An Introduction to Programming C-64 Demos (opens in new tab)

A c64 boots into basic. You can then enter and edit basic programs. In order to do ml, you need another program. There are many options, but the most used in the demo scene is turbo. This is an additional program that you run. This program allows you to enter and edit you ml before you execute it. Of course today most people use cross development and an emulator. Again there are several options, with cc65 probably one of the more popular ones. I wrote tmpx which allows you to use your favorite text editor and the turbo macro format, and then tmpx will compile it.

The screen you're talking about is just C64 BASIC. You'd do LOAD to get Turbo Assembler into memory (from cassette tape or disk), then go from there...

That's Linus Åkesson (lft):

http://demozoo.org/sceners/3621/

Puterman, who wrote the article, is Linus Åkerlund:

http://demozoo.org/sceners/2803/

They're both amazingly talented and in Sweden, but not the same person.

That's a different Linus.

My teenage self spent quite some time hanging around Amiga users, watching demos, reading Amiga technical manuals and playing out tunes in protracker.

Assembly and AMOS ruled.

Nice memories.

He's been busy: http://csdb.dk/scener/?id=835

Experience with 8-bit micros also makes me curse the barriers you often find on modern machines that prevent you from really controlling the video display. Whether it's well-meaning display drivers refusing your custom resolutions to avoid "blowing up" the monitor, problems with bad or partially implemented drivers (in the open-source case, probably due to the video card manufacturer having a proprietary hold on the necessary information), or going through graphics APIs which are only specified to suggest what the hardware should do rather than command it - for example, if you want to avoid tearing you may ask (in some very platform/API/situation-specific way) for vsync, but whether you'll get it is another matter. Yeah whenever I see a monstrously powerful modern system seemingly wheezing and straining to push a few pixels smoothly from one end of the screen to the other it makes me sad.