| Commodore VIC-20 | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Type | Home computer |
| Released | 1980 (VIC-1001) / 1981 |
| Discontinued | 1985 |
| Processor | MOS Technology 6502 @ ca. A home computer was a class of Personal computer entering the market in 1977 and becoming common during the 1980s 1 MHz |
| Memory | 5 KB - 64 KB |
| Operating system | Commodore BASIC 2. A kilobyte (derived from the SI prefix Kilo -, meaning 1000 is a unit of Information or Computer storage equal to either 1024 0 |
The VIC-20 (Germany: VC-20; Japan: VIC-1001) is an 8-bit home computer which was sold by Commodore Business Machines. Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany ( ˈbʊndəsʁepuˌbliːk ˈdɔʏtʃlant is a Country in Central Europe. For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic Japan topics. Eight-bit CPUs normally use an 8-bit data bus and a 16-bit address bus which means that their Address space is limited to 64 KBs This is not a "natural A home computer was a class of Personal computer entering the market in 1977 and becoming common during the 1980s Commodore, the commonly used name for Commodore International, was a US-American Electronics company based in West Chester Pennsylvania The VIC-20 was announced in 1980[1] , roughly three years after Commodore's first personal computer, the PET. Year 1980 ( MCMLXXX) was a Leap year starting on Tuesday (link displays the 1980 Gregorian calendar) The PET ( P ersonal E lectronic T ransactor) was a home -/ Personal computer produced by Commodore starting in 1977 The VIC-20 was the first microcomputer to sell one million units.
Contents |
History
Origin, marketing
The VIC-20 was intended to be more economical than the PET computer. It was equipped with only 5 KB of RAM and used the same MOS 6502 CPU as the PET. A kilobyte (derived from the SI prefix Kilo -, meaning 1000 is a unit of Information or Computer storage equal to either 1024 The MOS Technology 6502 is an 8-bit Microprocessor that was designed by Chuck Peddle for MOS Technology in 1975 The VIC-20's video chip, the MOS Technology VIC, was a general-purpose color video chip designed by Al Charpentier in 1977 and intended for use in inexpensive display terminals and game consoles, but Commodore couldn't find a market for the chip. The VIC (Video Interface Chip, specifically known as the MOS Technology 6560 ( NTSC version / 6561 ( PAL version is the Integrated Also 1977 (album by Ash. Year 1977 ( MCMLXXVII) was a Common year starting on Saturday (link displays As the Apple II gained momentum with the advent of VisiCalc in 1979, Jack Tramiel wanted a product that would compete in the same segment, to be presented at the January 1980 CES. VisiCalc was the first Spreadsheet program available for personal computers Year 1979 ( MCMLXXIX) was a Common year starting on Monday (link displays the 1979 Gregorian calendar) Jack Tramiel (born 13 December 1928) is a Businessman, best known for founding Commodore International - manufacturer of the Commodore Year 1980 ( MCMLXXX) was a Leap year starting on Tuesday (link displays the 1980 Gregorian calendar) For this reason Chuck Peddle and Bill Seiler started to design a computer named TOI (The Other Intellect). Electronics engineer Chuck Peddle is mostly known as the main designer of the MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor
The TOI computer failed to materialize, much due to the fact that it required an 80-column character display which in turn required the MOS Technology 6564 chip, which could not be used since it required very expensive static RAM to operate fast enough. In the meantime, freshman engineer Robert Yannes at MOS Technology (then a part of Commodore) had designed a computer in his home dubbed the MicroPET and finished a prototype with some help from Al Charpentier and Charles Winterble. When Jack Tramiel was confronted with this prototype, he immediately said he wanted it to be finished, and ordered it to be mass-produced following a limited demonstration on the CES, since the TOI had not yet been finished.
