ral-clan wrote:It would also have been nice if there had been a 40 column mode.
The standard screen size of 22 columns by 23 rows is one thing. But the VIC-I is flexible enough to provide a 40 column text mode hosted in a bitmap, with fairly readable characters. This display option is available either as full-fledged screen editor with support for BASIC I/O with tools like FAT-40, Super-Screen or PET Emulator. Or - undeniably faster, but more suited as programming API - with a library like it's used in MG Browse, two instances of the Bible Series or several instruction texts included with the disk images of my programs. Or in VIN (the file browser, and GUI tool written by Kananga), etc.tonyrocks wrote:Only wish it had 40 columns
Here's an example (a quote from an interview in Commodore Free #38), where the text explicitly refers to a soft 40-column text mode:
If for some reason these means of putting 40 text columns to display are thought of not being acceptable, fine. Commodore *did* something about that. With the VIC-II in the C64, which was on the market just one year later.
OTOH, the tools I mentioned already had been available at that time, or in case of the MG text library have also been around for quite some time now. Yet people still complain about (IMO only so perceived) deficiencies of the VIC-I as if they were rather ignorant about what actually is possible with the video hardware.
The VIC-20 *is* the VIC-I. With a 6502 CPU, some RAM and ROM, and I/O chips (and some TTL glue logic) arranged around it.