My fourth vic-20!

Boray · Post by **Boray** » Sat Oct 29, 2005 3:09 am

I just bought it...

http://www.tradera.com/auction/auction.asp?aid=19910632

I wanted the swedish keyboard!!! The Buti cartridge was also tempting. It will also be interesting to see what's on those 20 tapes... I didn't have that book either. I thought it would be cheap because the seller had put it in the wrong category, but apparently, some collectors had found it anyway... But I think 511 SEK was a quite fair anyway... The Swedish keyboards are quite rare on vic-20s...

/Anders

KilrPilr · Post by **KilrPilr** » Sat Nov 05, 2005 12:59 am

Cool Boray, Nice Grab! I would like to get one of those swedish vic's and the buti cart as well.

Leo

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Sat Nov 05, 2005 10:15 am

Hm, I have a set of brown Swedish keycaps, currently in use but could be removed. I don't have the VIC-20 ROMs though, only C64 ones. Note that the localization was sold as a kit for mounting on your own or by a store or a repairman. The kit contains both complete keycaps and stickers if you rather want to glue on new top and sides instead of replacing keys. I think it was not until 1984 or even 1985 that Handic begun delivering factory localized C64s, and by then VIC-20 was out of the picture.

Boray · Post by **Boray** » Sun Nov 06, 2005 5:19 am

Swedish keys

How nice to have a Swedish keyboard on the vic-20! For the English
speaking people here, how would you like to have a keyboard without
the keys Q, W and X? That should be about the same thing for you as
it is for a Swede to not have Å, Ä and Ö.

Anyway, I wonder how rare this computer is? Is there anyone else
here having one? According to the price lists, this ÅÄÖ-kit were sold
for the same price as Jupiter Lander, but it would have been quite
some trouble to do the actual upgrade, because not all vic-20s has
socketed rom chips. Of my four vics, this Swedish one has it and my
oldest CR computer has it as well, but not the other two. The upgrade
must have been to replace 8 keys and two rom chips (character rom and
kernal).

This coputer is my oldest yet. Under the 9v PSU it says Jan 1982. Two
months older than my first vic. The graphics looks nice and I have
not seen any gaininess at all yet. However, if you make the whole
screen yellow, then there is a square of lighter yellow in the
middle, almost as big as the screen... I have now cleaned the whole
computer, also inside of the keyboard because some combinations
didn't work properly but now it does.

Comparing it to my first vic that had a trouble with the rectifier,
the rectifier in this new/earliest computer is a lot bigger. After
running the vic for a while and starting to feel that heat, I
decided to put a little fan inside. I put it to the left of the
power led to help blow away the hot air. I just used one of the
empty screw holes of the keyboard to attach it. And I take power
from inside of the user port. The user manual says 100mA max on that
user port pin, and the fan takes 80mA. I'm testing it for the first
time now (connected to my vic-1020 too). I'm actually writing this
on the vic!

The vic-20 was in very fine condition. No doubt my best looking vic.
Looks like new (almost). And so does the datasette. I opened it to
clean it but that was really not necesary... And it loads 23 year old
tapes without any trouble.

BUTI

The BUTI cartridge came with a 22 page (A4) manual. It's a 3k memory
expansion board that also adds these commands: append, auto, delete,
dump, edit, find, help, kill, off, renumber repeat, step, trace,
unnew, vic (set memory config), # and $ (decimal and hex
conversion). But now to the bad thing... IT'S TOO FAT! It's so fat
that it doesn't fit into the slots of my vic-1020 expander. It fits
into a vic-20, but you have to use a lot of force to put it in the
port... I have most of the command in Programmer's aid, but maybe I
will use BUTI with the blue vic...

Vic-1001?

Hey, should the vic-20 have been named vic-1001? In the C2N manual,
there is a picture of a vic-20 with the label "VIC-1001 Commodore".

VIC Folkdatorn

The book "Programmering i språket Basic VIC FOLKDATORN" is a quite
big book about basic programming on the vic. 203 A4 pages. Very fine
condition. I also got another user manual ("Lär dig VIC 20") and some
copied papers.

The tapes

I got 20 tapes. I have not tried many of them yet but there was a
few VIC Rapport tapes and some labeled "VIC-20
programmeringskassett" by Handic.

Well...

I got another rf-modulator too...

Anyway, I'm very happy with
this buy. Now I have a real super vic! My configuration right now:

* A Swedish keyboard vic-20
* Fan cooling (makes it feel more competent for some reason

)
* Vic-1020 6 slot expansion board, now fitted with these cartridges:
16K RAM set to block 1 and 5 with an external block 5 switch and one
read/write switch, One 8K RAM cartridge set to block 2. Programmer's
aid in block 3 and the disk utility cart also in block 3.
* 1541 diskdrive (dark grey)
* 64HDD
* C2N Tape, old version
* One Wico Bathandle joystick

If I want graphics commands, I can switch off the block 5 ram and
plug in super expander. Or Hesmon if I want a monitor... And I will
still have one slot free...

That's it... Is anyone jealous?

/Anders

(Written with Textwalker 1.2 + Programmer's aid + lc2ascii)

Boray · Post by **Boray** » Sun Nov 06, 2005 5:27 am

carlsson wrote:I don't have the VIC-20 ROMs though, only C64 ones.

I just saved out mine to use with VICE. I will put them here for download soon... Maybe someone can make some eproms for you using the files...

The ones in mine are not eproms, looks like normal roms... But in my Plus/4s it's eproms, and stickers on the keys... put there by Commodore

/Anders

Boray · Post by **Boray** » Sun Nov 06, 2005 5:31 am

Btw, are there any other localized vic-20s out there? German for example?