The prototype produced by Yannes had very few of the features required for a real computer, so Robert Russell at Commodore headquarters had to coordinate and finish large parts of the design under the codename Vixen. The parts contributed by Russell included a port of the operating system (kernel and BASIC interpreter) taken from John Feagans design for the Commodore PET, a character set with the characteristic PETSCII, an Atari 2600-compatible joystick interface and the cartridge port. The PET ( P ersonal E lectronic T ransactor) was a home -/ Personal computer produced by Commodore starting in 1977 PETSCII ( PET S tandard C ode of I nformation I nterchange) also known as CBM ASCII, is the variation of the The Atari 2600 is a Video game console released in October 1977 A joystick is an input device consisting of a stick that pivots on a base and reports its angle or direction to the device it is controlling The serial IEEE 488-derivative interface was designed by Glen Stark. IEEE-488 is a short-range digital communications bus specification that has been in use for over 30 years Some features, like the memory add-in board, were designed by Bill Seiler. At the time, Commodore had an oversupply of 1 Kbit×4 SRAM chips, so Tramiel decided that these should be used in the new computer. A kilobit is a unit of information abbreviated kbit (or kb) The standard definition is 1 kilobit = 103 bit = 1000 Bit. Static random access memory (SRAM is a type of Semiconductor memory where the word static indicates that unlike ''dynamic'' RAM (DRAM, it does not The end result was arguably closer to the PET or TOI computers than to Yannes' prototype, albeit with a 22-column VIC chip instead of the custom chips designed for the more ambitious computers.
In April 1980, at a meeting of general managers outside London, Jack Tramiel declared that he wanted a low-cost color computer. When most of the GMs argued against it, he said, "the Japanese are coming, so we will become the Japanese. " This was in keeping with Tramiel's philosophy which was to make "computers for the masses, not the classes. " The concept was championed at the meeting by Michael Tomczyk, newly hired marketing strategist and assistant to the president; Tony Tokai, General Manager of Commodore-Japan, and Kit Spencer, the UK's top marketing executive. Michael S Tomczyk is best known for his role in the development and marketing of the Commodore VIC-20 the first microcomputer to sell one million units and for his early role as a pioneer Then the project was given to Commodore Japan. Engineering team led by Yash Terakura created VIC-1001 for Japanese market. VIC 20 was marketed in Japan as VIC-1001 before VIC-20 was introduced to US.
When they returned to California from that meeting, Tomczyk wrote a 30-page memo detailing recommendations for the new computer, and presented it to Tramiel. Recommendations included programmable function keys, full-size typewriter-style keys, and built-in RS-232. Tomczyk insisted on "user-friendliness" as the prime directive for the new computer, and proposed a retail price of $299. 95. He recruited a marketing team and a small group of computer enthusiasts, and worked closely with colleagues in the UK and Japan to create colorful packaging, user manuals, and the first wave of software programs (mostly games and home applications). Tomczyk's account of the story is told in his 1984 book, The Home Computer Wars.
Scott Adams was contracted to provide a series of cartridge-based adventure games. Scott Adams (born July 10, 1952) is the co-founder with ex-wife Alexis of Adventure International, an early publisher of games Five of his current Adventure game series were ported to cartridge format, with help from a Commodore engineer who came to Longwood Florida to assist in the effort. They got around the limited memory of VIC-20 by having the 16k games reside in a ROM cartridge instead of being loaded into main memory via cassette as they were on the TRS-80 and other machines the games were currently running on. The games were 100% text and had no graphic and yet sold very well. The first run of the five cartridges generated over $1,500,000 in sales for Commodore.
