Denial

Here is my VIC-20 Special Edition. It's painted black with a neon blue power LED. This is my first paintjob ever, so I don't think it came out too bad

Lemon64 thread: http://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=24838

Finished product:





Old pics of the non-finished:

http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/5956/2 ... 157ej3.jpg
http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/8982/2 ... 156bb2.jpg
http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/7140/2 ... 151py6.jpg

Nice! That looks like a really good paint job! What about the spot on the center of your painted vic?

The bottom white VIC has strange number keys.

Jeff-20 wrote:Nice! That looks like a really good paint job! What about the spot on the center of your painted vic?

The bottom white VIC has strange number keys.

Thanks!
Yeah there is a big hole in the case of the painted VIC. Don't ask me why, I got it like that from the previous owner.

Nice touch with the blue led!

Nice paint!

How about a flashing led, or maybe that would be just annoying?

or an LED that changes colors? Maybe changing to certain conditions (a different color for when the tape is reading, or disk drive in use)?

GeekTV could have a new show called Pimp My VIC!

Lovely!

This is how the VIC20 should have been marketed in the first place. Notice how so many home electronics today are black - white would look cheap. The keys as well should have been black instead of a deep brown.

pitcalco wrote:Lovely!

This is how the VIC20 should have been marketed in the first place. Notice how so many home electronics today are black - white would look cheap. The keys as well should have been black instead of a deep brown.

Well, white hasn't hurt sales of the iPod....and the Timex Sinclair was black and didn't do all that well. I agree with you though black looks nice.

I do love my white VIC though. Kind of like a home version of the PET (which I assume is what Commodore was trying to do).

pitcalco wrote:Lovely!

This is how the VIC20 should have been marketed in the first place. Notice how so many home electronics today are black - white would look cheap. The keys as well should have been black instead of a deep brown.

The black Commodores were the worst failures; starting with the Commodore 16 on up. On the other hand, putting the C64 into a white case extended the life of the C64 considerably.

Still, I think the key is to color co-ordinate everything; the Vic matched the PET's Datasette drives, and the C64 looked great with a co-ordinated monitor and disk drive.

DigitalQuirk wrote:Still, I think the key is to color co-ordinate everything; the Vic matched the PET's Datasette drives, and the C64 looked great with a co-ordinated monitor and disk drive.

Actually, the official PET datasette was black.

pitcalco wrote:Lovely!

This is how the VIC20 should have been marketed in the first place. Notice how so many home electronics today are black - white would look cheap. The keys as well should have been black instead of a deep brown.

The NeXT was black... didn't go very far...

Nowadays, many black cased PCs are being perceived as game machines...

Thanks to everyone who liked it

Jeff-20 wrote:or an LED that changes colors? Maybe changing to certain conditions (a different color for when the tape is reading, or disk drive in use)?

I don't think I have the skill or urge to do that. I consider myself finished with this one

I can only speak for my own preference, but I really did like the black VIC by Miika.

I don't have my own ipod, but they are nice but I would like a black one rather than a white one. Looking at my stereo set, I think it would look cheap if it were white than black.

Of course this is all idle speculation on the part of whether or not a black VIC would have sold better than the white - what has happened has happened.

I wonder if it speaks to my own psychology that I like black devices better than white. Hmm.

A black PET would have been awesome!

ral-clan wrote:the Timex Sinclair was black and didn't do all that well.

I suppose you mean the Sinclair ZX81 (known as the Timex Sinclair TS1000 in North America). It actually did extremely well in Europe, especially in its country of origin, the UK. Clive Sinclair claimed it to be the first computer to sell a million units and the jury is still out on who was right, he or Jack Tramiel, who claimed the title for the VIC 20.

It could well be argued that the ZX81 started the home computer revolution in Europe in the early 80s. Remember, we didn't have the TRS-80 over here in the late 70s, and both the Apple II and the PET (which was sold here from 1978) were far too expensive for the average person. The ZX81 and the VIC 20 were released more or less simultaneously in Europe but the ZX81 was the much cheaper of the two. Take Sweden for example: you had to pay around SEK 3000 for a VIC in early 1982, a third of an average Swedish person's income for one month. And that's before taxes which were 30-40% for most people. I suspect many parents bought their kids the cheap black wedge instead.