Vic Prototype with TV

History and Preservation Issues

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Jeff-20
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Vic Prototype with TV

Post by Jeff-20 »

Apparently there was a VIC 20 prototype in the early 80s which repositioned the function keys to allow for a 2 inch Sony TV to sit right in the frame!

I stole some pics from Bo Zimmerman and David Vohs:
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According to what I read, they had working prototypes and everything! My question is: would this be marketable??? I know the VIC's characters are large, but I don't think you'd be able to see anything in this!

I've hooked the VIC up to a 4inch LCD monitor and had trouble. Is this just a convention attraction? I sure would love to try it.
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Leeeeee
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Post by Leeeeee »

It would be visible, a 4" LCD probably has less than 100K pixels so resolution is poor compared to a 2" CRT. Also they probably underscanned the display to make the border take up very little of the image.

This would give quite readable characters - about the same as the standard windows font for a 1024 x 768 screen on a 17" monitor.
carlsson
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Post by carlsson »

It reminds me, did anyone build their own SX-20 out of a (broken?) SX-64? I think it should be fairly easy to replace the motherboard and maybe cut a few holes differently for input and output devices.

Have you seen the pics of an Amiga SX-500? It supposedly was a genuine Commodore prototype made out of a SX-64 shell and appeared on a computing expo some year ago.
Anders Carlsson

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