Vic-20 vs Plus/4 (and C64 vs Plus/4)

[Boray]

I wrote these comparisons between the Plus/4 and the Vic-20 and C64 a few months ago. I have now translated them from Swedish into English. Here you go:

English:
Plus/4 vs Vic-20: http://www.boray.se/commodore/plus4-vic20-eng.pdf
Plus/4 vs C64: http://www.boray.se/commodore/plus4-c64-eng.pdf

Swedish:
Plus/4 vs Vic-20: http://www.boray.se/commodore/plus4-vic20.pdf
Plus/4 vs C64: http://www.boray.se/commodore/plus4-c64.pdf

[joshuadenmark]

Thanks, great comparisons

[orion70]

Plus/4 is an overall winner - makes me want to pull it from dust and give it a go
As for the number of games though, 5.000 seems a bit overestimated, as a lot of them in plus4world are doubles in different languages (pirated copies etc.), and most are low-quality 16k programs anyway. I'd suggest for the Plus/4 beginner to try the top 10 from that site first. Also, some utilities are very well done, and surpass the C64 ones in many ways (see SVS-calc for example).

[norm8332]

And for people in areas with NTSC there are even fewer "good" games because most are PAL.

[Boray]

Orion: ...but that probably goes for the 2.300 Vic-20 games as well. A lot of early 80's homebrew unexpanded basic games in there

[orion70]

Sad but true

[joshuadenmark]

The Plus/4 is the most beautiful Commodore ever - I just love the design!

[orion70]

Looks like the perfect design for Commander Koenig in fact

[J.E.E.K.]

I wrote these comparisons between the Plus/4 and the Vic-20 and C64 a few months ago. I have now translated them from Swedish into English. Here you go:

English:
Plus/4 vs Vic-20: http://www.boray.se/commodore/plus4-vic20-eng.pdf
Plus/4 vs C64: http://www.boray.se/commodore/plus4-c64-eng.pdf

Just want to add something which might be worth to mention too (for both):
When it comes to Basic, the Plus/4 has 60K of free memory while the C64 basic only can use 38K.
Not only the memory, but also the memory management has changed in several ways. Not only that banked access method uses RAM which is covered by ROM (leading to the above statement), but also for strings: The garbage collector has a linear run-time behavior (in opposite to the quadratic algorithm of BASIC V2 found in the VIC 20 and C64) where string oriented programs won't suffer anymore.

[Victragic]

I owned a Vic, Plus/4 and then C64 back in the mid 80s. My favourite by far was the Plus/4.

The display actually looked decent out of the box on a PAL screen - far fewer interference lines and smaller borders than the other two.

Little things like a reset button, built in machine code monitor and native disk commands were nice features.

I loathed that it was orphaned by Commodore from almost the day it was built - and I got burned by some terrible C16 ports of games from other systems, leading me to eventually buy a second-hand C64 purely for games.

We bought the script/plus cart and a printer, and used it for word processing. I also recall typing in a database program designed for the C128 and used that for several things.

Sadly my current plus/4 doesn't work, and that highlights one of the main problems with the line - they were just not built to last.

[English Invader]

Not sure what you mean by the C64 and the VIC having a "real" reset button. I have one in the user port and there are some C64 games where the system can't be reset properly without turning the power off (Mayhem in Monsterland, for instance). The Mega-Cart reset button with the VIC is very effective, though.

Would an internal one connected directly to the motherboard be any better?

[Mike]

Not sure what you mean by the C64 and the VIC having a "real" reset button.

I presume you meant '... not having a "real" reset button'?

I have one in the user port and there are some C64 games where the system can't be reset properly without turning the power off (Mayhem in Monsterland, for instance).

The standard user port reset buttons deliver a somewhat unclean reset "pulse" due to key bounce. But they work quite as well, as long as a program/game doesn't put a cartridge autostart signature into RAM at $8000 (C64) or $A000 (VIC-20), which can easily be used to prevent the average 'nosy' user to reset the computer and then take a peek at the game code.

The Mega-Cart reset button with the VIC is very effective, though.

That comes because the Mega-Cart firmware maps its own firmware (with cartridge signature) into the BLK5 area upon that reset. This effectively disables any other (softloaded) cartridge autostart header and ensures the Mega-Cart menu starts up as intended. That reset button also features a little bit of extra circuitry to provide a cleaner reset pulse, but it's the map-in feature that does 99% of the work.

The map-in feature however wouldn't work as intended with an external reset - because external reset buttons don't provide the signal necessary for the ROM bank latch to re-init it to map in the Mega-Cart firmware. It's explicitly stated in the Mega-Cart manual, that only the reset button of the Mega-Cart should be used.

Would an internal one connected directly to the motherboard be any better?

See above answer.

[Doppleganger]

The keyboard cable on the VIC is FAR superior to the Plus/4, though...