VIC-20s in schools?

ral-clan · Post by **ral-clan** » Tue Jan 13, 2009 8:33 am

I attended school in Ontario, Canada. As others can attest, the school boards there had a VERY close relationship with Commodore Canada. We had tons of PETs in our elementary school, and when I attended high school (starting in 1984) I remember a computer lab full of C64s (with one or two PETs). But I never remember seeing a single VIC-20 in a school.

Does anyone have stories about VIC-20s in their school?

eslapion · Post by **eslapion** » Tue Jan 13, 2009 8:40 am

I remember the St-Paul-de-Varennes private high school on the south shore of Montreal had a classroom full of VICs and one C64.

I visited the Mère-Marie-Rose elementary school in 1985 and they had a classroom full of 64s but they didn't seem to be able to make much use of them.

The biggest surprise about VIC-20s in school for me came in late 1985.

There was a high school for adults called Centre Ste-Croix. They were still teaching BASIC programming on VICs and I traded to the people there a VIC with an internal 24k expansion for another VIC and money.

Very recently, I met one of the people who worked there.

Boray · Post by **Boray** » Tue Jan 13, 2009 8:48 am

We had these:
http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=358

I think I also saw a couple of these in a back room:
http://www.old-computers.com/MUSEUM/computer.asp?c=236

ral-clan · Post by **ral-clan** » Tue Jan 13, 2009 8:53 am

Eslapion, why would you trade a VIC with internal 24K for another VIC plus money?

When the C64 was starting to get a little dated, the school board went with ICON computers:

http://www.old-computers.com/museum/com ... st=1&c=971

But then that turned into a bit of a dead end (they did look cool though) and the school bought Commodore brand MS-DOS PCs (we never had any Amigas, but the PCs all had 1084 monitors - what a waste since the PCs were monochrome for the most part).

Luzur · Post by **Luzur** » Tue Jan 13, 2009 9:06 am

We had these:
http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=358

yep we had a Compis in our classroom too, which we played a mathematic game called "Matte-Pyramiden" (Math-Pyramid) or something like that.

eslapion · Post by **eslapion** » Tue Jan 13, 2009 9:08 am

ral-clan wrote:Eslapion, why would you trade a VIC with internal 24K for another VIC plus money?

At the time, the guy responsible for the computer room at the school wanted to buy a 24k memory expansion but nobody was making or selling them anymore.

I was unable to get a board that plugs in the expansion port for a reasonable price so the best solution was an internal expansion that could be disabled with a switch.

He didn't want to risk destroying one of his own VICs so I said I was so confident that I would install the 24k expander in one of my two own VICs and I would trade the expanded VIC for one of his plus the price of the expansion.

It worked perfectly well.

orion70 · Post by **orion70** » Tue Jan 13, 2009 9:11 am

My school had VIC-20s ever since they began selling them in Italy (1982).
We have three degrees of education here, elementary (age 6-11), medium (12-14), and highschool (15-19). I was in the second period then, and the school was renewed. They built an IT room inside it, and put several desks for students, and a long table for teachers, with two or three (can't remember) VICs hooked to TV sets turned towards the students - no monitors, but even color TVs were quite rare and expensive back then...
Each VIC had a C2N cassette player (not the PET style). Wonder if they still have those VICs somewhere.

I remember well I was impressed that one could type words in and see them show up on the screen. That was the time when I decided to ask my parents a VIC; they eventually bought me one in December, 1982. It was the beginning of something (see also here and here).

vic user · Post by **vic user** » Tue Jan 13, 2009 9:33 am

i wish we had had vics in our schools.

we had apples, and as you know, were way more expensive than vics, and i ended up buying an apple back then, as i wanted to be compatible with the school

PaulQ · Post by **PaulQ** » Tue Jan 13, 2009 11:29 am

My school took the same path: PET -> C64 -> ICON. The art department did get one Amiga 1000, and the computer lab did have one Commodore 128. One of the teachers had a 128-D in his office, and there were some B128's in the reception office.

Alas, no VICs. I got my Vic because getting computer time on the PET was almost impossible, and whatever time I did spend with it was "Structured" that left me unable to explore (ie; educational programs). I reasoned that I could write programs on the VIC then run them on the PET.

Boray · Post by **Boray** » Tue Jan 13, 2009 11:53 am

When I went to university (around 1995), I saw that the media students had a room full of Amigas. Bigger models like A4000 and A3000.

ral-clan · Post by **ral-clan** » Tue Jan 13, 2009 12:40 pm

DigitalQuirk wrote:One of the teachers had a 128-D in his office, and there were some B128's in the reception office.

Yes, in my school too. The receptionist had a "smooth" CBM computer. Not sure what model it was, but even then I thought that it looked cool.

Mikam73 · Post by **Mikam73** » Tue Jan 13, 2009 1:25 pm

We had Vics at school computer club, but those were our own computers

Post by **Jeff-20** » Tue Jan 13, 2009 7:23 pm

Apple IIe. I felt inferior with my VIC. Two computers for the whole school. I played Oregon trail and won. I remember all the multiple loads.

nippur72 · Post by **nippur72** » Wed Jan 14, 2009 8:51 am

At school we had Commodore PC clones, 8088 CPU, CGA, 640K Ram and two floppy disks (one for DOS and one for "user" data). Fair system for that time.

Biggest computer was an IBM PS/2 (80286) mainly used by the teacher to play a pirated copy of "Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards".

Mikam73 · Post by **Mikam73** » Wed Jan 14, 2009 9:01 am

I remember when I was kid other school had ABC computers, there was day when people can go to school and see how its like.. And when I was 12-14 school had IBM PC/XT computers and when I was 15-17 Amstrad PCs. Yes.. and I remember when we watched animated porn at computer class with IBM PC and videoprojector.. Good old dos.. Even teacher did sit there at class and watch and people did hurray, when I loaded more stuff.. I used run my own BBS and users did upload all kind of stuff.. Good times.. Good times..