{"slug": "vice", "name": "VICE", "category": "other", "category_name": "Other software", "description": "", "recommenders": 3, "commenters": 5, "warners": 0, "score": 3.028, "rising": -0.98, "first": "2025-11-04", "latest": "2026-10-17", "why": "One uses emulator while developing anyways. Try with C64 and VICE", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 3, "neutral": 2, "compare": 0, "warn": 0}, "spark": [1, 0, 2, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "One uses emulator while developing anyways. Try with C64 and VICE", "kind": "", "icon": false, "domain": null, "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://vice-emu.sourceforge.io/", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["VICE"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 746784016, "item_id": 46674001, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46674001", "by": "eru", "date": "2026-01-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Try with C64 and VICE and join us at https://csdb.dk/", "excerpt": "> One uses emulator while developing anyways. Yes, but part of the joy is the anticipation of playing on a real device at the end. > Try with C64 and VICE and join us at https://csdb.dk/ Thanks for the invitation! I used a C64 as my only computer in the late 1990s long past its prime, because my mother got a really good deal on a whole set with printer and disk drives and plenty of disks with software (mostly games, ", "context": "", "use_case": "C64 emulator for development", "switched_from": "", "story": "ASCII characters are not pixels: a deep dive into ASCII rendering"}, {"id": 746678304, "item_id": 46667394, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46667394", "by": "Keyframe", "date": "2026-01-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "One uses emulator while developing anyways. Try with C64 and VICE", "excerpt": "One uses emulator while developing anyways. Try with C64 and VICE and join us at https://csdb.dk/", "context": "", "use_case": "C64 emulation", "switched_from": "", "story": "ASCII characters are not pixels: a deep dive into ASCII rendering"}, {"id": 733094160, "item_id": 45818385, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45818385", "by": "classichasclass", "date": "2025-11-04", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "nothing survives a VICE breakpoint", "excerpt": "Then they started loading the protection code from disk doing tricky things. One I cracked recently was a pair of Commodore 1541 sectors that appeared to be the same logical sector (because the drive head is blind). It needed to hit both of them to compile the next portion of the loader. Naturally the segment up to that point was encrypted as well, but nothing survives a VICE breakpoint. https://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2", "context": "", "use_case": "Commodore emulator debugging", "switched_from": "", "story": "Patching 68K Software \u2013 SimpleText"}]}], "caveats": [], "who": [], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["c64 emulation and tracing", "c64 emulator for development", "c64 emulation", "commodore emulator debugging"], "compared": [], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46657122", "title": "ASCII characters are not pixels: a deep dive into ASCII rendering", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50129045", "title": "DeepSeek-v4.1-Flash-1017", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47839645", "title": "Soul Player C64 \u2013 A real transformer running on a 1 MHz Commodore 64", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45816879", "title": "Patching 68K Software \u2013 SimpleText", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"recommend": 1}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {"recommend": 2}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {"neutral": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 802082052, "item_id": 50130128, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50130128", "by": "clx75", "date": "2026-10-17", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "start a selected demo through VICE", "excerpt": "Probably a week ago someone posted a thread with the title \"Why isn't the industry freaking out about DeepSeek 4.1 Flash?\" I have been intrigued about Chinese models for a long time, but never tried anything except an early Qwen. My daily driver was Luna, with occasional elevation to Terra or Sol - all on 5.6 as I found the output of 6 jarringly incomprehensible. I still had 95 USD on my OpenRouter account, so I thou", "context": "", "use_case": "C64 emulation and tracing", "switched_from": "", "story": "DeepSeek-v4.1-Flash-1017"}, {"id": 765477712, "item_id": 47842357, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47842357", "by": "bartread", "date": "2026-04-20", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "", "excerpt": "That's a good idea because, although I love this, 1 minute per token is absolutely savage. Whereas if you can juice the performance you're into semi-credible Jar Jar Binks simulator territory. It does also make me wonder what you could do with somewhat more powerful retro hardware. I'd love to see what a transformer running on a PSX or an N64 could do.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Soul Player C64 \u2013 A real transformer running on a 1 MHz Commodore 64"}, {"id": 746784016, "item_id": 46674001, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46674001", "by": "eru", "date": "2026-01-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Try with C64 and VICE and join us at https://csdb.dk/", "excerpt": "> One uses emulator while developing anyways. Yes, but part of the joy is the anticipation of playing on a real device at the end. > Try with C64 and VICE and join us at https://csdb.dk/ Thanks for the invitation! I used a C64 as my only computer in the late 1990s long past its prime, because my mother got a really good deal on a whole set with printer and disk drives and plenty of disks with software (mostly games, ", "context": "", "use_case": "C64 emulator for development", "switched_from": "", "story": "ASCII characters are not pixels: a deep dive into ASCII rendering"}, {"id": 746678304, "item_id": 46667394, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46667394", "by": "Keyframe", "date": "2026-01-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "One uses emulator while developing anyways. Try with C64 and VICE", "excerpt": "One uses emulator while developing anyways. Try with C64 and VICE and join us at https://csdb.dk/", "context": "", "use_case": "C64 emulation", "switched_from": "", "story": "ASCII characters are not pixels: a deep dive into ASCII rendering"}, {"id": 733094160, "item_id": 45818385, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45818385", "by": "classichasclass", "date": "2025-11-04", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "nothing survives a VICE breakpoint", "excerpt": "Then they started loading the protection code from disk doing tricky things. One I cracked recently was a pair of Commodore 1541 sectors that appeared to be the same logical sector (because the drive head is blind). It needed to hit both of them to compile the next portion of the loader. Naturally the segment up to that point was encrypted as well, but nothing survives a VICE breakpoint. https://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2", "context": "", "use_case": "Commodore emulator debugging", "switched_from": "", "story": "Patching 68K Software \u2013 SimpleText"}]}