C64 tool tricks (VICE and others)

Janne Hellsten on August 23, 2018

A collection of random C64 tool tricks.

VICE

Capturing the ROM charset

Make ROM visible to the monitor and save data from $d000 onwards:

bank rom
bs "data.bin" 0 $d000 $d7fff

Using exomizer to crunch executables

Installation

  1. Download and extract exomizer
  2. Build it by
mkdir exomizer
cd exomizer
make -C src

The command line tools will reside under the src directory.

Packing a .prg file

To pack a .prg that uses the BASIC upstart sequence (SYS something), use:

exomizer sfx sys input.prg -o output.prg -x3

The -x3 adds a border flashing decrunching effect. Drop that switch if you don’t want it.