I am lucky enough to have about 4 or 5 VIC-20s in working or mostly working condition (may have a key missing from the keyboard on one or two). I even have the original VIC that I got as a kid at Christmas time around 1982 or so. One of my favourites has PET style flat keys & keytop font, a 'brass' looking VIC-20 sticker (with the original protective plastic 'shipping' film still covering it), and it looks brand new. Most of my VICs are pretty new looking, fortunately. I have one in the original box too, minus the packing foam.
But I think about how abundant they used to be at thrift stores, and how many I passed up (literally dozens). Maybe I should have bought a few more! But there still seems to be no shortage on Ebay. If I ever got really desperate, I could always buy there...(but I prefer not)!
Jim Butterfield also played a role. Jim Butterfield was nearly a household name for a while, when he was on TV every week on TVO. Canadian Tire even hired him to do a booklet - I gotta find my copy of that.
Yeah! Do you remember the original TVO "BITS & BYTES" series from 1982 or so? My Dad subscribed to that and they sent us tutorial books and cassettes with PET software on it. Sadly we've thrown out all this stuff (sometime in the late 80s). I remember the show well, with Billy Van as the bumbling guy who wanted to learn computers, Luba Goy (now with Air Farce, I believe) as the informative woman he would talk to, and that guy with the voice you used to hear all the time, narrating the animated clips showing how a computer worked.
They did another updated BITS & BYTES a little later on. It would be fun to see those again....they would have no market value, as they are so out of date, so I wonder if TVO would ever release a copy if someone asked nicely (hopefully they haven't been 'wiped').
vic user wrote:yeah, i subscribed to it too, and was so excited to get all those booklets!
do you remember when billy van got to be the expert in the later series?
chris
p.s.
he was AWESOME in Hillarious House of Frighenstein!
Yup! Loved that show (Frightenstein) and wish I could get some episodes on tape. As for the later series of Bits & Bytes, I didn't watch much of that...
Cost reduced. Typically all chips are mounted directly to the board, the RAM has been changed from 9*0.5K to 2*2K + 0.5. Nicolas Welte's 6502 RAM/ROM board only fits in a CR model, probably due to the lack of chip sockets make the motherboard more slim.
Cost reduced. Typically all chips are mounted directly to the board, the RAM has been changed from 9*0.5K to 2*2K + 0.5. Nicolas Welte's 6502 RAM/ROM board only fits in a CR model, probably due to the lack of chip sockets make the motherboard more slim.
Also the power supply has been changed from the 9V 2 prong plug (internal power supply) to the C64 style DIN plug. The advantage is the computer runs cooler, but the disadvantage is those external power supplies "bricks" are less reliable (and if I recall they have less 5V capacity, so its just asking for trouble if you have a multi-slot expander).
ral-clan wrote:They did another updated BITS & BYTES a little later on. It would be fun to see those again....they would have no market value, as they are so out of date, so I wonder if TVO would ever release a copy if someone asked nicely (hopefully they haven't been 'wiped').
Actually the computer hardware fundamentals are still the same today, so many of the "high-tech" animations would be relevant today. The big problem would be no-one today wants to know how a computer works, they just want to know how to use it.
Back then, we wanted to pick our VIC's apart piece by piece, and to do that an understanding of whats under the hood is important.
Did the change of PSU happen at the same time they simplified the board? Hm, yes, it seems logical rather than redesign the board twice in a short time.
Yes, I think the CR change came about with the ramping up of the production of the C64. By making the power system similar, they were able to save money there too. Also, some of the CR VIC's even had grey function keys, so they were even sharing keyboards at that time.
Mmh, but my two CR VICs have the old PSU whilst my old VIC has the DIN plug PSU!? Since the power connector is on the mainboard I do not think that this are somehow wrongly assembled units.
Schlowski wrote:Mmh, but my two CR VICs have the old PSU whilst my old VIC has the DIN plug PSU!? Since the power connector is on the mainboard I do not think that this are somehow wrongly assembled units.
Hmm thats interesting, maybe this is a European/American difference, since every CR model I have seen is DIN (I am in Canada).... Interesting. I wonder if the CR with two prong would be the most reliable VIC you could get, since it would have less components but yet the better power supply? A little harder to fix since it is missing sockets though.
But there still seems to be no shortage on Ebay. If I ever got really desperate, I could always buy there...(but I prefer not)!