While the PET was sold through authorized dealers, the VIC-20 primarily sold at retail, especially discount and toy stores, where it could compete more directly with game consoles. It was the first computer to be sold in K-Mart. Commodore took out advertisements featuring actor William Shatner (of Star Trek fame) as its spokesman, asking, "Why buy just a video game?". William Alan Shatner (born March 22, 1931) is a Canadian double Emmy - Golden Globe - and Saturn Award -winning Star Trek is a Science fiction Television series created by Gene Roddenberry that aired from September 8, 1966 through Television personality Henry Morgan (best known as a panelist on the TV show I've Got A Secret) became the ironic voice on a series of clever Commodore product ads. Not to be confused with Harry Morgan, American actor of film and television who was billed as Henry Morgan in certain roles For IGAS qua graphology organization see International Graphoanalysis Society I've Got a Secret is a weekly panel Game show produced
The VIC-20 had 5K of RAM (netted down to 3. 5K on startup), which is roughly equivalent to the words and spaces on one sheet of typing paper, one of the design goals of the machine. The computer was expandable up to 40K with an add-on memory cartridge (a maximum of 27. 5K was usable for BASIC). Although the VIC-20 was criticized in print as being underpowered, the strategy worked: in 1982 it was the best-selling computer of the year, with 800,000 machines sold, and in January 1983 it passed the 1-million-unit mark, a first in computer history. At its peak, 9,000 units per day were produced, and a total of 2. 5 million units were sold before it was discontinued in January 1985. Year 1985 ( MCMLXXXV) was a Common year starting on Tuesday (link displays 1985 Gregorian calendar)
In 1981, Tomczyk contracted with an outside engineering group to develop a direct-connect modem-on-a-cartridge (the VICModem), which at $99 became the first modem priced under $100. The VICModem was also the first modem to sell over 1 million units. VICModem was packaged with $197. 50 worth of free telecomputing services from The Source, CompuServe and Dow Jones. Tomczyk also created an entity called the Commodore Information Network to enable users to exchange information and take some of the pressure off of Customer Support inquiries, which were straining Commodore's lean organization. In 1982, this network accounted for the largest traffic on CompuServe, which was arguably an early implementation of Internet-style user groups. CompuServe, ( CompuServe Information Service, also known by its acronym CIS) was the first major commercial Online service in the United States
Retirement
Sales of the VIC-20 started declining after the launch of the Commodore 64 in 1982. Year 1982 ( MCMLXXXII) was a Common year starting on Friday (link displays the 1982 Gregorian calendar) The Commodore 64 used the same housing as the VIC-20 but was a much more powerful machine, with higher resolution graphics, a more capable sound generator and a full 64 kilobytes of RAM. The VIC-20 was taken off the market in January 1985, after sales of approximately two million units. Year 1985 ( MCMLXXXV) was a Common year starting on Tuesday (link displays 1985 Gregorian calendar)
Applications
Because of its small memory and low-resolution display compared to some other computers of the time, the VIC-20 was primarily used for educational software and games. However, productivity applications such as home finance programs, spreadsheets, and communication terminal programs were also made for the machine. Application software is a subclass of Computer software that employs the capabilities of a computer directly and thoroughly to a task that the user wishes to perform Its high accessibility to the general public meant that quite a few software developers-to-be cut their teeth on the VIC-20, being introduced to BASIC programming, and in some cases going further to learn assembly or machine language. In Computer programming, BASIC (an Acronym for Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of High-level programming languages See the terminology section below for information regarding inconsistent use of the terms assembly and assembler Machine code or machine language is a system of instructions and data executed directly by a Computer 's Central processing unit. Several computer magazines sold on newsstands, such as Compute! and CBM-produced publications, offered programming tips and type-in programs for the VIC-20. This is a list of Magazines marketed primarily for Computer and Technology Enthusiasts or users COMPUTE! ( was an American Computer magazine that was published from 1979 to 1994 though it can trace its origin to 1978 in Len Lindsay's PET A type-in program, or just type-in, is a Computer program Listing printed in a Computer magazine or book meant to be typed in by the reader Many VIC users learned to program by entering, studying, running, and modifying these type-ins.
The ease of programming the VIC and availability of an inexpensive modem combined to give the VIC a sizable library of public domain and freeware software, although much smaller than that of the C64. The public domain is a range of abstract materials &ndash commonly referred to as Intellectual property &ndash which are not owned or controlled by anyone Freeware is computer Software that is available for use at no cost or for an optional fee This software was distributed on online services such as CompuServe, BBSs, and via user groups. An online service provider is inclusive to Internet service providers and Web sites such as Wikipedia 's or Usenet (commonly accessed through CompuServe, ( CompuServe Information Service, also known by its acronym CIS) was the first major commercial Online service in the United States A Bulletin Board System, or BBS, is a Computer system running software that allows users to connect and login to
As for commercial software offerings, an estimated 300 titles were available on cartridge, and another 500+ titles were available on tape. In various types of electronic equipment a cartridge can refer one method of adding different functionality or content (e By comparison, the Atari 2600, the most popular of the video game consoles at the time, had a library of about 900 titles near the end of its production life (many were variations of another title). The Atari 2600 is a Video game console released in October 1977 Most cartridge games were ready to play as soon as VIC-20 was turned on, as opposed to games on tape which required loading. Titles on cartridge included Gorf, Cosmic Cruncher, Sargon II Chess, and many others. Gorf is an Arcade game released in 1981 by Midway Mfg, whose name was advertised as an acronym for "Galactic Orbiting Robot Force" Cosmic Cruncher was a game similar to Pac-Man where the player controlled a character shaped like the Commodore logo Sargon (or SARGON) is a line of Chess -playing Software for Personal computers.
