# What did the Commodore Vic 20 (or contemporaries) do? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 5, 2011, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-the-commodore-vic-20-or-contemporaries-do/577326 "2011-04-05T22:49:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![johnpost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f17d59/32.png) [@johnpost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/johnpost)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2011, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-the-commodore-vic-20-or-contemporaries-do/577326/141 "2011-04-10T17:45:53Z")
the Apple had analog game controllers so you could do similar. Atari joysticks were digital. ---
**Author:** ![Heracles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heracles/32/487_2.png) [@Heracles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heracles)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2011, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-the-commodore-vic-20-or-contemporaries-do/577326/142 "2011-04-10T20:06:19Z")
> [@johnpost](#): > > the Apple had analog game controllers so you could do similar. > > Atari joysticks were digital. Well, yes, the joysticks were digital (as in: four leaf switches for directions, plus the trigger). But each Atari / Commodore joystick connector also included inputs for two paddles. So you had two analog-to-digital converters on the VIC-20, and four on the Commodore 64. There was no relay, but the “user” connector on the back gave access to [several lines](http://www.allpinouts.org/index.php/Commodore_C64_User_Port) that could be used for modem/RS232 control, parallel printer support or for explicit control of individual input/output lines (and you could attach a relay to those, of course). I think the joystick lines could also be reconfigured for output. ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2011, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-the-commodore-vic-20-or-contemporaries-do/577326/143 "2011-04-10T21:00:37Z")
I do have something to contribute to this thread! About 10 years ago, I worked for FutureHealth, a small business selling medical sensors and software. The sensors (thermistors, photoplathysmagraph, gavlanic skin response, pneumatrodes, etc) were the same regardless which system you bought. However, the PC systems were thousands of dollars. For under a grand, you could buy a full Commodore 64 system with printer and 1541 for storing patient files. Besides being cheaper, the C 64 had no known viruses, no Y2K bug problem, and several other advantages. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2011, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-the-commodore-vic-20-or-contemporaries-do/577326/144 "2011-04-10T21:36:27Z")
> [@DocCathode](#): > > no Y2K bug problem This depends more on application software than anything else. In one sense, it’s true that what little the C=64 has for an OS doesn’t care about the date, but if your application software stores dates as six digits for DD/MM/YY you might have a problem representing dates after 12/31/99. ---
**Author:** ![Cheshire\_Human](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Cheshire\_Human](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheshire_Human)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2011, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-the-commodore-vic-20-or-contemporaries-do/577326/145 "2011-04-10T23:27:03Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > And, for extra credit, in assembly (and machine hex): > > LDA #$01 (A9 01) > STA $D020 (8D 20 D0) > LDA $D020 (A9 20 D0) > STA $D021 (8D 21 D0) > RTS (60) And you could just skip the 2nd LDA, achieve the same result, and save 3 bytes plus it’s machine cycles. You never would have done well on a Sinclair ZX81, with only 1k of memory, like I had. > [@thelabdude](#): > > So how much could you cobble up with the VIC and others? You could actually control things with a Color Computer. It had 4 analog to digital converters, 2 switch readers, and a switch that could programed to switch small loads. You could connect thermistors, pressure transducers, mechanically operated potentiometers, or any resistive signal you could dream up, plus detecting switch closures. You could then program it to use the incoming data to make and break one set of contacts. I know I fooled around using it to control my furnace. I read about many other projects in Rainbow. Some people were very creative. I think one application was detecting which Pine Wood Derby car broke the light beam first. The Apple II had expansion slots for which you could build any kind of board your electronics wizardry could dream up, including every one of the applications you named. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2011, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-the-commodore-vic-20-or-contemporaries-do/577326/146 "2011-04-11T01:20:14Z")
> [@Cheshire\_Human](#): > > And you could just skip the 2nd LDA, achieve the same result, and save 3 bytes plus it’s machine cycles. Well, yeah, of course. But I was translating the exact BASIC statements to the machine language equivalents. I did actually think about whether to put the second LDA in there or not. Obviously, it’s not necessary. But neither is a POKE 53281, PEEK (53280), when a POKE 53281, 1 will do and save you a bunch of bytes in your BASIC program. So I went the literal route. If you want to save BASIC program memory, you’d do A=53280:POKEA,1:POKEA+1,1 ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2011, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-the-commodore-vic-20-or-contemporaries-do/577326/147 "2011-04-11T01:26:46Z")
