This 16K bank concept is part of everything that the VIC-II chip does. You should always be aware of which bank the VIC-II chip is pointing at, since this will affect where character data patterns come from, where the screen is, where sprites come from, etc. When you turn on the power of your Commodore 64, bits 0 and 1 of location 56576 are automatically set to BANK 0 ($0000-$3FFF) for all display information.

*NOTE: The Commodore 64 character set is not available to the VIC-II chip in BANKS 1 and 3. (See character memory section.)

SCREEN MEMORY

The location of screen memory can be changed easily by a POKE to control register 53272 ($D018 HEX). However, this register is also used to control which character set is used, so be careful to avoid disturbing that part of the control register. The UPPER 4 bits control the location of screen memory. To move the screen, the following statement should be used:

 POKE53272,(PEEK(53272)AND15)OR A