In what year did you get your first VIC-20?

eslapion · Post by **eslapion** » Mon Oct 24, 2011 2:20 am

I got my own VIC on november 25th 1983, just a month before christmas.

I even posted a message about here on november 25th 2008 (25th anniversary).

Just a month after getting my VIC, I got an 8k expansion as a christmas gift.

However, my aunt purchased a VIC-20 in late 1981 for her 2 daughters and I had been using it every now and then since. My 2 cousins, used their VIC almost exclusively to play Voodoo Castle. They never finished it.

ral-clan · Post by **ral-clan** » Mon Oct 24, 2011 5:50 am

Spectrum wrote:I was just a stupid 14 yo. I thought that, if my Vic was broken, my dad would surely have done his best to buy me a new computer.
So I willingly damaged my Vic and then I played the role of the desperate child who lost his best friend.

Wow! What a story! What exactly did you do to break your VIC-20?!

At least you felt remorse! Ha ha!

Spectrum · Post by **Spectrum** » Mon Oct 24, 2011 6:00 am

ral-clan wrote:Wow! What a story! What exactly did you do to break your VIC-20?!

At least you felt remorse! Ha ha!

Yes, I felt remorse...

I opened the Vic and I damaged the motherboard. What a fool.
But I now keep my Vic as a treasure. Moreover, I think I will soon buy another! Karma could suddenly surprise me killing my Vic!!!

orion70 · Post by **orion70** » Mon Oct 24, 2011 6:22 am

Wow! This is an interesting story... Your first punishment was to feel guilty for your behaviour, and the second to was to be a spectrumist

.

Spectrum · Post by **Spectrum** » Mon Oct 24, 2011 6:47 am

orion70 wrote:Wow! This is an interesting story... Your first punishment was to feel guilty for your behaviour, and the second to was to be a spectrumist .

The fault was ALL of the C64 that charmed me with its multicolour and amazing sound!!!

So, I bought a Spectrum, with limited colours and with a beeper sound!

I'm very fond of my Speccy.

orion70 · Post by **orion70** » Mon Oct 24, 2011 7:45 am

I'm joking, of course: the Spectrum world was quite fascinating also for us 'on the other side of the barricades'. I can see there's still a strong following of Speccy retrocomputerists in the internet, notably from the UK.
I've been to England several times, and it seems that the computer of the Eighties par excellence was the Spectrum 48K there (some also mention the Beeb, but 80% is Speccy).

Mayhem · Post by **Mayhem** » Mon Oct 24, 2011 11:28 am

Don't be fooled, there are a LOT of C64 enthusiasts in the UK. Just that the Speccy peeps shout louder because it was the origin of the machine, and one of the few places it sold more heh...

Spectrum · Post by **Spectrum** » Tue Oct 25, 2011 1:14 am

orion70 wrote:I'm joking, of course: the Spectrum world was quite fascinating also for us 'on the other side of the barricades'. I can see there's still a strong following of Speccy retrocomputerists in the internet, notably from the UK.
I've been to England several times, and it seems that the computer of the Eighties par excellence was the Spectrum 48K there (some also mention the Beeb, but 80% is Speccy).

OT: Orion, I'm joking as well, of course. I was used to play with the C64 with friends and it was really impressive. I remember that I even recorded the "Nemesis the Warlock" theme to listen it while playing with the Speccy version...

meldrew · Post by **meldrew** » Sun Oct 30, 2011 9:39 am

Well I'm retired now and I bought Vic for the children as they were starting second school. The youngest is now 38 so it was a good few years ago.
I only discoverd the vic again because I am moving house and clearing the loft. There it was in its box with all the bits, so I thought I would see if it works! Presumably I put it away working. Anyway, I've put it all together, the datacassette and 16k ram pack, hooked it up to the tv and guess what... no display. It's a LCD tv and I've done a channel search but no synch. Cassette player drives the games tapes but I can't tell if it's working or not. Hey Ho. Anybody local to me want to collect it?

Peter

FD22 · Post by **FD22** » Sun Oct 30, 2011 4:58 pm

Christmas 1981. I'd been cycle-stealing on the Commodore PETs at school for a year, and showing a mate how to write code on his ZX81 for a few months, and begging the parents for a machine of my own for most of that year. Early in December I was taken to the local computer shop, and discussions commenced.

