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EnglishWhat Is C64jasm and Where Can You Learn About It on nurpax?
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C64jasm is a macro assembler for the Commodore 64, introduced and documented by Janne Hellsten on his personal blog at nurpax.github.io. The blog is the primary place to learn about it: the tool was announced there in a November 2018 post, and later posts walk through specific features and debugging workflows. If you want to understand what C64jasm does or find practical guidance for using it, the relevant material is concentrated in that blog's C64jasm-tagged posts rather than in a separate documentation site.
What the blog says C64jasm is
The announcement post, "C64jasm - a new take on C64 macro assembling" (November 8, 2018), frames the tool as a macro assembler for C64 development. The blog's own description of the site is modest: it is the personal blog of Janne Hellsten, "mostly about what's going on in my github account." That context matters — C64jasm is presented as a project from the author's GitHub work, and the blog posts are where he explains and demonstrates it.
The posts that follow the announcement are feature-focused rather than reference-manual-style. They show how specific pieces of C64 development are handled in C64jasm, which is the most direct way the blog teaches the tool.
The C64jasm posts, in order
The blog's recent-posts list gives a clear reading path. Each entry below is a post listed on the nurpax home page:
| Date | Post | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| November 8, 2018 | C64jasm - a new take on C64 macro assembling | Introduction to the assembler |
| June 6, 2019 | Loading sprites, PETSCII and SID with C64jasm | Loading graphics, text and audio assets |
| July 27, 2019 | C64jasm object literals | Object literal syntax in the assembler |
| February 22, 2021 | Debugging C64jasm projects with VICE and C64Debugger | Debugging workflow using VICE and C64Debugger |
Read in this order, the posts move from "what it is" to "how to load assets," then to a language feature, and finally to debugging a real project. The debugging post is especially useful if you have written code but need to inspect it at runtime: it pairs C64jasm with the VICE emulator and C64Debugger rather than treating the assembler in isolation.
Related C64 material on the same blog
C64jasm sits alongside other C64 posts that provide background rather than direct tool instruction. These include "Dirty tricks 6502 programmers use" (August 18, 2019), "C64 tool tricks (VICE and others)" (August 23, 2018), and a multi-part series on BINTRIS C64, including "Bad lines and flexible line distance" (June 19, 2018) and "Break down of a C64 demo effect" (June 7, 2018). If you are new to the platform, the 6502 tricks post is the closest thing to prerequisite reading; the demo-effect breakdown shows the kind of output this toolchain targets.
How to find everything
The home page shows only recent posts. For the full archive, use the "All posts..." link on the home page; that is the entry point for browsing older C64jasm and C64 content. The blog also invites contact at [email protected] or via @nurpax for suggestions and improvements, which is the appropriate channel if a post leaves a question unanswered.
One caveat: the blog does not present itself as formal documentation. It is a personal project log, so expect explanations tied to the author's own examples rather than exhaustive syntax coverage. For a quick orientation to C64jasm, start with the 2018 announcement, then read the asset-loading and object-literals posts, and keep the 2021 debugging post open while you work.