Owning a classic machine is great, but Living Commodore Memory needs action. In this VCF West talk, Dan Sanderson shows how practice preserves history. He urges fans to switch systems on, code, repair, and teach.
He starts with a quick poll. Many in the room owned a C64. Few touched a C65. That gap matters. The Commodore 65 never shipped. Prototypes differ, and documentation is patchy. So, memories alone fall short. We need repeatable practice.
Enter the MEGA65. It recreates the idea in usable form. It keeps the feel and clears old pain points. HDMI sits with classic ports. SD cards handle disk images. A fast CPU mode refreshes BASIC work. The team licensed the C65 ROM and maintains BASIC 65. Clear APIs and steady updates help creators ship.
Openness drives the momentum. Code and cores live on GitHub. Owners update at home. Then they test new builds and share results. With ports from MiSTer, the MEGA65 can act like a small museum. It runs PET, VIC-20, and C64 cores with an authentic keyboard layout. That routine turns Living Commodore Memory into daily use.
Documentation keeps newcomers moving. A 250-page guide ships in the box. A larger doc set grows online. Sanderson also writes a monthly newsletter and a read-aloud podcast. Each issue offers small tasks. Turn the machine on. Try a demo. Build a tool. Then come back next week.
Games and tools keep arriving. Titles like Showdown and First Shot highlight newer graphics modes. Meanwhile, community authors release assemblers, editors, and utilities. The machine becomes a platform, not a prop.
Sanderson closes with a personal note. He recovered a BASIC program he published in 1988. It is simple, yet it proves the point. Media fades. Practice sticks. So he invites viewers to try a MEGA65, write something small, and share it. That is how the living Commodore memory stays real. Watch the talk and add your code to the story.