One of the most popular cassette games was Blitz, written by Simon Taylor and published by Commodore, selling many tens of thousands of copies, and remaining in the top ten computer games listings for six months. The game involved flying over a city of skyscrapers, and flattening the buildings one by one by bombing them until the city was flat. The aircraft descended a line at a time, and if the player's bombing was not accurate enough, the aircraft would crash into the remaining buildings.
Description
Basic features
The VIC-20 had proprietary connectors for program/expansion cartridges and a tape drive (PET-standard Datassette). The Compact Cassette, often referred to as audio cassette, cassette tape, cassette, or simply tape, is a Magnetic tape sound The Commodore 1530 ( C2N) Datassette (a Portmanteau of Data + cassette) was Commodore 's dedicated computer Tape recorder It came with 5 KB RAM, but 1. 5 KB were used by the system for various things, like the video display (which had a rather unusual 22×23 char/line screen layout), and other dynamic aspects of the ROM-resident BASIC interpreter and KERNAL (a low-level operating system). Commodore BASIC, also known as PET BASIC, is the dialect of the BASIC programming language used in Commodore International 's 8-bit Home This article is about Commodore's 8-bit OS software Kernal is also a common misspelling of Kernel. Thus, 3. 5 KB of BASIC program memory for code and variables was available to the user of an unexpanded machine.
The computer also had a serial bus (a serial version of the PET's IEEE-488 bus) for daisy chaining disk drives and printers; a TTL-level "user port" with RS-232 and Centronics signals (most frequently used as RS-232, for connecting a modem[2]); and a single DE-9 game controller port, compatible with the digital joysticks and paddles used with Atari 2600 videogame consoles and, later, the C64 (the use of a standard port ensured ample supply of Atari-manufactured and other third-party joysticks; Commodore itself offered an Atari-protocol joystick under the Commodore brand). IEEE-488 is a short-range digital communications bus specification that has been in use for over 30 years The Commodore 1540 (also known as the VIC-1540) was the companion Floppy disk drive for the Commodore VIC-20 Home computer. Transistor–transistor logic ( TTL) is a class of Digital circuits built from Bipolar junction transistors (BJT and Resistors It is called In Telecommunications, RS-232 (Recommended Standard 232 is a standard for serial binary data signals connecting between a DTE ( Data Terminal Equipment Centronics Data Computer Corporation was a pioneering American manufacturer of computer printers now remembered primarily for the parallel interface that bears its name Modem (from mo dulator- dem odulator is a device that modulates an analog carrier signal to encode Digital information The D-subminiature or D-sub is a common type of Electrical connector used particularly in Computers Calling them "subminiature" was appropriate A game controller is an Input device used to control a Video game. A joystick is an input device consisting of a stick that pivots on a base and reports its angle or direction to the device it is controlling A paddle is a Game controller with a round wheel and one or more fire buttons, where the wheel is typically used to control movement of the player object The Atari 2600 is a Video game console released in October 1977
Importantly, like most video game consoles at the time the VIC had a cartridge port to allow for plug-in cartridges with games and other software as well as for adding memory to the machine. In various types of electronic equipment a cartridge can refer one method of adding different functionality or content (e Port expander boxes were available from Commodore and other vendors to allow more than one cartridge to be connected at a time.
The graphics capabilities of the VIC chip (6560/6561) were limited but flexible. At startup the screen showed 176 pixels in width and 184 in height, with a fixed-colour border to the edges of the screen; since an NTSC or PAL screen has a 4:3 width-to-height ratio, each VIC pixel was much wider than it was high. The screen normally showed 22 columns and 23 rows of 8-by-8-pixel characters; it was possible to increase these dimensions but the characters would soon run out the sides of the monitor. Overscan is extra image area around the four edges of a Video image that is not normally seen by the viewer Like on the PET, 256 different characters could be displayed at a time, normally taken from one of the two character generators in ROM (one for upper-case letters and simple graphics, the other for mixed-case -- non-English characters were not provided). In the usual display mode, each character position could have its foreground colour chosen individually, and the background and screen border colours were set globally. A character could be made to appear in another mode where each pixel was chosen from 4 different colours: the character's foreground colour, the screen background, the screen border and an "auxiliary" colour; but this mode was rarely used since it made the pixels twice as wide as they normally were.
