References to 6560 VIC chip prior to its use in the VIC 20

[lance.ewing]

Over the past couple of days, I've been trying to find as many references as I can to the 6560 chip that are dated prior to the release of the VIC 20. I couldn't find many, but the earliest reference was from towards the end of 1978, which I thought might be of interest.

The details are as follows:

EDN, Electrical Design News, Volume 23, Issues 19-22
Rogers Publishing Company, 1978
(the issues date from October/November 1978)

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=j9A ... Y+6560+VIC

On Page 201, there is apparently a table of various video chips in which the 6560 is included. The details given for the 6560 are as follows:

MOS TECHNOLOGY
6560 VIC
1 MHz
PROGRAMMABLE SCREEN GRID TO 200H AND 200V LINES
512 INDEPENDENTLY PROGRAMMABLE & MOVABLE BACKGROUND LOCATIONS
16 COLORS
3 TONE GENERATORS PLUS WHITE NOISE WITH 16 AMPLITUDE LEVELS.

NMOS +5V
40-PIN

FOR VIDEO GAMES INCORPORATES COLORS & SOUND GENERATION AND TIMERS CAN BE MASKED TO OPERATE ON NTSC, PAL, AND SECAM TV SYSTEMS


Interesting that it refers to SECAM TV systems.

Google Books refuses to show a snippet of this part of page 201, but I was able to construct the above by doing various text searches under books.google.com and the matching text came back slightly different depending on which parts of the above I was searching for. I then compared it with the same table of information in later issues of EDN (e.g. from 1980, Volume 25, Issues 19-22, which has it on page 229, and does show a snippet).

Does anyone happen to have access to old copies of EDN issues? It would be great to get a scan of this 1978 reference to the 6560.

The description isn't detailed enough to recognise any differences between the features it had in 1978 and what ended up in the VIC 20. We know from other sources though that it didn't have the multi colour mode, in fact I highly suspect that the original 6560 chip supported 16 colours for foreground, background and border (auxiliary wouldn't have even existed in the absence of multi colour mode). It seems likely that the 6560 in the Attack UFO arcade cabinet was like this. Certainly it didn't support multi colour mode and appears to have supported 16 foreground colours instead, and given that the 6562 chip had 16 border colours (and had the Reverse bit in a different location), I have a feeling that the 6562 represents an evolution step between the original 6560 and the VIC 20 version of the 6560. I think they sacrificed 8 of the foreground colours when they added multi colour mode, and then sacrificed 8 of the border colours when the moved the Reverse bit. Attack UFO definitely didn't have the reverse bit where the VIC 20 has it.

I was really hoping to find a reference to an advert for the original 6560 that was a bit more detailed than what I found, but I guess that is going to be unlikely, although more detailed datasheets must have existed at the time. Ryoto Electric who built the Attack UFO arcade game must have had such a datasheet.

I did find another reference from June 1980. This is around the time that the original VIC 20 prototype (MicroPET) was shown at the Consumer Electronics Show. The reference is from the following publication:

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=nYt ... S+6560+VIC

From what I can tell, it appears to have exactly the same "advert" information as in the EDN 1978 reference. Given that it appears to be quite an interesting publication, I decided to buy a second hand copy online. It should be arriving about a week into June. I'll then scan the page and add to this topic.

I'm aware that the datasheet for the 6560/1 is dated Feb 1980 as well, which at that point already describes the multi colour mode.

[cbmeeks]

How are you reading these books? All I get are screenshots of the title page and no way to download them.

**EDIT**

Never mind. I see you couldn't read it all either.

Thanks.

[lance.ewing]

How are you reading these books? All I get are screenshots of the title page and no way to download them.

**EDIT**

Never mind. I see you couldn't read it all either.

Yeah, I couldn't see the image, or read the whole text in one go...

I did find another reference from June 1980. This is around the time that the original VIC 20 prototype (MicroPET) was shown at the Consumer Electronics Show. The reference is from the following publication:

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=nYt ... S+6560+VIC

From what I can tell, it appears to have exactly the same "advert" information as in the EDN 1978 reference. Given that it appears to be quite an interesting publication, I decided to buy a second hand copy online. It should be arriving about a week into June. I'll then scan the page and add to this topic.

...but now I can read the whole text, because this "Tutorial, microcomputer system design and techniques" book published in 1980 that I ordered has now arrived, and it turns out that what it contains (among many other articles from various sources) is a re-print of the November 1978 EDN article that mentions the 6560 VIC chip. So we no longer need to track down an actual copy of that issue of the EDN magazine, because this book contains an exact reproduction.

When I get time, I will scan it and add it to this post. It doesn't say anything more than I included in the first post above, but it is nice to see the actual article and see confirmation that this was from 1978.