Video about the good old VIC-20

[vectrexroli]

Here we will have a look at the good old Commodore VIC-20:

And here the same video in 3D:

[carlsson]

In case you're curious: the unexpanded VIC-20 has a total of 5.5K RAM, of which 1K is used for system memory, 0.5K is used for colour memory and 0.5K is used for screen matrix (video memory). It leaves an effective 3.5K for your own programs. In machine code, you might be able to nibble a little of that 1K system memory for your own uses. There are a few smaller chunks of unused space there, that can be filled with POKE from BASIC too which many BASIC programs did to place short machine code routines outside of general program space.

[+OLD CS1]

Cassette buffer is always a good place to stash code.