One of the most effective ways to learn 6502 assembly is to work directly at the machine level: assembling instructions by hand, stepping through execution, and inspecting registers and memory as the CPU runs. The VICE Monitor provides an excellent interactive environment for doing exactly that on the Commodore 64. This post is a practical guide to the subset of monitor commands you will actually use when practicing 6502 programming on the C64. It deliberately ignores advanced or peripheral features and concentrates on assembling code, disassembling it, stepping through instructions, inspecting state, and managing breakpoints. Top 10 Command Cheatsheet Command...

I’ve been getting back into 65xx assembly, so I decided to buy a W65C816SXB SBC which is a development board designed for education from WDC. The specs for this and the 65C02 version look great, but I really should have tried their WDCTools development software before I impulse bought this board! Their software is terrible. I spent an evening last night trying to get it to work but so far have failed. Walking through their Getting Started page didn’t even work. Reading through the 6502 forums, I’m not the only person that ran into issues. Most other people that got...

Supermon64 is a machine-language monitor for the Commodore 64 originally written by Jim Butterfield. The following was take and modified from the instructions at jblang/supermon64. I copied them here for my reference. Usage Instructions Number Bases Prefix Base $ Hex + Decimal & Octal % Binary Overview g go (run) j jump (subroutine) l load from tape or disk m memory display r register display s save to tape or disk x exit to basic a simple assembler d disassembler f fill memory h hunt memory t transfer memory c compare memory @ disk status/command Number Conversion $2000 $2000 +8192...