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A Technical Deep Dive into the Commodore 64 Dead Test Cartridge Font

By

masswerk

7d ago· 22 min readenInsight

Summary

A detailed technical exploration of the font used in the Commodore 64's "Dead Test" diagnostic cartridge. The article documents the font's design, reveals an Easter egg hidden within it, examines the technical implementation, and provides downloadable Commodore 8-bit character ROMs for enthusiasts and retro computing fans.

Key quotes

· 3 pulled
Recently, having a cursory look around at the Web, this yielded an alarming result: there's apparently no documentation of the iconic font of the C64 Dead Test cartridge, no character chart, no read-out, nothing of note.
A scandalous omission, we're attempting to remedy here, for once.
The same font, BTW, is also implemented in the more advanced Rev. 586200 diag
Snippet from the RSS feed
A deep dive into the font of the “Dead Test” diagnostic cartridge of the C64, including an Easter egg, a look into the implementation, and, finally, some Commodore 8-bit character ROMs for download.

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