I am a relative newcomer to the Vic-20 (though a long time C64 owner); I purchased one from an individual at AtariAge, and after receiving it I plugged it up and everything seemed to be fine. I recently bought a couple of carts for it - the 8K Expansion and Pirate's Cove.
My problem is, neither of these seem to work. I insert the 8K Exp., and it still says 3583 Bytes Free. Is this normal? And Pirate's Cove does nothing; I enter "SYS32592", and it just locks up.
Any ideas as to what's wrong?
Cartridges don't work? (Pirate's Cove & 8K Expansion)
Moderator: Moderators
Several things could be causing your problems.
First thing I would look at is the edgecard contacts of the carts to ensure they are clean and free of corrosion. Some folks will use a pencil eraser to rubbing across the contacts to clean them.
The socket on your Vic-20 may also have contacts, which need cleaning. Inserting and removing carts numerous times may help to clean the socket "fingers". In the past, have used a very small fine tooth file to clean these contacts.
If you do not have a corrosion problem causing your problems, one possibility is a broken or intermittent databus, address, bus, or power connection to the Vic-20 edgecard socket. This could be a broken trace on the Vic-20 motherboard or a broken VIA between top & bottom layers of the motherboard. I recently fixed one, which had address bus A0 contact open on Vic-20 motherboard.
For the 8K expander, if you pop it open, you may find some DIP switches. If the previous owner was lucky enough to have a cartridge port expander, they may have changed (via DIP switch) the address in which the 8K expanded RAM appears. If this was changed from default BLK1, then Vic-20 kernel will not see the expanded RAM continuous with 3.5K and will show only 3,583 bytes free. However, the RAM is still available to use in BLK2, BLK3, or BLK5 (depending on DIP switch setting).
Good luck with the carts!
First thing I would look at is the edgecard contacts of the carts to ensure they are clean and free of corrosion. Some folks will use a pencil eraser to rubbing across the contacts to clean them.
The socket on your Vic-20 may also have contacts, which need cleaning. Inserting and removing carts numerous times may help to clean the socket "fingers". In the past, have used a very small fine tooth file to clean these contacts.
If you do not have a corrosion problem causing your problems, one possibility is a broken or intermittent databus, address, bus, or power connection to the Vic-20 edgecard socket. This could be a broken trace on the Vic-20 motherboard or a broken VIA between top & bottom layers of the motherboard. I recently fixed one, which had address bus A0 contact open on Vic-20 motherboard.
For the 8K expander, if you pop it open, you may find some DIP switches. If the previous owner was lucky enough to have a cartridge port expander, they may have changed (via DIP switch) the address in which the 8K expanded RAM appears. If this was changed from default BLK1, then Vic-20 kernel will not see the expanded RAM continuous with 3.5K and will show only 3,583 bytes free. However, the RAM is still available to use in BLK2, BLK3, or BLK5 (depending on DIP switch setting).
Good luck with the carts!
Mega-Cart: the ultimate cartridge for your Commodore Vic-20