Convert PETSCII to ASCII This decoder reverses the same defined Commodore text-mode mapping used by the paired ASCII-to-PETSCII tool.
Use it for emulator dumps, legacy Commodore text, and byte-level experiments.
Start with the built-in sample, then replace it with a short test value containing a space, punctuation, and a character whose code you already know. This gives you a quick sanity check before using a longer string.
PETSCII includes control and graphic ranges that are not ordinary ASCII, so unsupported values are reported rather than guessed.
Encode a short ASCII string with the reverse tool and compare the decoded result to the original. The result stays in the browser until you explicitly copy or download it.
This tool does not require an account, upload service, or external API. That makes it suitable for development checks, retro-computing exercises, documentation examples, and small repeatable test fixtures.
Decoding PETSCII requires knowing which Commodore character set the source uses. This converter uses the same lowercase/text-mode mapping as its paired encoder, making encode/decode behavior consistent for the supported text repertoire. It is not a general screen-code decoder and should not be used to interpret bytes copied directly from a C64 screen-memory area.
Hexadecimal input is useful for retro-computing because it preserves the original byte values. A text editor can hide the difference between a printable character and a control or graphics code, while a hex dump keeps the representation explicit. When a byte cannot be mapped to ordinary ASCII, the tool reports it so you can decide whether the source is a different PETSCII mode or a screen-oriented encoding.
For reliable migration of old Commodore text, begin with a known message that contains both letter cases and spaces. Decode it, compare the result with the original source, and record the expected byte sequence. That test becomes a small compatibility fixture you can rerun whenever the surrounding application changes. The process is much safer than manually replacing characters by appearance.
Remember that ASCII is narrower than PETSCII. Some Commodore symbols and control functions simply do not have ordinary ASCII equivalents. The tool does not invent transliterations for those values because doing so would change the information. When you need a visual representation of a graphics character, a character-set-aware viewer is a better next step than a plain ASCII decoder.
A good archival practice is to store the original PETSCII hex alongside the readable ASCII transcript. The transcript is convenient for searching and editing, while the original bytes preserve information about the Commodore source. If a later analysis identifies a different PETSCII mode, you can decode the original bytes again instead of trying to reconstruct them from the ASCII copy.