Denial

Read the history of the Vic-20 and other Commodore computers in "On the Edge: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore". Full reviews are available here:

http://www.commodorebook.com/view.php?content=reviews

"He destroyed me, he destroyed my family, he did all kinds of terrible things, but he gave me a chance to do something nobody else would give me necessarily. I can remember that and I thank him for it." -Commodore PET Engineer Chuck Peddle on founder Jack Tramiel

"God, what an incredible thing we did." - Commodore-Amiga Engineer R.J. Mical

www.commodorebook.com

How come Barnes & Noble doesn't carry this book? They seem to
carry all Brian Bagnall's other books.

yoyodyne wrote:How come Barnes & Noble doesn't carry this book? They seem to carry all Brian Bagnall's other books.

Variant Press will be releasing it to an international distributor later this year, but for now you can purchase the book reliably from the company website. Everyone who ordered it has received their book and there have been no complaints:

www.commodorebook.com

Yip, they even sent to germany

Björg

Welcome Brian to the group!!

I received your book for Christmas and had it read in 6 days!! Great read

Which Commodore machine do you collect and use most these days?

Are the bonus chapters ready yet as per your website? Any more information on the PET computers than what's in the book. I found the book touched upon the earlier chicklet systems and very briefly on the next PET but then jumped to the Vic-20 (leaving questions on the process/story behind the 3000, 4000, 8000, SuperPET and 64PET).

Brian

Centallica wrote:Welcome Brian to the group!!

I received your book for Christmas and had it read in 6 days!! Great read

Thanks, that means a lot. If someone else wrote a book on Commodore, I think I'd read it in about 6 days too.

Centallica wrote:Which Commodore machine do you collect and use most these days?

The XBox. It's loaded with emulators. My C64 gets the most use, but honestly, it's been months since I used it. I've got a decent collection of Commodore computers though.

Centallica wrote:Are the bonus chapters ready yet as per your website? Any more information on the PET computers than what's in the book. I found the book touched upon the earlier chicklet systems and very briefly on the next PET but then jumped to the Vic-20 (leaving questions on the process/story behind the 3000, 4000, 8000, SuperPET and 64PET).

There is one bonus chapter ready on the KIM-1 and TIM computers (mentioned in the book) that would appear somewhere between chapter 2 and 3 I think. It's about 17 pages. I'm just waiting for the right time to release it to the site.

The other bonus chapters are basically written but really a mess. I've been hoping someone from the early years would step forward to help those chapters out with interviews and real quotes. One such person is Kit Spencer who made contact with me a few weeks ago. I sent a book to him so hopefully he will shed some info on "calculators and typewriters" Commodore and Jack Tramiel.

Yes! I remember him from the book. Wasn't he the UK Matrketing person who did wonders for Commodore?

Once again, good to have ya here
Brian

I didn't realize it was you!!! I am on page 118 now and I'm enjoying your book very much! Thanks for writing it!

/Anders

I just ordered it from Guru Mediation in Uppsala.

I have now read up to chapter 10 (page 206). And I have found some things that doesn't seem right.

On page 174 it says "As a bonus, users could change the color of the border to one of 16 colors available on the VIC chip."

...But there are only 8 border colors on the VIC chip. The only thing that can use color 8-15 is the background color.

On page 140 it says how the 6562 chip included saw tooth, square, triangle and pulse waveform sounds.

On page 160 it says "He copied the improved 6562 tone generator. "Although that chip never went into production, those design changes were put into the original VIC-I chip.""

Was this extended 6560 chip only put in the "MicroPET" prototype? Because there are no waveforms like that on the Vic-20.

/Anders

You can use 8-15 for auxilary multi-colour too: POKE 36878,8*16 etc

As far as I know, there is very little information on the 40 column 6562/63 chip, but according to the brief datasheet, something on the sound side was improved. I would think the author means that they had the VIC-I chip, then implemented some type of waveforms but the resulting chip was never released, since the C64 was favoured.

Actually, there is a kind of pulse width modulation in VIC-20, which was demonstrated by Viznut of PWP in 2003:
http://www.pelulamu.net/pwp/vic20/waveforms.txt

carlsson wrote:6562/63

The book calls them 6562 and 6564

Boray wrote: On page 160 it says "He copied the improved 6562 tone generator. "Although that chip never went into production, those design changes were put into the original VIC-I chip.""

This also talks against the rumor that Commodore used the vic-20 to get rid of a lot of allready manufactures VIC chips and 1K ram chips.... Or maybe they discarded those improvments from the 6562 just to do that...?

It is said that the 6562 chip was developed sometime between 1979 and 1980, but not mentioned until Cursor magazine in November 1981. One of the only known prototype chips is marked week 7, 1981, i.e. right after the CES in January 1981?

http://www.floodgap.com/retrobits/ckb/secret/vic40.html
http://www.6502.org/archive/datasheets/ ... 63_vic.pdf

I don't know how big batch of VIC-I chips Commodore initially had manufactured, but if they had tried to sell it for a few years, not more than a couple of ten thousands surely were in stock? The VIC prototype was displayed in June 1980. Maybe the 40 column chip was not ready by then, and a few machines had to be shipped to programmers to make some games for the Japanese VIC-1001 release later that fall. Once 6560/61 was decided to be used, perhaps less hurry to finish the 40 column version.