page_title: Commodore 64
section_title: Graphics
hierarchical_section_title: Commodore 64 / Hardware / Graphics
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Die beiden Fonts des C64, a) Klein- und Großschrift, b) Großschrift und Symbole
context_page_description: The Commodore 64, also known as the C64 or the CBM 64, is an 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International. It has been listed in the Guinness World Records as the highest-selling single computer model of all time, with independent estimates placing the number sold between 10 and 17 million units. Volume production started in early 1982, marketing in August for US$595. Preceded by the Commodore VIC-20 and Commodore PET, the C64 took its name from its 64 kilobytes of RAM. With support for multicolor sprites and a custom chip for waveform generation, the C64 could create superior visuals and audio compared to systems without such custom hardware.
  The C64 dominated the low-end computer market for most of the 1980s. For a substantial period, the C64 had between 30% and 40% share of the US market and two million units sold per year, outselling IBM PC compatibles, Apple computers, and the Atari 8-bit family of computers. Sam Tramiel, a later Atari president and the son of Commodore's founder, said in a 1989 interview, "When I was at Commodore we were building 400,000 C64s a month for a couple of years."
context_section_description: The graphics chip, VIC-II, features 16 colors, eight hardware sprites per scanline (enabling up to 112 sprites per PAL screen), scrolling capabilities, and two bitmap graphics modes. The standard text mode features 40 columns, like most Commodore PET models; the built-in character encoding is not standard ASCII but PETSCII, an extended form of ASCII-1963. The KERNAL ROM sets the VIC-II to a dark blue background on power up with a light blue text and border. Unlike the PET and VIC-20, the C64 uses "fat" double-width text as some early VIC-IIs had poor video quality that resulted in a fuzzy picture. Most screenshots show borders around the screen, which is a feature of the VIC-II chip. By utilizing interrupts to reset various hardware registers on precise timings it was possible to place graphics within the borders and thus use the full screen.
  The C64 has a resolution of 320×200 pixels, consisting of a 40×25 grid of 8×8 character blocks.  The C64 has 255 predefined character blocks, called PETSCII. The character set can be copied into RAM and altered by a programmer.
  There are two colour modes, high resolution, with two colours available per character block (one foreground and one background) and multicolour with four colours per character block (three foreground and one background).  In multicolour mode, attributes are shared between pixel pairs, so the effective visible resolution is 160×200 pixels.  This is necessary since only 16 KB of memory is available for the VIC-II video processor.
  As the C64 has a bitmapped screen, it is possible to draw each pixel individually.  This is however, very slow.  Most programmers used techniques developed for earlier non-bitmapped systems, like the Commodore Pet and TRS-80. A programmer redraws the character set and the video processor fills the screen block by block from the top left corner to the bottom right corner.
  Two different types of animation are used: Character block animation and hardware sprites.
caption: The two PETSCII character sets of the C64
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