Missed edit. Actually, a simple: POKE53280,1:POKE53281,1 will do even better. ---
**Author:** ![Cheshire\_Human](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Cheshire\_Human](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheshire_Human)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2011, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-the-commodore-vic-20-or-contemporaries-do/577326/148 "2011-04-11T03:28:40Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > Well, yeah, of course. But I was translating the exact BASIC statements to the machine language equivalents. I did actually think about whether to put the second LDA in there or not. Obviously, it’s not necessary. But neither is a POKE 53281, PEEK (53280), when a POKE 53281, 1 will do and save you a bunch of bytes in your BASIC program. So I went the literal route. If you want to save BASIC program memory, you’d do A=53280:POKEA,1:POKEA+1,1 I figured as much, but I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to rag on ya… 😃 ---
**Author:** ![jghyers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/35a633/32.png) [@jghyers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jghyers)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2011, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-the-commodore-vic-20-or-contemporaries-do/577326/149 "2011-09-17T13:03:39Z")
I was hoping someone could help me remember what game I used to play on my Vic 20 as a child … since it was almost 30 years ago, my memory is very vague. 😕 All I can remember is that I think it was just a text game where you entered rooms or buildings (maybe castles) & that the instructions said that you **could not win**! ☹ Does anyone remember a game like this? Thanks in advance! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Baron\_Greenback](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baron_greenback/32/48_2.png) [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2011, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-the-commodore-vic-20-or-contemporaries-do/577326/150 "2011-09-17T13:32:01Z")
> [@jghyers](#): > > Does anyone remember a game like this? One of the Scott Adams ones, maybe? I must say that the wave of nostalgia reading this thread has somewhat overwhelmed me. I was fucking ace at Omega Race though. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2011, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-the-commodore-vic-20-or-contemporaries-do/577326/151 "2011-09-17T20:25:53Z")
> [@thelabdude](#): > > See if you can contact [http://glensideccc.com/](http://glensideccc.com/) Hey go to the ChicagoCocoFest. Somebody there will know. My boys! I stopped going to the endless series of “Last” Chicago CoCoFests when I got unemployed AND realized I still had stuff in my trunk from the previous ones. One year I cleared out my CoCo stuff with a donation to the auction. Somebody got a sweet 512k CoCo3 modified to run the accompanying Sony RGB monitor, based on emails with Marty Goodman and my pretending I knew something about electronics. You never saw a better picture out of a CoCo. As for the Vic, didn’t some kid hack into the Department of Defense with one, inspiring the movie “Wargames?” ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2011, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-the-commodore-vic-20-or-contemporaries-do/577326/152 "2011-09-17T20:31:41Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > Missed edit. Actually, a simple: > POKE53280,1:POKE53281,1 > > will do even better. Y’know, it isn’t a high level language if you can’t do anything without most of the instructions being PEEKs and POKEs. Just sayin’ that it was what turned me off to the C=64, though that Linux box is looking retro-iffic. ---
**Author:** ![Jaledin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Jaledin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jaledin)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2011, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-the-commodore-vic-20-or-contemporaries-do/577326/153 "2011-09-17T20:43:32Z")
Forgot about the V-20 – thought it was another name for the C64. Wow, that brought back some memories of using cassettes to load software and writing BASIC and playing text games like those where you have to find some hidden shit in some old haunted spooky house (not racist or anti-CIA – it _was_ a spooky old house!). ---
**Author:** ![Bytegeist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9dc877/32.png) [@Bytegeist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bytegeist)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2011, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-the-commodore-vic-20-or-contemporaries-do/577326/154 "2011-09-17T21:09:55Z")
> [@dropzone](#): > > Y’know, it isn’t a high level language if you can’t do anything without most of the instructions being PEEKs and POKEs. Just sayin’ that it was what turned me off to the C=64 … That was a general affliction of most BASICs for 8-bit computers — except perhaps the IBM PC, where I don’t remember so much of it. But the Apple IIs, the Commodore machines, the TI-99/4, the Ataris, the Sinclair ZXs — they all had a lot of PEEKs and POKEs to control things (usually video features) that they ran out of space to implement with BASIC commands. ---
