New Commodore book talks about Vic-20

[Boray]

According to the book, they started on the 40-column color chip 6562 in late 1979. It was meant for a Color PET computer. But it required ultra-fast 200-nanosecond memory and that's why they didn't use it except for in the Color PET prototype. Bill Seiler's "G-Job" pre-vic-20 prototype was shown at the same time as the Color-Pet prototype. After that, MOS began on a 6564/65 chip that was redisigned to work with slower DRAM memory. It was meant for a computer project called the "TOI" that never got anywhere. I don't think they ever got that chip working.

Then, another vic-20 prototype was developed at MOS, The MicroPET by Bob Yannes. It was done indepentently from the other prototype. And it is in the description of this project it's said that the VIC chip got new features from the 6562 and 6564.

The vic-20 later became a mix of the two prototypes if I understood it correctly.

The 6562 was called the VIC-40 chip, but it had no relation to the VIC-40 game machine project where they designed a completely new chip, the 6566 VIC-II, that became the C64. This is where I'm reading now (page 231) and there has been no mention at all yet about any vic-20 -> vic-40 upgrade plans. But that would probably come later as the vic-20 just had been released when they started on the c64. But can the 6562 chip really be put in a vic-20? Is the vic-20's internal memory really as fast as 200 nanoseconds?

[Boray]

Another probable error in the book:

On page 221 it says "By late 1983, Apple had sold 700,000 computers." The foot note says this info comes from Time Magazine January 3, 1983.

So I think it should say late 1982.

[carlsson]

Hm, so it appears Brian has access to sources (interviews etc) much greater than anyone in the Commodore community ever has before. Cameron's page on the Colour PET and TOI speaks about "unknown graphics architecture", perhaps 80x25 text and "parts of the design may have been integrated into the early VIC-I video chip". 6564 is a part number I've never seen mentioned before. The VIC-II used in UltiMAX typically is a 6566, and the early C64 used 6567 (NTSC) or 6569 (PAL).

If 6560 was developed in 1978, and there was both a 6562 and 6564 under way before the VIC-20, the 6560/61 as we know it can not be identical with the chip once developed to be sold to video game manufacturers. Also, the 6562/63 data sheet doesn't mention requirement of higher speed memory.

The UltiMAX (6566) is also known as VIC-10 or Vickie, and the C64 project is referred to as VIC-30. Maybe there is a typo in the book about this?

Here is Rick Melick's interview with the same Bill Seiler by the way:
http://www.geocities.com/rmelick/14.htm

He indicates that TOI perhaps became VIC-II and that VIC-I was a finished video chip which they tried to interface it with a PET.

[Boray]

According to the book, that G-Job Vic prototype was shown to Jack Tramiel before the other prototype. It was shown together with the 6562 Color PET at the Las Vegas CES. Peddle demonstrated the G-Job for people and talked about the TOI computer, explaining the final machine would be similar but better. When Tramiel saw it, he didn't like this G-Job at all. He just thought it was a cover-up for the fact that they weren't ready with the TOI. Later (after Tramiel had been in London and seen the low-cost Sinclair), the other vic-20-prototype was shown to him and it only included a demo of the vic chip, no basic. The whole demonstration was in black and white smoothly scrolling things around (it actually says both up and down and to the sides) etc. And the final part said: Oh and by the way, it has color" and it went into some color demo thing. Here is the discussion between Carpentier and Tramiel after the demo:

Carpentier: Here's the chip. What do you think?
Jack: All right, ship it.
Carpentier: You mean the chip?
Jack: No no no, I mean that! (pointing to the prototype board)
Carpentier: This?
Jack: That
Carpentier: This?
Jack: That
Carpentier: Really?
Jack: That

I think this indicates that there was something new to the chip included from the 6562, or why would he ask: Here's the chip. What do you think? The question is if any of these changes got into the real vic-20?

Then for the Chicago CES, Peddles group progressed with the G-Job because they wanted to compete to show a better prototype than the MicroPET (That Jack liked so much) and it was much more like a working computer. After that, the two joined forces to get the benefits out of the two systems into the vic-20.

The vic-20 got some things from the TOI project. For example the serial interface and the kernal.

I'm now on page 261 and the c64 is soon to be released. There has been no mention of any upgrade plans for the vic-20.

According to the book, there was discussions of making the c64 and VIC-II chip backward compatible with the vic-20. Also of using Basic 4.0. Another interesting thing is that the SID chip constructor originally wanted to have 32 sound channels by multiplexing. But as there was no time for this with the short development time, he just duplicated one channel three times instead.

/Anders

[Boray]

The UltiMAX (6566) is also known as VIC-10 or Vickie, and the C64 project is referred to as VIC-30. Maybe there is a typo in the book about this?

The Max machine is mentioned, and the vic-40 (=c64) but no vic-10 or vic-30 so far... It says the c64 was designed to take Max game cartridges. When you inserted a cartridge, it became a Max.

