Regional Retro Computing Font Converter — 100% Secure & Private.
PETSCII (Commodore 64) is a legacy encoding used for Retro Computing regional script typing. Because it maps characters to standard keyboard keys rather than Unicode positions, this tool is required to convert PETSCII (Commodore 64) text into modern Unicode for web display and digital publishing.
Our PETSCII (Commodore 64) font converter runs entirely in your browser. None of the text you type or convert is sent to any server. This makes it perfect for private document processing and ensures zero data leaks.
Paste your PETSCII (Commodore 64) text into the source input area.
The tool will instantly convert it to standard Unicode below.
Click 'Copy Result' to use the Unicode text anywhere online.
Use the Vicerversa (Swap) button to convert from Unicode back to PETSCII (Commodore 64).
Encoding Engine
Our high-performance engine uses a two-pass mapping system to resolve character swaps and script-specific vowel reordering rules, ensuring that your text remains linguistically accurate after conversion.
Unicode is the industry standard for consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text across most of the world's writing systems. Legacy fonts like PETSCII (Commodore 64) were designed before Unicode adoption.
Instantly convert legacy 8-bit PETSCII (Commodore 64) encoding into standard Unicode for modern web compatibility and retro computing archiving.
In the golden age of 8-bit computing, the Commodore 64 was king. However, before the global adoption of Unicode, Commodore used a completely proprietary 8-bit character set called PETSCII (PET Standard Code for Information Interchange). Unlike standard ASCII, PETSCII featured unique graphic drawing symbols (used to create incredible BBS art), playing card suits, and inverse characters. Today, attempting to view raw PETSCII text files on a modern Windows or Mac machine results in broken, unreadable garbage. Our PETSCII to Unicode converter seamlessly maps these legacy codes to their closest modern Unicode equivalents.
While standard ASCII is a 7-bit encoding supporting 128 characters, PETSCII is a full 8-bit mapping supporting 256 unique symbols.
Even the standard alphabet is mapped differently. In ASCII, uppercase letters come first. In PETSCII, uppercase and lowercase letters are completely scrambled compared to the standard matrix. Furthermore, the upper 128 characters are dedicated entirely to Commodore's proprietary block graphics. Our conversion engine accurately translates these specific graphical glyphs into standard Unicode Block Elements (e.g., U+2588) so the visual layout of retro documents is preserved.
The Commodore 64 had a unique hardware feature: it could swap between two completely different character ROM banks by pressing `SHIFT + C=`.
The "Unshifted" mode provided Uppercase letters and a massive suite of drawing graphics. The "Shifted" mode provided Lowercase letters but sacrificed many of the drawing characters. Our converter intelligently parses the raw byte data and allows you to select which visual mode the original file was intended to be viewed in, ensuring a clean, accurate modern text output.
To use the converter, simply paste your raw, broken PETSCII text dump into the left input box. If you have extracted a `.seq` or `.prg` file directly from a Commodore floppy disk image (.D64), paste the contents here.
The JavaScript engine instantly maps the proprietary bytes to standard UTF-8 Unicode in the right box. You can then safely copy and paste this text into modern forums, emails, or Wikipedia articles. If you need to convert text from the Atari era, use our ATASCII to Unicode Converter instead.
Digital preservationists are actively attempting to save thousands of text-adventure games, BBS logs, and programming tutorials trapped on 40-year-old magnetic floppy disks.
Without conversion, this historical data is digitally locked. This tool acts as a cryptographic Rosetta Stone for retro computing, allowing archivists to modernize legacy 8-bit data into searchable, indexable Unicode text that can be preserved forever on modern internet databases.
Quick answers to common questions about this utility.
Currently, this tool operates as a one-way converter (PETSCII to standard Unicode) for reading and archiving purposes. Converting modern Unicode back into PETSCII is highly problematic because 99% of modern Unicode characters physically do not exist in the 256-character Commodore limitation.
Unicode does not have perfect 1:1 matches for every single proprietary Commodore drawing character. We map them to the closest visual equivalent in the Unicode 'Box Drawing' and 'Block Elements' subranges. The text will be perfectly readable, but complex ASCII-art drawings may have slight alignment variations.
Yes. The entire byte-mapping array and conversion algorithm runs locally inside your web browser using JavaScript. Your legacy text files are never uploaded to our servers, guaranteeing absolute privacy.