**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2011, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-the-commodore-vic-20-or-contemporaries-do/577326/155 "2011-09-17T21:34:19Z")
> [@Balthisar](#): > > But the Commodore came first. And they wouldn’t have millions of colors… maybe 256. It was the Amiga that finally made things almost photo-realistic with 4096 colors. Yes, but you couldn’t display all 4096 colours on the screen at once, except when using [a special and highly restrictive video mode](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_Hold-and-Modify). ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2011, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-the-commodore-vic-20-or-contemporaries-do/577326/156 "2011-09-17T21:37:35Z")
> [@Bytegeist](#): > > That was a general affliction of most BASICs for 8-bit computers — except perhaps the IBM PC, where I don’t remember so much of it. Not so much for the CoCo. Its Extended Color BASIC was pretty close to GW-BASIC on the PC. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2011, 11:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-the-commodore-vic-20-or-contemporaries-do/577326/157 "2011-09-18T11:55:27Z")
> [@Harmonious\_Discord](#): > > Watch the Doctor Who’s from the 80’s with Tom Baker to see what the Dragon computer could do for graphics. Close ups of the monitors in the Tardis where using this computer. The Dragon was the British version of the Tandy Color Computer. Say CoCo for the Tandy if you need a cutsie name. Just don’t look at [The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy TV Show](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy_%28TV_series%29)–all those graphics were done with stop animation, using what essentially amounts to a light, black paper, and colored transparency sheets. Also, to be more relevant to the the thread: my school has a color monitor that could handle 80 characters per line, and it was hooked up to our Apple//c. Unfortunately, being at school, I never learned to do much with it. The best I could do was hiding in the Library on the AppleIIe with a monochrome screen, and I was mostly interested in copying the one program everyone loved, a game called Driver, so we didn’t have to keep taking it back and forth. And, what the heck, I’ll describe the game. It was a I BASIC game, whatever that meant, and it used /|\ to draw a winding path on the screen, and a car made up of reversed spaces and reversed /. You would drive using 1, 2, and 3. It had three different difficulties that you would select at the part of the program, with each being progressively thinner. I downloaded all 2 Gigs of known Apple II software from an archive 8 years ago, but I never found this game. I one time tried to print off the source code to take it home, but, while I could get it to switch to the printer, it would switch back when it displayed source. ---
**Author:** ![Bytegeist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9dc877/32.png) [@Bytegeist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bytegeist)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2011, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-the-commodore-vic-20-or-contemporaries-do/577326/158 "2011-09-18T17:45:59Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > And, what the heck, I’ll describe the game. It was a I BASIC game, whatever that meant, … That means it was an _Integer_ BASIC program, as opposed to one in _Applesoft_ BASIC — in case you were curious. ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2011, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-the-commodore-vic-20-or-contemporaries-do/577326/159 "2011-09-18T18:31:29Z")
> [@Jaledin](#): > > Forgot about the V-20 – thought it was another name for the C64. Wow, that brought back some memories of using cassettes to load software and writing BASIC and playing text games like those where you have to find some hidden shit in some old haunted spooky house (not racist or anti-CIA – it _was_ a spooky old house!). The C64 was much, much more advanced than the Vic 20. I can’t tell you the specs on either of them, but the C64 could do a heck of a lot more. I don’t think that the V20 had anything more than cassette storage, for instance, while the C64 did have the capability of having an external floppy disk drive…a slow and primitive disk drive, true, but it had one. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2011, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-the-commodore-vic-20-or-contemporaries-do/577326/160 "2011-09-18T18:35:53Z")
> [@Lynn\_Bodoni](#): > > The C64 was much, much more advanced than the Vic 20. I can’t tell you the specs on either of them, but the C64 could do a heck of a lot more. I don’t think that the V20 had anything more than cassette storage, for instance, while the C64 did have the capability of having an external floppy disk drive…a slow and primitive disk drive, true, but it had one. Oh, yeah…the good old 1541. I had a game for C64 whose loading screen was “Patience is a 1541 disk drive”. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-the-commodore-vic-20-or-contemporaries-do/577326.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-the-commodore-vic-20-or-contemporaries-do/577326.md?page=9)