Hi folks, I am curious if some people have 80 cols
setups for their C64. Perhaps that is C128 territory
only? I've seen some BBSs dedicated to 40 cols and
PETSCII presentations, so maybe I am missing the
point entirely. I'm just curious. I love all the
micros from '77 and up. Thanks!

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Sun, 26 Jul 2026 22:32:15 -0000 (UTC), mpower wrote:

Hi folks, I am curious if some people have 80 cols setups for their C64. Perhaps that is C128 territory only? I've seen some BBSs dedicated to 40
cols and PETSCII presentations, so maybe I am missing the point
entirely. I'm just curious. I love all the micros from '77 and up.
Thanks!

The C64 has no native way to do 80 columns.

That said, some terminal programs offered an 80 column mode for the C64
that basically just changed the font.

IHMO: It looked awful and was hard to read. But YMMV.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Much appreciated.

---- Original Message ----
Subject: Re: Do C64 Enthusiasts Use 80 Cols?
From: Captain Nemo <noone@nowhere.com>
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2026 12:11:49 +0000
Newsgroups: comp.sys.cbm
Article: 19530

On Sun, 26 Jul 2026 22:32:15 -0000 (UTC), mpower wrote:

Hi folks, I am curious if some people have 80 cols setups for their C64. Perhaps that is C128 territory only? I've seen some BBSs dedicated to 40
cols and PETSCII presentations, so maybe I am missing the point
entirely. I'm just curious. I love all the micros from '77 and up.
Thanks!

The C64 has no native way to do 80 columns.

That said, some terminal programs offered an 80 column mode for the C64
that basically just changed the font.

IHMO: It looked awful and was hard to read. But YMMV.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Captain Nemo wrote to All <=-

The C64 has no native way to do 80 columns.

That said, some terminal programs offered an 80 column mode for the C64 that basically just changed the font.

IHMO: It looked awful and was hard to read. But YMMV.

80 columns on a black and white TV, now that was horrid. I did one
semester of computer science dialed into the university's computers with
that setup, and got an IBM PC XT shortly afterwards. :)



... THE HEXAGONS OF AIM
--- MultiMail/Win v0.52
* Origin: http://realitycheckbbs.org | tomorrow's retro tech (1:218/700)

Hi folks, I am curious if some people have 80 cols
setups for their C64. Perhaps that is C128 territory

For BBSing, Novaterm 9.6revC for the C=64 has a pretty workable 80 column setup, plus an approximation of ANSI emulation besides.

This is what it looks like in 80 columns in VICE.

https://i.imgur.com/55vvJce.png

Hope that helps.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Shipwrecks & Shibboleths [San Francisco, CA - USA] (1:218/860)

On 2026-07-26, mpower <mpower-codeworks@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi folks, I am curious if some people have 80 cols
setups for their C64. Perhaps that is C128 territory

One person already responded about Novaterm.. and you may have seen my
other reply suggesting StrikeTerm2014 (a fork of the other), and also
CCGMS Future v0.2 for PETSCII in 80 cols... but nobody has mentioned
that there is a replacement for the VIC-II chip called the Kawari. It
will give you actual hardware 80 columns on the C64. One person I talk
to on the BBSes loves his, says it looks fantastic for BBSing and
everything else.

I just use an SVideo cable out of my C= into an LCD with software 80
columns.. Looks fine to me. I've put up with worse looking software 80
columns on the Atari 8bits ;).

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Sat, 03 Oct 2026 12:12:14 -0700
Daniel <me@fuhgitabutit.com> wrote:

I vaguely remember his video on the subject. Wasn't it sort of
cheating by scrunching the fonts?

Yes, it involves running in bitmap mode and rendering text "by hand;"
there was an article on this in Compute! back in the day. On top of
being slower, it's hard to come up with a readable font in a 4x8 cell (especially since you need a 1px gutter to separate the characters, so
it's effectively 3x7,) so it's no surprise that it wasn't very common.

Might've been more usable if it was 6x8 or even 5x8 (for 53/64 columns)
but 80 being the Magic Number by general consensus they went with that.


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

John Ames <commodorejohn@gmail.com> writes:

On Sat, 03 Oct 2026 12:12:14 -0700
Daniel <me@fuhgitabutit.com> wrote:

I vaguely remember his video on the subject. Wasn't it sort of
cheating by scrunching the fonts?

