A new vic (owner) is born!!!

[Ivanhoe76]

At last, after a long search, yesterday afternoon i've found a flaming vic 20... and I've made it mine!!! Yes guys, I got it, in the end...It was set upon a desk in an electronic market near home by a middle aged man selling old non-electronic things. He was so happy to give it away that I thought it could be a non-working one... but when i tried it at home, with great joy, it worked ...and very well, indeed!! With it the seller gave me three carts (pirate's cove, avenger and the sky is falling), a joystick and a c2n cassette reader/recorder... all for just 25 €!!! I'm shocked of what real vic can do, in particular after listening "real" sound (guys, I couldn't believe but it's much better than the one produced by emulators!!!) and viewing the glorious and colorful graphics of the real machine!!! And now I'm looking for memory expansion and a floppy disk... Can anybody help me?

[Wonder-Boy]

Good find! The real thing is so much better than the emulators

[Jeff-20]

I never imagined a Denial member would use emulator only. I thought everyone had a real VIC 20.

Congratulations! How are the VIC 20s of Italy different from other regions?

[Ivanhoe76]

I personally owned a real vic in the early 80's, when I was just a kid. With it I played a lot (until 1989, when my father bought me a C64), learned Basic language, wrote a pair of games (a dice game and a high-noon style game for two players) but never had a chance for learning ML (my parents didn't want to "waste" money buying some unuseful assembler/disassembler cart neither manual for 6502 ML), my final aim.... unluckily my beloved vic went out of order and was sent to dump... When I discovered this AWESOME forum, my passion "grew up" again, even if never disappeared, and I started to look out for all the things I owned in the past: a real vic with standard device (cassette recorder), a memory expansion and, if i can find it, a floppy disk... Anyway, it was a real emotion to see a real vic working, like meeting someone you haven't seen for years! What can I say? I'm really in love!(let's hope my girlfriend won't read this!!!!)

[carlsson]

Congrats! I thought you had become a father, and donated a VIC-20 to your newborn child. A bit like the Three Kings. I suppose gold is always gold, so the question is which of frankincense or myrrh one would exchange for a second-hand VIC-20. From what I gather, both are used for similar purposes, a bit like putting a VIC and a 1541 side by side.

[nbla000]

Hi Emanuel,
Have you bought the Italian Vic book "Alla Scoperta del Vic" ?
It is a good start point for your new vic game....

To play a game on real hardware is very nice, yes Vice is convenient but for best experience real hardware is better.

For example, i may play all MegaCart games on Vice but is not same when you use the MegaCart on you real Vic....
Last week-end i had a PONG tournament with my friends using my PONG Vic conversion from the MegaCart on my Hyper-Real Vic-20 (Paddles not supported yet on Vice )

[ral-clan]

Congratulations! How are the VIC 20s of Italy different from other regions?

Is it true that a lot of Italian VIC owners had the VC-20 model (German name)?

[orion70]

Being the northern part of Italy not too far away from Germany, one would say it was easier to buy a VC20... But as far as I remember, no German Commodore computers were available here in the 80s.

Commodore Italia was located near Milan (Cinisello Balsamo) and I remember it went strong in sales and advertising campaigns, but it had no production units.

Year after year, Commodore Italia opened up several assistance and distribution points all over Italy; they were present in every computer magazine with a lot of different ads.

The VICs sold here were mostly made in Hong Kong (at least mine was), but boxes, manuals and instructions were written in Italian and (c) of Commodore Italia - so I guess they were printed in Milan.
The box was the longer version (not the American / Canadian "compact" box), with the same layout of the one sold in England.

I had the first visual impact with a Volks Computer recently, through Ebay.
I don't think VC was a good name for Italy, as it is pronounced "vee tcee", meaning "water closet". This would have helped the VIC's detractors.

[nbla000]

But as far as I remember, no German Commodore computers were available here in the 80s.

I confirm, early units were with brown function keys and later with gray function keys but all with Vic-20 name not VC-20.

[carlsson]

For that matter, was VC-20 sold in Austria, German speaking parts of Switzerland, Luxembourg and so on?

[Ivanhoe76]

Yes nbla000, I finnally bought the amazing vic book "Alla scoperta del Vic 20"... It's a real mine of informations and it spaces from deep basic programming to ML introduction... I think it's really useful and I can't wait to use it for trying to create some stuff on my new vic (for now i only tested it becouse I'm messing up with my wedding organization... the day is coming near... )... Anyway, my vic has gray function key and the colorful vic mark... I think it's a new italian one (my old one had brown function key)... Anyway the keyboard is in really good condition (my old one had the space bar nearly out of order !!)...

[RobertK]

For that matter, was VC-20 sold in Austria, German speaking parts of Switzerland, Luxembourg and so on?

All I can confirm to you is that it was also sold in Austria under the name VC-20. I didn't know about the name VIC-20 until the mid-90s when I read about it on the internet.

BTW, in the 80s I wondered why on earth they gave this wonderful little computer the name "Volkscomputer", since I rather associated it with Volksempfänger (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksempf%C3%A4nger) than with Volkswagen...

[ral-clan]

I wonder why Italy got VIC-20s all the way from Japan when they were being manufactured in Germany? I'm sure the West German factory could have just used the full "VIC" label for export to Italy.

I suppose it was the same in Canada. Half of my VIC-20s say MADE IN CANADA (i think the earlier brass sticker ones) while the other half say MADE IN USA (the rainbow sticker ones). I think I have one very early pet-style keyboard one that is MADE IN JAPAN (made in 07/81).

[eslapion]

...I suppose it was the same in Canada. Half of my VIC-20s say MADE IN CANADA (i think the earlier brass sticker ones) while the other half say MADE IN USA (the rainbow sticker ones). I think I have one very early pet-style keyboard one that is MADE IN JAPAN (made in 07/81).

In reality, all early PET style VICs that were made in Japan have the same hardware as the VIC-1001. Only the firmware and the codes printed on the keyboards were different.

When the demand for NTSC VICs exceeded what could be made in Japan, production began in north america. That was around late 1981.

By late 1982, the production of VIC-20s was around 9000 per day worldwide.

From wikipedia:
"Engineering team led by Yash Terakura created VIC-1001 for Japanese market."

So the VIC-20 is really a VIC-1001, adapted and modified for the rest of the world... and the NTSC version existed before the PAL version.

[wiskow]

With it the seller gave me three carts (pirate's cove, avenger and the sky is falling), a joystick and a c2n cassette reader/recorder... all for just 25 €!!!

If you have The Sky is Falling, you'll also want to get yourself a set of paddles to play it with...

-Andrew