Paintings at the age of 10

[carlsson]

Here are the promised (?!) paintings and sketches, drawn by me around the age of 10-12. Rather than inlining them, slowing down and destroying forum layout, I put a link to each with a description and you can decide if you want to see it. The images are not overly large, 20-70K each.

Den Store VIC-20 by Handic
http://www.mds.mdh.se/~dal95acn/tidning ... nstore.jpg
This is the painting I drew in 3rd grade, when other pupils drew cars, horses or whatever. It even was put on the wall for some months.

Metagaltic Ford - FIRE TO START, F1=Option or ANY to gurd help!
http://www.mds.mdh.se/~dal95acn/tidning ... galtic.jpg
Name obviously inspired by Metagalactic Llamas, although it is credited to Taskset (did they ever make VIC games, or just C64 ones?). Don't ask me what "gurd" means, I think it is another word for "get".

Love Could - With use joystick can you no play good!
http://www.mds.mdh.se/~dal95acn/tidning ... ecould.jpg
Obviously a C64 title, so I had to step in and add a VIC-20 disclaimer. One of the few games that tells the player to actually bring an unused joystick for best performance. "Triegame" was inspired by a handheld game from Tri-Tech which cold itself Tri-Game. AÅC stands for Anders Åke Carlsson.

ZX-82 - if only Sir Clive had known...
http://www.mds.mdh.se/~dal95acn/tidning ... j/zx82.gif
Notice the almost invisible space key, but a gigantic "ShifHt" key. The text is in Swedish and barely readable, but translation reads:

"An improvement of ZX-81. By 3 voices + noise you get good sound. 2K RAM, tach (touch) keys, 36 columns, 3 rows, Swedish letters ÅÄÖ can be built in (but I had crossed out that memory could be expanded). 6 colours, sound. A printer ZX-82a is required (?!)"

Testing, 1,2,3 - I was foreseeing the future
http://www.mds.mdh.se/~dal95acn/tidning ... aj/jmf.gif
Here is a comparison between fictional computers ABC-83200 (sequel to Swedish computers ABC-80 and ABC-800), ZX-82 and VIC-40004. Worth noticing:

* Max screen resolution (cols x rows): ABC-83200 240x50, ZX-32 36x25, VIC-40004 430x80
* Swedish characters: ABC yes, ZX optional, VIC needs POKEing
* Upper and lower case: ABC no, ZX yes in special mode, VIC yes
* User defined graphics: ABC yes all, ZX yes only 30, VIC no
* Colours: ABC 23, ZX 6, VIC 255
* Sound: ABC 6 voices 200 octaves, ZX 3+1 voices 45 octaves, VIC 255 voices 630 octaves (is that THz range or beyond?)
* Languages: ABC Basic Pascal, ZX Basic Assembler, VIC Basic Machine Code
* Price: ABC 63000 SEK, ZX 2500 SEK (it said 1995 SEK before), VIC 500,000,000 SEK (yep, half a billion Swedish crowns, or roughly 66 million USD)

I find it so typical of Commodore to make a computer which costs 66 million USD, has a sound chip which plays concerts for the bats, a lot of colours and great resolution but no user defined graphics, in particular if it was meant as a sequel to the VIC/C64 series. I'm not saying that the Plus/4 or C128 cost that much money, but in some way it fits reality quite well.

Koopa - attack of the Mutant Nintendo Super Mario Bros
http://www.mds.mdh.se/~dal95acn/tidning ... /koopa.jpg
This is a much more recent drawing, maybe 1990-91, when I got hold of the booklet for SMB. It had detailed pixelated images of all the characters in the game, and I converted some to C64 sprites for use in a SEUCK game that I never finished. The Koopa had to fit two sprites, as I didn't want to cut him down so much.

Oh well, that's all folks. I hope it entertains you.

[Leeeeee]

630 octaves (is that THz range or beyond?)

Assuming that the first octave starts at 1Hz then the last octave would stop at about 4.5*10^189 Hz.

You'd never play a scale up to there because long before you got there you'd sweep through all the radio & TV bands, visible light, UV, giving you sunburn (from a sound chip!) and X-rays.

This should have had a more severe health warning than cigarettes!

Lee.

[Jeff-20]

You gotta love those first 2!

[Boray]

This is fun! Thanks for posting them.

/Anders

[carlsson]

Thanks. I supposed the 630 octaves would be an exaggeration, but maybe it is possible to start at a frequency around 1*10^-100 Hz (which probably is light years below infrared and will erupt the building my VIC-40004 sits in many times over).

I have drawn keyboards a lot over the years - when I got older, I used squared paper and carefully measured how much space I needed and how keys would be positioned (oh well, as long as you follow QWERTY, there is little room for variation). Interestingly enough, I never thought about repositioning keys for more effective writing (DVORAK, YUDO etc).

[Tonks]

Cool.

It bought back many memories. I just wish I still had some of the pictures my friends and I used to draw.

We used to design laptop Vic 20s. This was back in 1983 and 84. I might have been a wealthy man if I ever put my imagination to work. In fact back then I didn't even know of any laptop computers. It was just all based on the "Hitch Hikers Guide to the galaxy". I thought how cool it would be to have a portable computer like the hitch hikers guide. So we would design things using the Vic as the starting point.

Also there were lots of game designs put on graph paper, right down to the blocky screen.

Great memories, great fun!!!!

[Jeff-20]

Graph Paper was such a great commodity back in those days!

I could never get enough of it! I was very young and didn't figure out the base 2 system for user graphics. I drew all 255 possibilities on graph paper with the understanding of a pattern but no real clue as to how one might decode it without graph paper.

I remember keeping a collection of all of my programmable characters! I wish I still had those pages.

[carlsson]

Tonks, you know that there is a VIC-20 prototype with a 2" (5 cm) TV window? See the "VIC-TV" entry in the link below:

http://www.floodgap.com/retrobits/ckb/s ... ervic.html

[ruud]

Hallo Anders,

> Tonks, you know that there is a VIC-20 prototype with a 2" (5 cm) TV
> window?

Thanks for the idea! Three days ago I scrapped a old video camera, a big one that needed to rest on your shoulder in order to operate it. It uses an 1" bulb for displaying what you recor(ed). I actually first thought it was a small LCD screen until I got zapped by the high voltage. The original idea was to use for a C64 but the text, 40*25, is barely readable to be honest. Should be less a problem with the VIC-20.

Hmmm, I use this 1" tube in my VIC-PC as start-up screen and then switch to monochrome, CGA or even VGA one.....