#educator 64

A plethora of Commodore computers

Commodorians Part 2

This was one of the three mega exhibits for the 40th anniversary of the big three appliance computers launched in 1977.   Anthony Becker, Jeffrey Brace, Chris Fala, Todd George (captain), & Bill Winters combined their skills, collection, and love for Commodore equipment to showcase the PET-2001′s family tree.

Commodore’s PET/CBM series wasn’t exactly geared towards computer users on a budget, nor did any of them have color graphics modes, or a wide variety of games.  Then in 1980, the VIC-1001 was released in Japan in an attempt to corner their home computer market before anyone else.  However, it didn’t take too well to the Japanese market, and Commodore never succeeded there.

However, the American version known as the VIC-20 was wildly successful.  In 1981, a VIC-20 could be purchased for under $300 which was incredibly inexpensive for a color home computer.  The downside was that the VIC-20 only had a 22 column display, and 5K of RAM, of which only 3583 bytes were available to the user. 

The VIC-20 was the first computer to break a million units sold.  In true Commodore fashion, they saved money wherever possible by changing the design to decrease production costs, resulting in three main variations.

Early models that lacked RF shielding around the VIC-I graphics chip and a massive heat sink

Models with RF shielding and a massive heat sink

Late, cost-reduced models with denser RAM chips, improved power regulation, no massive heat sinks, and smaller motherboards

The VIC-20 introduced the serial IEEE-488 bus designed to replace the older parallel version, so as to save money on disk and printer interfaces.  The first disk drive to use this interface was the short-lived VIC-1540 drive.  Due to the way serial was implemented, the 1540 only works with the VIC-20.  It was replaced with the VIC-1541, which was later branded the 1541 and continued to be used with the majority of the Commodore 8-bit line.  Because of its short production run and lack of general compatibility, the VIC-1540 has become somewhat of a collectors item.  This one was on loan to the team, and its functional status was unknown. 

Most software distributed for the VIC-20 came on cassette tape, as well as on ROM cartridges that plugged into the back of the machine.