For this month's Book Club video, we look at the worst Commodorerelated book in my collection: The Black Book of C128, by Robert H. & Dell Taylor. Claiming to be a vast, authoritative reference, it's actually riddled with errors, unnecessary commas, and sometimes entirely fabricated "facts". We all make mistakes, and typically I'd go easier on it, but this book's advertising campaign was quite aggressive, claiming to be "the best reference manual on the market" and having "not one wasted page" unlike other publisher's books that would tell you "how to unpack the C128" and waste "ten pages on what the keys are for".

This video was originally a patronexclusive video. Thanks to my patrons for their support.

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Read along at home: https://archive.org/details/The_Black...

Link to the RUN magazine shown: https://archive.org/details/runmagaz...

End credits music is "53280" by Bedford Level Experiment.
Music video here:    • 53280 (Commodore 64)  
More music here: https://bedfordlevelexperiment.bandca...

Index:
0:00 Intro
2:29 Vanity Press? Should we go easy on it?
4:45 Super Help Chart ripped from Jim Butterfield's SuperChart
6:45 Why Black Book?
9:38 How To Use: Colour Coding
11:17 BASIC 2.0 Dictionary
16:50 BASIC 2.0 abbreviations, error messages, control codes
20:45 Color combinations: trial and error?
22:51 Graphic modes, memory locations, sprite functions
27:48 Sprite Priorities: Entirely Wrong Information
30:11 SID: 64 Sound Registers
32:09 Disk Command Summary
33:39 Handy POKEs and PEEKs, memory map
37:24 Dictionary of BASIC 7.0
44:15 Other sections: CP/M, 1541, 1571 Disk Drives, Conversions
47:27 Abbreviations, Personal Data
50:35 Thanks!