First, I think it's time to move this thread to the "Collecting and History" section. (Jeff?)
I have to admit that it is quite painful and time consuming for me scanning the manual with my little scanner, but I can see some progess. I doubt that I'll be ready this weekend. To shorten the time waiting for manual and disk image, I like to share this wonderful "Preface" page from the manual (OCRed) from 1981, the very early VIC days. Just read, how this stuff was programmed, the dedication, the suffering
Oh, and I know, it's a bit long. I hope this is ok and y'all are enjoying it like I do. I think it's wonderful. This alone was worth the 1 € I've spent for VIGIL
Greetings,
Folko
Here it goes:
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PREFACE
This is the second version of VIGIL. The first version of VIGIL is for the PET micros and has been completed now since May of this year.
At about the same time that work was completed on the PET version of VIGIL, Commodore introduced their VIC personal computer. The VIC is one of the most economical home computers- it contains a built-in BASIC interpreter, sound and color capabilities, expansion ports for cassette, floppy disk and telecomunications and memory upgrades. We believe that the VIC has a great deal of potential as a games computer.
If past experience is any indication, it will be about a year until any quantity of quality software is available for the VIC. We are trying to shorten that time span by making available VIC VIGIL. VIC VIGIL is not just a remake of the PET version. Rather. author Roy Wainwright has completely rewritten the package to take advantage of the color and sound which distinguishes the VIC from the PET. You may be wondering how he developed such a fantastic package on the VIC. Well, he cheated a little. The development was done on his old trustworthy PET. How is this for a development system?
* 8K OLD ROM PET
* Built-in cassette drive for mass Storage
* Second cassette drive
* Dot matrix printer
* 6502 assembler written in BASIC
He assembled the VIGIL interpreter for the VIC on his PET, ard then downloaded it to his VIC. The VIGIL interpreter consists of more than 2000 assembler statements. His assembler being written in BASIC, takes more than 5 hours to complete the assembly. And Roy has assembled the VIGIL interpreter hundreds of times. How is that for dedication? He told me that he doesn't mind the long assembly times except when his cassette drive starts acting up - forcing him to start all over again. He does admit hwwer, that his wife has sometimes been delegated to oversee some of these long assemblies. So we must graciously thank Mrs. Wainwright too.
The vast array of VIGIL comnands provide the means to create interactive programs for the VIC. But the real power of VIGIL is the ease with which these games and graphics applications can be developed, and the perfornance advantages that the language offers over BASIC.
VIGIL represents a genuinely new and useful language VIC User. We hope that you agree with our evaluation that Roy has a winner with his VIGIL. My thanks again to Roy for his diligence (he also said he had some fun) and to the rest of his family for the long hours that they may have missed Roy. We would also like to thank MIKE SAUVE of Micro Technical Services for adding memory to several of our VICs.
Arnie Lee
October 3, 1981
Grand Rapids, MI.