After much comparison and cross-checking, it came down to either the TI99/4a or the VIC-20. The TI machine had 16K, a pretty powerful BASIC, cartridge expansion, and a powerful CPU (though with a quirky memory map). The VIC had 5K (well, 3.5 usable for BASIC as we know), a dedicated cassette interface, lots of software, and a nice keyboard.

I went with what I knew - the PETs at school had shown me what a decent keyboard and rock-solid cassette interface meant in terms of usability. I got the C2N and the 8K expander cart as part of the deal (somewhere in the region of £250 which was a fair whack in those days) and a couple of games on tape (Martian Raider and Frogger) and away it went until December 25th.

Over the next three years I added a 4-slot 16K motherboard, BUTI cart, speech synth, FORTH, Programmers Aid, MCM, and a bunch of home built stuff including a composite video adapter, twin tape driver, and an RS232 link to the business machine my folks used (a NewBrain AD). I finally handed the whole lot over to my little bro in late '84 when I started using BBC machines at college, and never saw it again.

Fast forward almost 30 years, and I now have two VICs in the collection, together with the 'proper' original C2N cassette unit and something I never had first time around - a floppy drive unit. Some of the hardware I had back then is now either ultra rare (anyone else ever seen a BUTI+ cart?) or just non-existent (the Stack 4-slot cart with switchable memory on-board) but it's still nice just to fire-up the old breadbox and see 3583 Bytes Free...

Spectrum · Post by **Spectrum** » Mon Oct 31, 2011 2:00 am

FD22 wrote:...but it's still nice just to fire-up the old breadbox and see 3583 Bytes Free...

Oh, you are so right!!! I can recall so many sweet memories just seeing that cyan bordered screen...

OT: By the way, what's a BUTI+ cart?

TLovskog · Post by **TLovskog** » Mon Oct 31, 2011 2:37 am

Bought my first VIC-20 in 1983. I bought it with the Super Expander and a tape drive. I skipped the usual "moped" (a very light 30km/h kind of motorcycle) which all boys at the time bought and drove, and spent all my money on the computer.

Up till then I had played in a neighbors garage with his 2 PET 2001. One of them had a twin disk drive and fully expanded memory. To this he and I built a ADC and a DAC board and some other fun expansions.

I had it for a quite long time, until it was replaced with a C128D.

Now I have 3 of them again.

16KVIC20 · Post by **16KVIC20** » Mon Oct 31, 2011 2:50 am

Spectrum wrote:Oh, you are so right!!! I can recall so many sweet memories just seeing that cyan bordered screen...

It represented the beginning of amazing things.

orion70 · Post by **orion70** » Mon Oct 31, 2011 2:59 am

16KVIC20 wrote:
Spectrum wrote:Oh, you are so right!!! I can recall so many sweet memories just seeing that cyan bordered screen...
It represented the beginning of amazing things.

...and now we're only old lads trying to revive those feelings...

Spectrum · Post by **Spectrum** » Mon Oct 31, 2011 3:35 am

orion70 wrote:
16KVIC20 wrote:
Spectrum wrote:Oh, you are so right!!! I can recall so many sweet memories just seeing that cyan bordered screen...
It represented the beginning of amazing things.
...and now we're only old lads trying to revive those feelings...

Interesting.
Your post made me think about that.
I am trying to "revive" the old days?
I've to say that I am not a nostalgic. I don't want to "goes back" to those days. I am happy as I am: an almost 40 yo guy.
But I like to remember the times when I was a boy. It's hard for me to express what I feel in english, but I think all of us on Denial have similar feelings, so we can understand each other.
There's something more: I am happy...or even proud, that I am one of the witnesses of that time.
My niece is 3 yo. I can't even imagine what kind of games or computers she will enjoy in her future. But one day, I will be happy to show her the "old Vic" letting her see what kind of games we played. It will be surely funny for her. Even ridicolous, perhaps.
But I've to say that there are B/W films that can still makes me laugh, or moves me. I was not even born when many of those films were realized. Nevertheless, watching them I can understand how the world or Italy was at that time...and I can still appreciate the stories and comedies.
Today we are familiar with computer graphics in making movies, but we can also still enjoy the old movies. I think it can be the same with retrocomputers. To play on an emulator is good... but to do it with the real thing is a far cry from.