25 years... of history

[Richard James]

My first computer was a VIC-20 but my first computer experience was actually an Apple. I was at a party with my parents and the person there owned an old Apple II, it had a Monochrome screen, I believe it was black and white. And they were playing Galaxians on it. I knew after that that I wanted a computer, so I begged my parents to buy one. I would often play with the computers in stores, commodore ones because I remember holding down keys and filling the screen with the special characters.

Eventually my parents (who were not rich) eventually bought me a VIC-20. It had only a few games Avenger and Scott Adams Avenger. Due to the fact I did not have access to games I started programming my own from images I saw in magazines. I even wrote a Space Harrier clone in BASIC.

Later I was able to purchase an Atari ST 1040 which replaced the VIC. Unfortunately my VIC-20 died from overheating in the VIC chip.

Now I work in computers and computers are in every aspect of life. Even though the VIC-20 was not an Amiga I believe that it gave me the start in life I needed. It helped me understand how computers work and gave me a love for the machine.

[Bacon]

RAM expander [..] 16K and it was brown [..] DIP switches

Perhaps it was a Stonechip Vixen expansion? Unfortunately I can't find any pictures on the Internet at the moment. As far as I know, Commodore never sold an externally switchable memory expansion themselves, although both the VIC-1110 and 1111 internally have such DIP switches... There were some other brands who made Commodore lookalike memory expansions too.

Probably. I have the Vixen as well, the only memory expansion that I use on the real machine because I can switch it on the fly. I'll type up some stuff about my more modern Vic20 adventures when I get some time tonight.

Quite possible. Do you have any pictures? Might jog my memory.

[ral-clan]

I would often play with the computers in stores, commodore ones because I remember holding down keys and filling the screen with the special characters.

After learning how to load things from tape on the school's PET, I remember trying it out on a TRS-80 (green screen) on display in a Radio Shack!

LOAD "",2

Of course it didn't work!

Commodores were popular in Canada, and so often you would see a VIC-20 on display in a department store, with some sort of quick, hacked program hastily typed and running on it:

"[INSERT NAME HERE] IS THE BEST!!!!!"

...scrolling endlessly.

Or the prompt:

Screen: WHAT IS YOUR NAME?

[you enter your name]

Screen: [your name] is stupid!

I even wrote a Space Harrier clone in BASIC.

That's quite a feat for a VIC-20. Would love to see it if you still have it.

[Richard James]

I don't have it. It is lost to time. I could re-create it however, I already know of one optimisation for it, it was hardly playable the way I wrote it. it was just the third level, graphics where achieved via smart use of the VIC's inbuilt character set. I had about three different images for each sprite, a normal one and smaller ones for perspective. It had a 3D matrix with all the sprites in it and according to where the sprite was depended on which image was drawn. The sprites were moved forward in the matrix towards the player (that is why it was slow) and the player could shoot missiles out. At the far end of the matrix I randomly inserted new sprites. So it looked like the game at least from the screenshot I had from CVG. The sprites I chose were mushrooms on the ground and green butterfly things in the air.

http://www.mobygames.com/game/atari-st/ ... Id,182152/