/Anders

Boray · Post by **Boray** » Sun Nov 06, 2005 9:39 am

Here's the contents of a tape with the label: "VIC USER GROUP JUL KASSETT"

http://user.tninet.se/~pug510w/datormus ... rgroup.zip

Would you like more?

/Anders

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Sun Nov 06, 2005 1:34 pm

The breadbox C64 ÅÄÖ kit - at least the one my big brother once mounted in his computer - consists of NEC D2732A EPROMs on small daughter boards. Both the EPROM and the socket are 24-pin, but one pin on the daughter board is rewired differently on the under side. In the picture, only the character ROM was replaced - the KERNEL ROM was kept original to ensure better compatibility with some software.

http://www.cbm.sfks.se/pics/vic64s-inside.jpg

On C64C, 28-pin EPROMS surface mounted through a daughter board and some odd wires were used.

http://www.cbm.sfks.se/pics/c64c-swe-inside.jpg

In the 1984 price list from VIC=HANDLAR'N, the ÅÄÖ kit cost 249 kr for VIC-20 version and 299 kr for C64 version. Not sure why, other than covering for recent R&D work to make the C64 ROMs.

VIC-1001 is the Japanese VIC-20 version, much sought by some people. Possibly the illustrations in the C2N manual were drawn for the Japanese market?

BUTI Plus also contains a machine language monitor, on top of the Basic commands and 3K RAM. That is the reason why I once borrowed this cartridge from a friend, to type in a rather long machine code listing. Too bad the box is a little too big. Is your cartridge from Audiogenic (UK) or an US release directly from UMI?

According to what the Secret Weapons have found, it seems localized machines were only available in the Swedish/Finnish and perhaps Norwegian/Danish markets, at least officially. German market seems to not have localized machines until the C128. My personal explanation is that Handic/Datatronic was a very strong partner to Commodore and had a nice market share in the Scandinavian countries, so it would make sense to offer localized kits to the customers.

http://www.floodgap.com/retrobits/ckb/s ... ven64.html

Boray · Post by **Boray** » Mon Nov 07, 2005 5:58 am

I wonder why they used those extra boards in the 64s... Did they use eproms that didn't fit?

On my BUTI cart it says: VP052 Manufactured and distributed in UK by Audiogenic, P.O. Box 88, Reading, Berks.
(C) UMI 1982

Thanks for the info!

/Anders

Boray · Post by **Boray** » Mon Nov 07, 2005 6:00 am

Btw, Why isn't the Swedish Plus/4 mentioned in that page:
http://www.floodgap.com/retrobits/ckb/s ... ven64.html

/Anders

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Mon Nov 07, 2005 7:36 am

The first revision ÅÄÖ kits should fit. Perhaps the kit my brother bought was a bootleg, but he did receive the proper keys and stickers. I checked in the FTP directory if anything was mentioned about the C64 kit, but could not find any information on ROM or EPROM. Maybe a lot more C64 kits were manufactured, and somewhere there was a break level in costs between ROMs and EPROMs?

No idea why the Plus/4 is not mentioned on the page. Perhaps that localization was a 3rd party thing, never officially supported by Commodore (who by then had taken over the agenture). There also are no such ROM dumps on the FTP site. I haven't searched the rest of Plus/4 sites for recognition of alternative ROM sets though.

Boray · Post by **Boray** » Mon Nov 07, 2005 8:07 am

I think ALL Plus/4s sold in Sweden had the ÅÄÖ... Not real keys but stickers. And the print on the stickers is fuzzy on all of them. The guy I bought my two from even said they were fuzzy when he bought them new...

Btw, BUTI PLUS also has a Centronics interface... So it is that and the monitor that is the "plus"...

/Anders

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Mon Nov 07, 2005 8:19 am

Centronics interface, as in software compatible or a physical interface? I can't remember hearing about that before. Soon, you'll find a reset button, a disk manager and some other hidden features too.

Boray · Post by **Boray** » Mon Nov 07, 2005 2:29 pm

Probably software, but I don't know... It just says "Centronics interface" in a catalog I have here from "Tial Trading"...

Hmmm... The color yellow on this computer looks more like gray to me...

BUTI - part 2

Anyway, I decided to open up the BUTI cartridge so that I can use it. And it was possible to remove the front while the back still is attached to the board so I will use it like that.

Buti does not slow down the basic at all! (Like programmer's aid and others do). I tested with my benchmark program and it got exactly the same result as a vic-20 with expansion ram.

If I start Programmer's aid, then it replaces the Buti commands that has the same names, while the others remain intact. If I then do a KILL, then programmer's aid dies and all Buti commands comes back. A KILL again, and Buti dissapears too... Pretty cool to run Buti, Programmer's aid and the dos-wedge from the disk util cart at the same time... I now use 5 carts at the same time... I like the Buti VIC command to switch between unexpanded, 3k expanded and 8+K expanded modes... It also has a feature to turn key repeating on and off and convert HEX<->DEC. But I will probably still be using Programmer's aid because I like the ability to scroll a program listing both up and down. Buti doesn't have user defined function keys either... I also have two un-new commands to choose from: Buti and the diskutil cart...

I will look out for Buti Plus (so I don't have to exchange it for Hesmon when I need a monitor)...

/Anders

Boray · Post by **Boray** » Mon Nov 07, 2005 2:33 pm

Hey, it says it's a hardware interface... This text is futher down on the page about a cable:

"Har du inte ett hårdvaruinterface (som t ex Buti Plus eller Text 64, måste du ha ett mjukvaruinterface, nr 908. Passar även VIC-64."

But maybe they just mean that it's hardware when it's a cartridge, even if it's software on a cartridge... I don't know...

/Anders