The VIC chip did not provide for a direct full-screen, high-resolution graphics mode. It did, however, allow the pixel-by-pixel depictions of the on-screen characters to be redefined (by using a character generator in RAM), and it allowed for double-height characters (8 pixels wide, 16 pixels high). It was possible to get a fully-addressable screen, slightly smaller (160 by 160) than normal, by filling the screen with a sequence of 200 different double-height characters, then turning on the pixels selectively inside the RAM-based character definitions. (The 200-character limitation was so that enough bytes would be left over for the screen character grid itself to remain addressable by the VIC chip. ) The Super Expander cartridge provided such a mode in BASIC, although it often had to move the BASIC program around in memory to do it. It was also possible to fill a larger area of the screen with addressable graphics using a more dynamic allocation scheme, if the contents were sparse or repetitive enough. This was used, for instance, by the game Omega Race. Omega Race is an Arcade game released in 1981 by Midway. It was the only arcade game with Vector graphics Midway created The VIC chip did not support sprites. In Computer graphics, a sprite (also known by other names see Synonyms below is a two-dimensional/three-dimensional Image or Animation that
The VIC chip had readable scan-line counters but could not generate interrupts based on the scan position (as the VIC-II chip could). However, the two VIA timer chips could be tricked into generating interrupts at specific screen locations, by setting up the timers after a position has been established by repetitive reading of the scan-line counter, and letting them run the exact number of cycles that pass by during one full screen update. Thus it was possible, but difficult, to e. g. mix graphics with text above or below it, or to have two different background and border colors, or to use more than 200 characters for the pseudo-high-resolution mode. The VIC chip could also process a light pen signal (a light pen input was provided on the DE-9 joystick connector) but few of those ever appeared on the market. A light pen is a Computer Input device in the form of a light-sensitive wand used in conjunction with a the computer's CRT TV set or monitor
The VIC chip had three rectangular-wave sound generators. Each had a range of three octaves, and the generators were located on the scale about an octave apart, giving a total range of about five octaves. In addition, there was a white noise generator. There was only one volume control, and the output was in mono.
Memory expansion
The VIC-20's RAM was expandable with plug-in cartridges using the same expansion port as programs. RAM cartridges were available in several sizes: 3K (with or without an included BASIC extension ROM), 8K, 16K, 32K and 64K, the latter two only from third-party vendors. The internal memory map was reorganised with the addition of each size cartridge, leading to the situation that some programs would only work if the right amount of memory was present (to cater for this, the 32K cartridges had switches, and the 64K cartridges had software setups, allowing the RAM to be enabled in user-selected sections).
The most visible part of memory that was reorganised with differing expansion memory configurations was the video memory (with text and/or graphics display data). This was because the video chip could only use the built-in memory for its display data, and at the same time free memory had to remain contiguous for the BASIC interpreter to be able to use it. An unexpanded VIC had 1K of system memory, followed by a 3K "hole", then 4K of contiguous user memory up to address 8191. The 3K cartridge would fill the "hole", so on unexpanded and +3K VICs the video area was placed at the top of user memory (8K - 512 Bytes). If an 8K or 16K cartridge was added instead, this memory appeared at addresses above 8K; the video memory was then placed at the start of user memory at 4K, just above the "hole", to provide the maximum amount of contiguous user memory.
The 32K cartridges allowed adding up to 24K to the BASIC user memory; together with the 3. 5K built-in user memory, this gave a maximum of 27. 5K for BASIC programs and variables. The extra 8K could usually be used in one of two ways, set by switches:
- Either it could be mapped into the address space reserved for ROM cartridges, which sat "behind" the I/O register space and thus was not contiguous with the rest of the RAM. This allowed running many cartridge-based games from disk or tape and was thus very useful for software pirates; especially if the RAM expansion allowed switching off writing to its memory after the game was loaded, so that the memory behaved exactly like ROM.
