Newbie query (you've heard this one before I bet!)

Geoffb · Post by **Geoffb** » Fri Sep 24, 2010 4:36 am

Hi there,
I'm new to this forum. I discovered my previously assumed "lost" vic 20 has now been found.

Dating from November 1982 I have the Vic itself, a datasette, 16k ram cartridge, Ratrace cartridge two books and various tapes. The rf modulator is knackered so I connecet direct to av of tv with a home made lead.

Now here's my query. I can see on this and other sites the various games, programmes that are available online and boy do I want to get them.

However being a curmudgeonly 42 years old I don't want to run a clvere emulator on my pc but would like to get these programmes downloaded and onto my actual, real, tangible Vic 20.

So how do I do it?

Great site by the way!

Bacon · Post by **Bacon** » Fri Sep 24, 2010 5:46 am

Welcome!

A good question with several answers. This sticky thread in the Emulators and Cross-development section has a whole lot of info about this.

However, the easiest and most affordable way today would probably be to buy a uIEC from Jim Brain. It's a device that lets you use a modern day SD card as a huge disk drive connected to the VIC 20.

Another, more flexible alternative is the Final Expansion, developed by a Denial member and sold by Retro-Donald in Germany (he unfortunately doesn't speak English, but I'm sure one of our German members are more than willing to help you out there). The Final Expansion is a multi-cartridge and RAM expansion unit, combined with the same SD card functionality as the uIEC.

Then there's the more expensive Mega-Cart, jointly developed by a few Denial members. You can't use it to transfer any software to the VIC from the net, buit it already contains almost all software ever released.

Mayhem · Post by **Mayhem** » Fri Sep 24, 2010 6:05 am

Welcome

If you want all the games as well, then I would recommend grabbing the Gamebase20 archive, even if you are not going to use it via the frontend. You have this slightly less curmudgeonly 36 year old here to thank for organising that heh

Care to list what tapes you have? You might have something needed for the archive, you never know...!

Geoffb · Post by **Geoffb** » Fri Sep 24, 2010 3:02 pm

Thanks for the replies chaps. I have seen the sticky thread but have yet to try any of the software listed, maybe I should.

In reply to the query of what tapes, I'm afraid I have very few bought ones, Jetpac, Amok, Invaders, Asteroids, the original tape supplied with the Vic.

The thing was that I was hooked on writing in Commodore Basic quite quickly, as I had spent a small amount of time in my school computer room (remember when the computer had a room all to itself!) with Commodore Pet's. This meant that I was constantly trying to write games, programmes music synthesiser's etc. on my Vic 20 but all in Basic. I should have delved into machine code!!!

I always thought it was a fairly unique and probably useless thing to learn Commodore Basic but imagine my surprise and pleasure when 20 years later, I began to learn Microsoft Excel formulas and subroutines? The logic if not the language is identical and I became known at work for using Excel to solve all sorts of problems.

I attribute it all to my years of writing Vic programs!

nbla000 · Post by **nbla000** » Mon Sep 27, 2010 10:19 am

About Mega-Cart, I wish to specify that since it is also a Memory Expander you can use it jointly with uIEC or any other sd2iec based drive to easily load any Vic-20 program for any Vic-20 memory configuration by using his integrated FileBrowser.

...and about "expensive" you must consider that you don't need to assemble it, just plug and play.

RobertBe · Post by **RobertBe** » Mon Sep 27, 2010 11:13 am

Bacon wrote:However, the easiest and most affordable way today would probably be to buy a uIEC from Jim Brain. It's a device that lets you use a modern day SD card as a huge disk drive connected to the VIC 20.

Or its cousin, the SD2IEC, found at

http://www.nkcelectronics.com/commodore.html

Truly,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://videocam.net.au/fcug

English Invader · Post by **English Invader** » Mon Sep 27, 2010 2:09 pm

Basically, all you need is a uIEC/SD and a Mega-Cart and you're pretty much set. The rest is for either die-hard collectors or technical boffins.

tokra · Post by **tokra** » Mon Sep 27, 2010 3:26 pm

I went with the SD2IEC first, because I wanted to copy from tape to it and from the look of it on JBrain's site the uIEC blocks the tape port. Imagine my surprise when I finally bought an uIEC to find it has a different tape connector that passes through the tape port itself, so a tape can still be connected to it. JBrain should update his site, because I can imagine other people making the same decision... Now if only the device was in a neat case, but it looks like only the V2 of C64SD provides that - alas this one has no tape port through again...

Vic20-Ian · Post by **Vic20-Ian** » Sat Oct 02, 2010 5:27 am

I have an SD2IEC and a Megacart which has standard ram packs and all the cartridge images on it.

Final expansion 3 once built is a configurable ram cartridge taking your Vic up to 512KB accessible memory.

I prefer my FE3 as it features standard ram pack modes, built in real time clock and SD card storage as well as a flash rom to load your own games and cartridges.

You can program so the basic scripting for disk menus in FE3 is easy.

If you need help with the German or the building let me know by PM as I have built 4 for folks on here.

It comes down to a choice of tinkering or plug and play less configurable.