January 8, 2026
Press RUN? The disk did it for you
Dissecting a C64 Autoboot Program
Retro trick makes C64 games auto-start — nostalgia vs gatekeeping vibes
TLDR: A retro deep dive explains how a 1984 trick made Commodore 64 programs auto-start by nudging memory and faking keypresses. Fans are split between praising clever engineering and dismissing it as a mere parlor trick, with nostalgia and memes fueling a lively debate on what counts as a “real” boot.
Retro land is buzzing after a deep dive into a 1984 magazine hack that made Commodore 64 games auto-start without typing RUN. The C64 normally dumped you at a BASIC prompt, but this clever loader nudged memory markers and even “stuffed” fake keypresses so programs sprang to life. The breakdown cites an old COMPUTE!’s Gazette trick and nods to the guidebook Mapping the Commodore 64, and the crowd is split between awe and eye-rolls.
On one side: the nostalgia flood. Commenters swear they can “smell warm plastic” and remember typing LOAD "*",8,1 like a sacred ritual. On the other: the purists, insisting this isn’t “real” booting, just a cheeky BASIC sleight-of-hand. Meanwhile, tinkerers are giddy over the reverse engineering, calling the keyboard-buffer trick “so dumb it’s brilliant.” Modern devs are laughing at how much work it took to do what today is a double-click—while retro fans clap back that constraints made legends. Memes are glorious: “BASIC prompt is the Dark Souls of user interfaces,” “POKE wars 2026,” and ASCII art of a floppy yelling “RUN YOURSELF.” The hottest debate: does tricking the computer count as true autoboot, or just extremely stylish cheating?
Key Points
- •The Commodore 64 boots to the BASIC prompt and does not auto-boot from disk like many contemporaries.
- •Some C64 programs auto-started after loading, enabled by techniques such as Dan Carmichael’s 1984 autoboot method.
- •C64 BASIC memory is partitioned by TXTTAB, VARTAB, and ARYTAB pointers, which are adjusted on program load.
- •Loading machine-language programs can disrupt BASIC by altering VARTAB/ARYTAB; the NEW command resets these pointers.
- •BASIC and KERNAL use RAM vectors at $0300–$0333; loaders often print commands and use the keyboard buffer to automate execution.