Peripherals

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VIC peripherals.jpg


Introduction to Peripherals for the VIC-20

A large part of the success of the VIC-20 can be attributed to the peripherals that were sold separately for use with it. Because of the VIC's many connector ports, a whole range of devices could be attached to the computer. This allowed the VIC-20 to expand its abilities and far beyond that of the basic stock model. Compared to a contemporaneous video-game console (i.e. Atari 2600 VCS), the VIC's ability to use peripherals "sold" many buyers on the machine by showing that it could do more than just play games. Many obvious and necessary peripherals were developed and sold by Commodore and third-party companies (printers, modems, tape drives) while other, more esoteric devices stretched the VIC's usefulness further than even its designers had envisioned.

VIC-20 expansion schematic

Storage Devices

External storage devices for the VIC-20 were all based on magnetic media. The most popular (and cheapest) was the Compact Cassette based tape drive (datasette). The 5.25-inch floppy disk drive was a faster, although more expensive, option.

The VIC-20 is also compatible with other storage devices designed for the Commodore 64 and 128 which appeared after it was no longer in production.

  • CMD FD-2000 and FD-4000
  • CMD HD
  • Commodore 1571
  • Commodore 1581
  • Jim Brain's uIEC family of solid state storage adapters
  • Gideon Zweijtzer's 1541 Ultimate and 1541 Ultimate Plus

Altough not a storage device in itself, 64HDD is a software created by Nick Coplin that allows the use of a DOS based PC as a form of storage device for the VIC-20, 64 or 128.

Tape & Disk accelerators

Because the VIC-20 was mostly sold with a datasette who's data transfer rate was rather slow, a few companies developed solutions to accelerate the speed at which software and data files could be loaded and saved.

Disk acceleration solutions for the VIC-20 mostly appeared long after it disappeared from the marketplace.

Tape accelerators:

  • Eastern House Software The Rabbit
  • Compute's Gazette Turbotape

Disk drive accelerators:

  • Compute's Gazette Turbodisk (compatible with the 1541 only)
  • Nicola Batista's Easy Load+ (released in 2007)
  • CMD JiffyDOS for the VIC-20 (released in 2006)

Memory Expansion

Next to the Datasette, memory expansion was another very popular peripheral upgrade for Vic 20 owners. Many people ran into limits with 3.5k of memory rather quickly; while it was sufficient for simple games and terminal emulators, more sophisticated programs required more memory. Memory expansion was achieved by plugging a RAM cartridge into the Vic 20's cartridge port. With the exception of the 3k expansion solutions, most memory expansion came in 8k blocks and changed the Vic 20's memory map. For memory expansion needs, the 8k RAM cartridge was one of the more popular solutions.

An 8K RAM expander

List of Memory expansion devices for the VIC-20:

Printers

Modems

Monitors

Input Devices

  • Joystick
  • Light-pen
  • Paddle controllers
  • Tablet
  • Light Gun
  • Trackball

Cartridge Slot Expanders

Display Boards

Speech Modules

  • Votrax
  • Adman Speech Synthesizer
  • Protecto Enterprizes Voice Synthesizer
  • SpeakEasy 2000

Numeric Keypads

  • Cardkey Numeric Keypad

Printer Interfaces

  • Card? +G/G-Wiz/Super-G Printer Interface
  • Cardco G-Wiz
  • Cardco Super-G
  • Xetec Super Graphix Jr.

Power Supplies

  • Maxtron replacement power supply for VIC-20 & C64 computers
  • See Hardware Modifications to create your own power supply

Data Interfaces

  • VIC-1011A RS232C interface
  • VIC-1011B RS232C interface
  • VIC-1112 IEEE-488 interface cartridge
  • Handic IEEE 488 interface cartridge
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