25c3: The Ultimate Commodore 64 Talk
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN people treat it as the canonical C64 talk and rewatch Steil's 'Ultimate' series regularly.
What it is
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.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 3 different months, 2011 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec msarnoff · 2025-04 · on “How MOS 6502 Illegal Opcodes Work (2008)”
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: [this video] Ultimate Guide to the Game Boy: [LINK] Ultimate Guide to the Apollo Guidance Computer: [LINK]
Recommends psykotic · 2011-07 · on “The story of FCopy for the C-64”
> 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: [this video]
Recommends anyfoo · 2021-09 · on “The Ultimate Commodore 1541 Disk Drive Talk [video]”
Not exactly what you're asking for, but [this 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.