Yes, it involves running in bitmap mode and rendering text "by hand;"
there was an article on this in Compute! back in the day. On top of
being slower, it's hard to come up with a readable font in a 4x8 cell (especially since you need a 1px gutter to separate the characters, so
it's effectively 3x7,) so it's no surprise that it wasn't very common.

I've wondered if it could've been done by using character mode. Since
you can redefine all characters you could stuff two narrow characters
into one on the go. It feels like it could be an easy thing when
rendering but there might need to be a lot of character pairs, you'd run
out of characters to redefine.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Re: Re: Do C64 Enthusiasts Use 80 Cols?
By: Anssi Saari to All on Tue Oct 06 2026 11:47:45

...there might need to be a lot of character pairs, you'd run
out of characters to redefine.

The bigge problem is that in character mode, each key equals one character cell, so you can't type just half a cell.
--- SBBSecho 3.38-Linux
* Origin: End Of The Line BBS - endofthelinebbs.com (1:124/5016)

On Tue, 06 Oct 2026 11:47:45 +0300
Anssi Saari <anssi.saari@usenet.mail.kapsi.fi> wrote:

Yes, it involves running in bitmap mode and rendering text "by
hand;" there was an article on this in Compute! back in the day. On
top of being slower, it's hard to come up with a readable font in a
4x8 cell (especially since you need a 1px gutter to separate the characters, so it's effectively 3x7,) so it's no surprise that it
wasn't very common.

I've wondered if it could've been done by using character mode. Since
you can redefine all characters you could stuff two narrow characters
into one on the go. It feels like it could be an easy thing when
rendering but there might need to be a lot of character pairs, you'd
run out of characters to redefine.

Interesting notion, but I'm not sure it'd get you anything; that's
basically what they're doing in the existing examples (VIC-II bitmap
mode being arranged in character cells already.) If you didn't need a
full character set you could use predefined combo characters, but 256
of those leaves you with only 16 possibilities for your half-chars, not *nearly* enough for even uppercase-only, let alone digits/punctuation.


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 10/4/2026 3:12 AM, Daniel wrote:

Yeechang Lee <ylee@columbia.edu> writes:

mpower wrote:

Hi folks, I am curious if some people have 80 cols
setups for their C64. Perhaps that is C128 territory
only?

The 8-bit Guy has a good video on how to achieve 80 columns on the
C64, and why doing so is rare.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJzOErvJwZs>

I vaguely remember his video on the subject. Wasn't it sort of cheating
by scrunching the fonts? God that was years ago. I started disliking him
with that stupid commander x16 project.

I admit I was taken in by his enthusiasm years ago, but then nothing
seemed to happen. Later on, I learned about the Cerberus 2100 project,
which has existed for years. Probably since before he started talking
about the x16.

https://www.thebyteattic.com/p/cerberus-2100.html

https://github.com/TheByteAttic/CERBERUS2100

And as far as I know, people can just find the right shop, and order a
copy, and don't have to wait for the 8bit guy to do anything at all.

Full disclosure: I don't watch the 8bit guy regularly anymore, and have
not for years.

The sad note about the Cerberus 2100, is that it won't run CP/M, which
was my primary objective when looking for a Z80 compatible computer/
board. I still don't have one, but may get myself a CP/M compatible
board one of these years.


Best wishes, and happy 8bit computing!
--
Johann | email: invalid -> com | http://www.myrkraverk.com/blog/
I'm not from the Internet, I just work there. | via Easynews.com https://bsky.app/profile/myrkraverk.bsky.social | for ( ;; ) _:;
Federated at https://fed.brid.gy/bsky/myrkraverk.bsky.social

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Yeechang Lee <ylee@columbia.edu> writes:

mpower wrote:

Hi folks, I am curious if some people have 80 cols
setups for their C64. Perhaps that is C128 territory
only?

The 8-bit Guy has a good video on how to achieve 80 columns on the
C64, and why doing so is rare.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJzOErvJwZs>

I vaguely remember his video on the subject. Wasn't it sort of cheating
by scrunching the fonts? God that was years ago. I started disliking him
with that stupid commander x16 project.

--
Daniel
sysop | air & wave bbs
finger | info@bbs.airandwave.net

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

mpower wrote:

Hi folks, I am curious if some people have 80 cols
setups for their C64. Perhaps that is C128 territory
only?

The 8-bit Guy has a good video on how to achieve 80 columns on the
C64, and why doing so is rare.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJzOErvJwZs>

--
geo:37.783333,-122.416667

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)