Denial

Hi all,

Back in the day, I would treat my VIC-20 fairly roughly with little regard for wearing things out on it.

Nowadays, my VIC-20 is even more precious to me as it is pretty much an antique.

I don't like the idea of having to "hard" reboot it when a game image freezes up.

Is there a better way?

There are reset lines on all of the ports I think (except for the joystick port probably). Look up the pinouts (available in the vic-20 user's manual), make your choice, and build something. I have a home made reset button for the serial port that I put in the free port on the disk drive.

Boray wrote:There are reset lines on all of the ports I think (except for the joystick port probably). Look up the pinouts (available in the vic-20 user's manual), make your choice, and build something. I have a home made reset button for the serial port that I put in the free port on the disk drive.

That is a cool idea! By "reset" are we talking about grounding two pins together essentially?

Yep, connecting the reset pin with hmm... is it GND or +5??? Someone else has to answer that.

Boray wrote:Yep, connecting the reset pin with hmm... is it GND or +5??? Someone else has to answer that.

Definitely GND!

I've read other posts where people have used paper clips, coat hangers and bits of wire to short the RESET line to Ground in the cartridge port or user port. Gives me chills every time I see that.

... just what do you think a switch does?

Add that to the thread of "adding another thing to VIC" -- it should have came with a "friendly" reset switch. Or a handy paper clip!

A "switch" is not a paper clip or coat hanger.

Back in the day, I installed many such reset switches into VICs and C64s for friends, I also saw the results of accidentally connecting the "paper clip" to the wrong pins. With chips getting harder and harder to find these days, I would not recommend the paper clip method at all.

All this talk about paper clips and hangers is making me very nervous!

Jeff-20 wrote:All this talk about paper clips and hangers is making me very nervous!

Indeed!

I've seen reset switches available for sale online recently; can't think where though.

Two versions were on offer. 1 goes in the disk drive din socket. The other goes in the user port, that one does C64 as well. For me, the VIC 20 is mostly taken care of with the mega cart, but I may get a reset switch at some point.

At least the VIC had a switch, the ZX Spectrum had nothing, you just pull the power cord out. I fitted a torpedo switch to mine.

Heh-heh, I used to walk 2-miles to school, in the snow, uphill, both ways... when you're 16 (in 1982) and there were no retail cartridge expander boards (until '84, and the one I got only had a fuse, no reset switch), you used a paper clip, carefully, or have to re-type your ML hacking, perhaps hours of work, all over again. And like the game, Operation!, you were careful to not touch the sides.

In 2012, if you're using a "switch" (or a paper clip), then you have bigger issues. There are these softkeys <ALT>F9 and <ALT>F12 to soft/hard reset your VIC emulator.

Get real.

On some tape drives, there is an extra all metal ground cable hanging lose. I remember a guy taking that cable and dragging it over the user port until his c64 was reset.

I would have loved seeing THAT.

Boray wrote:On some tape drives, there is an extra all metal ground cable hanging lose. I remember a guy taking that cable and dragging it over the user port until his c64 was reset.

Yes, that's what I used too! Not that I dragged it over all pins of the user port, but I just hit the reset pin with the cable from the tape drive. no paper clips involved

Using the serial port of the FDD leads to reset all devices on the bus, doesn't it? That can be an advantage as well as a disadvantage.

Using the user port has the above mentioned problem, that the user port is blocked.

Simple solution: Use the user port, but not at the connector, but directly on the board. Drill a small hole into the top cover and put a small key button in.