Denial

Earlier this year, I snagged a little PCB and schematic in some type of online auction. It's a tiny little board intended for 1001006 motherboards marked 321461, ostensibly to convert them from the NTSC-J standard to the US variety of NTSC. Either that, or it fixes something about the composite vide...

Within a short time of me putting feelers out there in the greater vintage computing/Commodore world, someone found a set of ROM dumps for a very similar cartridge. (https://sid.fi/~tnt/vic20/zero18/)

I burned a copy of the character ROM to a fresh 2816 and... voila!

Not long ago, I was fortunate enough to find a Protecto-80 cartridge. 20241217_054230.jpg Problem is that I only get a gray screen, black border, and black cursor on screen, which leads me to believe that I've possibly got a dead character ROM. My research indicates that these mask ROMs (C2H017 or D...

John, you should be very proud of that build, it's a beast. I'm amazed at how much you were able to cram in that case under the keyboard. Out of curiosity, with all those bells and whistles attached, did you ever measure how many amps the 5V rail pulled on your Super VIC? How often did you use the P...

Not sure if it meets your criteria, but it was a labor of love. That's awesome! This is precisely the sort of thing I was hoping for. Here's the article about K9 https://snarpco.com/k9/ Yes! That's the one! I got to see it years ago at VCF Midwest 2015: https://www.commodorez.com/VCFMW10/71.html ht...

What is the most unexpected, unique, or otherwise novel application or task you've seen applied to a VIC-20. The question crossed my mind, and I figured it was worth posting here. Most folks I imagine used one for video games and basic productivity software in its heyday. It's a versatile platform, ...

The photograph is somewhat small. Here, these are much bigger: https://www.commodorez.com/img/commodore/vicdsc1.jpg I borrowed the old ceramic parts for these out of other projects since they look so beautiful. Pretty chips should be useful as well as ornamental. https://www.commodorez.com/img/comm...

Howdy folks. Not long ago, I got struck with the notion to build a faster serial interface for the VIC. Next thing I know, I've got a working card with two serial ports. vicdsc1slide.jpg You can find more information here: https://www.commodorez.com/vicserial.html Or watch a demonstration of it in a...

I wish I could be there, but it isn't in the cards this year. Hopefully folks take good photos, and there well be representatives of our favorite little 8-bit machine present. For those going, y'all have fun in the big new venue!

Picked up my copy in person at VCF Midwest. I was fortunate enough to have a table next to Jeff, it was a pleasure to meet you sir! I foresee this book becoming an essential part of my VIC experience.

Oh hey, I'm a bit late to the party. This was my exhibit at VCF Southwest 2023: 20230623_134536c.jpg 2 tables, 3 monitors, and up to 3 VICs running at once. Here is the 1001 and the early US model: 20230623_134447.jpg Here's the 16K prototype: 20230623_134504.jpg On top of the TV is the "brown ...

Mine arrived earlier this week, and it was packed well enough to be thrown off a 5 story building and survive the trip. Man, this cartridge is loaded for bear with all sorts of fun software. I like the new RAM config options too Edit: I should proof-read better in the future. I didn't mean to imply ...

ramlayout2.JPG ramlayoutlisting2.JPG Alright, here's the updated version that I plan to put on the webpage about these boards. I've also taken some better lit photos of the mystery SRAM on the brown board: ram highlighted.jpg It sure looks like an MOS part to me. MPS 2114, 30L 2280 Does that seem l...

36869 has a different mapping from how you interpret it (it's not the high byte of any address, but rather encodes the screen and character base address in its higher and lower nibble, respectively) Then I will remove the 256 multiplier. FRE(0) 'misses' the space already occupied by your test progr...

You know, y'all might have something there. I measured the startup time, and it's closer to 19 seconds from when I throw the switch. 15S instead of 155 makes alot more sense now. I'd like to be able to post a definitive memory map of this unique VIC, and I can think of no better place to ask than he...