- Or, 3K of the 8K could be mapped into the same memory "hole" that the 3K cartridge used, letting 5K lie fallow. These 3K were contiguous with the rest of RAM, but couldn't be used to expand BASIC space to more than 27. 5K, because the display data would have had to be moved to cartridge RAM, which wasn't possible.
Some 64K expansion cartridges allowed the user to copy ROM images to RAM. A ROM image, or simply ROM, is a computer file which contains a copy of the data from a Read-only memory chip often from a video game cartridge, a The more advanced versions even contained an 80-character video chip and a patched BASIC interpreter which gave access to 48K of the memory and to the 80-column video mode. As the latter type of cartridges, marketed primarily in Germany, weren't released until late 1984—two years after the appearance of the more capable C64—they went by mostly unnoticed.
The VIC's name(s)
- The name "VIC" came from the Video Interface Chip, which, despite its designation, also handled all the sound synthesis in the VIC-20. The VIC (Video Interface Chip, specifically known as the MOS Technology 6560 ( NTSC version / 6561 ( PAL version is the Integrated The VIC chip's successor, the graphics-and-RAM-refresh VIC-II, was used to great success in Commodore's later best-selling machine, the C64, and also in the dual video output C128 for that computer's 40-column/composite video graphics. The VIC-II (Video Interface Chip II, specifically known as the MOS Technology 6567/8562/8564 ( NTSC versions 6569/8565/8566 ( PAL) is the microchip The Commodore 128 ( C128, CBM 128, C=128) home / Personal computer was the last 8-bit machine which was commercially
- The VIC-20 was originally meant to be called Vixen, but this name was inappropriate in Germany, Commodore's second most important market, because it sounds like wichsen, a German language colloquial word for "masturbate". Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany ( ˈbʊndəsʁepuˌbliːk ˈdɔʏtʃlant is a Country in Central Europe. The German language (de ''Deutsch'') is a West Germanic language and one of the world's major languages. VIC, which was subsequently chosen, has a similar problem—it can be pronounced like fick[en], the German word for "fuck". Therefore the VIC-20 was finally marketed as the VC-20 "Volkscomputer" (people's computer) in German-language countries, an obvious play on "Volkswagen" (people's car).
- In Japan, where the VIC-20 hit the market a bit earlier than elsewhere, it was marketed as the VC-1001 (1980). For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic Japan topics. Year 1980 ( MCMLXXX) was a Leap year starting on Tuesday (link displays the 1980 Gregorian calendar) This version allowed the display of Katakana, which replaced an equal number of graphical symbols of the other versions. is a Japanese Syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with Hiragana, Kanji, and in some cases the Latin alphabet
- Most continental European versions were not localized beyond adapting them to the PAL color TV system and translating the manuals. PAL, short for Phase Alternating Line, is a colour -encoding system used in Broadcast television systems in large parts of the world An exception was the Swedish/Finnish version, which provided the Swedish letters Ä, Ö, and Å on its keyboard and in its character shape ROM. " Ä " or " ä " is a character which represents either a letter from several extended Latin alphabets or the letter A with O-Umlaut The glyph O with Umlaut appears in the German alphabet. The letter Å represents various sounds in the Swedish, Finnish (although no native Finnish words contain the letter å Danish, Norwegian
- The 20 in VIC-20 has often been connected with the total size of ROM inside the computer (8K BASIC + 8K KERNAL + 4K character shapes = 20K), but in fact it has nothing to do with technical specs. Michael Tomczyk thought that VIC sounded like a truck drivers name so he insisted on adding 20 as a friendly number for a friendly computer. According to reports, the original name was going to be VIC-22 (based on the screen width) but 20 was chosen as a friendlier name.
