VIC 20 Hardware Prototype

[Jeff-20]

I don't know if I am missing a thread, but have we ever discussed the VIC 20 prototype discovered by John Feagan?


https://armchairarcade.com/perspectives ... prototype/

[orion70]

Great stuff! First time I see it. I wonder how much money would it go for if it was auctioned in eBay

[Vic20-Ian]

That looks really cool, nice styling.

Is there more information, photos, pcb pictures?

[Jeff-20]

via the link below the pic...

...History of the Vic-20 development has been rewritten by the non-participants–but I have the pictures. Here is the real deal developed at the Commodore Advanced Moorepark development center in San Jose, CA in July 1980. It took another year of production engineering and a launch in Japan before it made it to the US. My wife translated the users manual to English from Japanese."

I guess he only has pictures of it. Quite smaller without the "natural keyboard"

...Interestingly, having a full stroke keyboard on a low end/budget computer like the Vic-20 was actually something of a coup for Commodore, as most such releases from other companies featured lower cost chiclet or membrane-style keyboard parts ...

I like the little number pad.

[Vic20-Ian]

I would be interested in a replica as people do for Apple I etc.

I am interested to know what form the PCB was.

[Wilson]

I thought I heard about this prototype here, so I feel like it must've been discussed at some point. There's some more information about it here https://www.floodgap.com/retrobits/ckb/secret/toi.html. It was, apparently just a hacked together KIM-1 memory board, CPU, and VIC chip, so there probably was no mainboard PCB. I think it looks really cute. The PET keyboard and tiny little case look great. It's like a really, really sturdy ZX-81.

[Mike]

I thought I heard about this prototype here, so I feel like it must've been discussed at some point.

Indeed it was, in 2014: http://sleepingelephant.com/ipw-web/bul ... php?t=7222.

...

[cbmeeks]

Attention: I will gladly donate my left kidney for that prototype.


LOL

[lance.ewing]

I have the Kindle version of Brian Bagnall's book "Commodore: A Company on the Edge". That image of the prototype appears in that book, near where it talks about the prototype built by Bob Yannes. Amazon says the Kindle version was published in Feb 2012. Not sure if it was in the earlier edition of the book.

[ka20]

Something is not right in this picture. There are two cables coming out of the computer, one for the datasette, and the other is apparently a video cable running to the television. So how is this machine powered? There is no power cable anywhere, and yet the computer is supposedly producing the image on the screen. I think this is a fake or a non-working prop that someone at Commodore made for display purposes.

[highinfidelity]

Great stuff! First time I see it. I wonder how much money would it go for if it was auctioned in eBay

Considered that you were the opener of the 2014 thread, it's comforting to see that you also tend to "re-discover" things, old fellow!

[orion70]

OLD fellow is the key word. Fifties are coming

[lance.ewing]

Something is not right in this picture. There are two cables coming out of the computer, one for the datasette, and the other is apparently a video cable running to the television. So how is this machine powered? There is no power cable anywhere, and yet the computer is supposedly producing the image on the screen. I think this is a fake or a non-working prop that someone at Commodore made for display purposes.

Hmmm, that's a good point. After you mentioned this, I did wonder whether maybe the one cable has both video in one direction and power in the other, but that might be stretching things a bit. The cable does seem quite thin.

I spent a minute or two studying the image on the TV and it seems that it was probably the standard rows versus columns of a VIC chip. If power isn't connected to the prototype, then where do we think the image on the TV is coming from? I agree that its possible there is a bit of smoke and mirrors going on, but I can't think why they'd bother to fake it if they had the real thing to take a photo of. There are some other cables on the right hand side of the image. Maybe they had the real thing set up over there, just outside the photo. Perhaps it was outside its case, or perhaps it didn't fit in that case at the time the photo was taken. Maybe that keyboard unit was just the keyboard (it is quite small after all), and the machine was outside the picture to the right.

[highinfidelity]

Well... was it supposed to be a fully fledged working prototype? Or just a "prototype"? You can mean basically everything with "prototype"...

[darkatx]

After looking at it - I suspect that Mike hit the nail on the head (in the original thread) and the keyboard is literally just that with hookup for the Datasette. The cord leads to the rest of the machine tucked away.
Hate to think that thing is running on batteries or has the power cord fed through a hole in the table with the connector being on the bottom of the keyboard.