension and program merge and recovery utilities.[3]

The hosted scan is incomplete. It stops at p. 270, partway through Appendix F, so the rest of the ASCII table, Appendices G to J (screen codes, keycodes, the MLX machine language editor and the Automatic Proofreader) and the index are missing.[4]

Contents

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Page numbers are from the book's contents list.[3]

  • Foreword, p. v
  • Chapter 1: Recreations and Applications, p. 1 (SpeedScript, p. 3; Spike; Martian Prisoner; 64 Mailing List; 64 Spreadsheet, p. 72)
  • Chapter 2: Kid Stuff, Educational Games, p. 85
  • Chapter 3: Sound, p. 103 (Working with SID, p. 105; Sound Editor 64; SYS Sound; The Note Name Game)
  • Chapter 4: Colors, Characters, and Motion, p. 137
  • Chapter 5: Inside Your 64, p. 177 (function keys, arrays, Adding New Keywords to BASIC, p. 194)
  • Chapter 6: Utilities, p. 213 (SuperBASIC 64, p. 215; Copyfile; Merging Programs on the 64; 64 Program Lifesaver, p. 256)
  • Appendices, p. 259: A-B typing in programs; C screen location table; D screen colour memory table; E screen colour codes; F ASCII codes, p. 269; G screen codes, p. 273; H Commodore 64 keycodes, p. 275; I using the MLX machine language editor, p. 276; J the Automatic Proofreader, p. 283

What this book does not contain

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It is a programming book. It has no schematics, parts lists or component values; for those use the Commodore 64 / 64C Service Manual. The first volume is COMPUTE!'s First Book of Commodore 64.

Download: Computes Second Book of Commodore 64.pdf

References

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  1. ↑ COMPUTE!'s Second Book of Commodore 64 (COMPUTE! Publications, 1984), title page and copyright page (PDF pp. 3-4).
  2. ↑ Open Library, Compute!'s second book of Commodore 64, record OL2937273M, from Library of Congress catalogue data (LCCN 84-174735). Retrieved 2026-10-01.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 COMPUTE!'s Second Book of Commodore 64, Contents, pp. iii-iv (PDF pp. 5-6), and Foreword, p. v (PDF p. 7).
  4. ↑ COMPUTE!'s Second Book of Commodore 64, last scanned page, p. 270 (PDF p. 278), against the contents list (PDF p. 6).
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