VIC trivia
- An anecdotal bit of evidence to support Commodore's statement that the VIC-20 could be used not only for games but also as a serious introduction to computing, can be said to originate from the fact that a young Linus Torvalds was given a VIC-20 as his first computer. Linus Benedict Torvalds ( ˈtuːrvalds born December 28 1969 in Helsinki, Finland) is a Finnish software engineer Torvalds later upgraded to a Sinclair QL, then to a 386 PC. The Sinclair QL (for Quantum Leap) was a Personal computer launched by Sinclair Research in 1984 as the successor to the ZX Spectrum Torvalds later went on to write the kernel used in the GNU/Linux operating system. In Computer science, the kernel is the central component of most computer Operating systems (OS Linux (commonly pronounced ˈlɪnəks
- Another notable software developer who began his computing career with a VIC-20 was the OpenBSD creator Theo de Raadt. OpenBSD is a Unix-like computer Operating system descended from Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD a Unix derivative developed at the Theo de Raadt, (ˈθiːoʊ dεˈrɔːt born May 19, 1968 in Pretoria, South Africa, is a Software engineer who lives in
Notes
The VIC 20 could be hooked into external electronic circuitry, using parts available from parts outlets like Radio Shack and Maplin. RadioShack Corporation (formerly Tandy Corporation) ( is a chain of electronics retail stores in the United States, as well as parts of North America Maplin Electronics is a Retailer of electronic goods in the UK and Republic of Ireland. Interfaces were designed to use either the joystick port, the so-called "user port", or the memory expansion / cartridge port, which exposed various analog to digital, memory bus, and other internal I/O circuits to the experimenter. The BASIC language could then be used (using the PEEK and POKE commands) to perform data acquisition from temperature sensors, control robotic stepper motors, etc. The VIC 20 did not originally have a disk drive available for sale, with only a relatively high cost tape recorder system (using audio cassette tapes). Many experimenters built adapters that allowed any conventional audio cassette recorder to be used for program and data storage (since these were generally cheaper than Commodore's own Datasette recorder). The Commodore 1530 ( C2N) Datassette (a Portmanteau of Data + cassette) was Commodore 's dedicated computer Tape recorder
References
- ^ Commodore.ca | Products | Commodore VIC-20 History, Pictures & Time Line
- ^ The Commodore VICModem and later models connected directly to the user port's edge connector. But in order to connect the VIC to industry-standard modems and other RS-232 devices, the user needed to purchase a separate TTL-to-RS232 voltage converter box (standard TTL voltages lie between 0 and 5 V, while RS-232 uses ±12 V). Modem (from mo dulator- dem odulator is a device that modulates an analog carrier signal to encode Digital information In Telecommunications, RS-232 (Recommended Standard 232 is a standard for serial binary data signals connecting between a DTE ( Data Terminal Equipment Transistor–transistor logic ( TTL) is a class of Digital circuits built from Bipolar junction transistors (BJT and Resistors It is called The volt (symbol V) is the SI derived unit of electric Potential difference or Electromotive force.
- Bagnall, Brian: On The Edge: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore, ISBN 0-9738649-0-7.
- Finkel, A. ; Harris, N. ; Higginbottom, P. ; Tomczyk, M. (1982). VIC 20 Programmer's reference guide. Commodore Business Machines, Inc. and Howard W. Sams & Co, Inc. ISBN 0-672-21948-4.
- Jones, A. J. ; Coley, E. A. ; Cole, D. G. J. (1983). Mastering the VIC-20. Chichester, UK: Ellis Horwood Ltd. and John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 0-471-88892-3.
- Tomczyk, Michael (1984). The Home Computer Wars: An Insider's Account of Commodore and Jack Tramiel. COMPUTE! Publications, Inc. ISBN 0-942386-75-2.
See also
External links
- Denial - the Commodore VIC-20 Community
- OLD-COMPUTERS.COM online-museum VIC-20 page
- Commodore VIC-20 Tribute Page, by Rick Melick
- Archive.org commercial for the VIC-20 featuring William Shatner
- 1000BiT.net - Commodore VIC-20 page
- 1000BiT.net - Commodore VIC-1001 page
- 1000BiT.net - Commodore VC-20 page
- VIC-20 Geek Site - includes Free Retrogames and a Tiny C Compiler
- VIC-20 and oher CBM viewable in 3D!
- Commodore Horizons Magazine Archive at the Centre for Computing History
This article was originally based on material from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, which is licensed under the GFDL. Here is a list of games for the Commodore VIC-20 personal computer system sorted alphabetically The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing ( FOLDOC) is an online searchable encyclopedic Dictionary of Computing subjects The GNU Free Documentation License ( GNU FDL or simply GFDL) is a Copyleft License for free documentation designed by the Free Software
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