[Boray]

I'm now on page 348 and have just finnished the TED computers. I have found some more tings that doesn't seem correct.

On page 347, it says that the C16 only was sold in Canada. That's not true. It was sold in Europe too. And probably in a lot higher amounts as well.

On the same page it says the Plus/4 not even had a real keyboard. That's not true. The Plus/4 keyboard is in fact better than the C64 keyboard. It's more like a C128 or Amiga keyboard, or the PC keyboard I'm writing on right now.

On page 345/345 it says the Plus/4 was meant to have a graphical user interface called "Magic Desk II" to compete as a low-budget alternative to the Macintosh. And when the developer of this interface depatrured to join Jack Tramiel's new company, nobody could finnish it, so they had to look up a replacement thing and found a company that made the 3+1 software instead. But according to other information on the internet (and Swedish magazine VIC Rapport), the original plan was to have user selected custom software built in. You selected the software (among 8 different ones: Magic Desk, Superscript, 3-plus-1, Logo, Pilot, Easycalc 264, Com 264 and Financial Advisor) and the rom was then put in your delivered computer. But the dealers didn't like this idea so Commodore decided to put the 3-plus-1 package in all of them instead. There is no mention at all of this in the book.

There is no mention of that the Plus/4 (and C16 etc) became a big hit in eastern Europe and even outsold the C64.

[Schlowski]

In Germany the C16 was sold as a learning computer through big discounters, but I have no figures how well it sold...

Björg

[carlsson]

It sounds like this book has a lot of artistic freedom? Perhaps the author mixed up Plus/4 with C116, which on the other hand I think only was shipped to European markets to compete with e.g. ZX Spectrum (which by then had a more real keyboard in Spectrum+).

The fact that TED machines became a huge hit in eastern Europe like Hungary seems to be due to Commodore radically dumped the prices in that market around 1987 or so, so they became very affordable, maybe even better priced than domestic or other neighbourhood made computers.

[Boray]

The book says all C116s were sold in Japan

[carlsson]

Again, a quote from Secret Weapons of Commodore:

(The C116 was) Never released in the US; instead, for American users, the 116 was reincarnated in a 64-like motherboard with a grey keyboard and released as the 16.

http://www.floodgap.com/retrobits/ckb/secret/x64.html

Maybe Brian is referring to the North American C16 as not having a real keyboard? The C116 is said to have been designed by Commodore Japan, but only released in Europe - if even that. The motherboard is similar to a Plus/4 but different from a C16. The chicklet keyboard is said to be one of the worst ever seen, compared to other chicklet keyboards.

[Schlowski]

Every now and then C116 pop up at ebay.de so they really exist!
And in computer magazines of that time the C116 is really torn to pieces...

http://cgi.ebay.de/Commodore-C116_W0QQi ... categoryZ3
544QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Björg

Edit: Here is the prove for the C16 as a learning computer in Germany:
http://cgi.ebay.de/Commodore-C16-Microc ... plettpaket_
W0QQitemZ8255279968QQcategoryZ3544QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

[Boray]

One thing that gets repeated a couple of times in the book is that it's impossible to do a 80 column display on a TV. For example on page 487:
"Mical explains the Amiga 500's lack of a color TV signal. "It turned out that a lot of people weren't using the TV anyway because it was giving them a headache," says Mical. "You could do 60 columns and have it look good on a TV but on a medium quality TV you had to go to 40 columns, and at 40 columns the characters are as big as your head".


I had no problem to use a 80 column font on my old 70's color TV even through the rf-modulator on my Amiga500. But 60 was easier to read. Maybe they mix up 80 and 60 with 60 and 40? Because 80 and 60 was the two system font sizes on the Amiga500... (8 and 9 points)

Or maybe NTSC is less detailed than PAL both vertically and horizontally? I thought it only was vertically...

/Anders

[MacbthPSW]

One thing that gets repeated a couple of times in the book is that it's impossible to do a 80 column display on a TV. For example on page 487:

Did it actually say it's impossible in the book? The example you gave just makes it sound like it's poor, but not impossible.

I used my 1702 monitor with my Amiga 500 and A520 modulator here in NTSC land. 60 columns looked very good, while 80 columns did look pretty bad. However, there were problems with the bigger font - many apps didn't deal with it properly, and I didn't like giving up the extra screen space, so I ran in 80 column mode anyway, and just got used to it. I put up with it for at least six or seven years, never being able to justify to myself the cost of a new 1084 or other similarly capable monitor.

[Boray]

For example on page 275:

"The Commodore 80 would be unable to connect to a standard television. "Since TV's can't do 80 columns, it would have had to have been a separate CRT monitor," says Charpentier."


A book about home electronics I have says the theoretical resolution on every line of a PAL TV is 530. That would mean 530/8 = 66.25... 66 columns with 8 point characters. But it doesn't say if this is for the video signal or for rf signals...

[Boray]

It probably is for the actual TV screen....