A magazine called COMPUTE! (or was it COMPUTE!'s Gazette?) published a capable little word processor called SpeedScript, for the VIC-20 and Commodore 64. This was around 1983 I think. SpeedScript was written in assembly (initially you typed in the program as hex numbers from the magazine pages). Worked like a charm, for the low standards we had back then. Justification, page numbering, I think it even had a word counter. I hacked mine to be able to view and print accented characters, which weren’t available natively on those computers.
More advanced word processors became available pretty soon afterwards, but only for the Commodore 64.
GEOS wasn’t a word processor. GEOS was the Commodore implementation of a GUI-based operating system. geoWrite was the word processor contained within. I remember doing high school papers using geoWrite and geoPaint, as well.
engineer_comp_geek, RaftPeople: I was trying to pitch my explanation at a somewhat less technical level than that, but you are certainly more correct than I was on the issue of how many instructions per second the 6510 could execute. Now let’s leave the subject be before someone gets the bright idea to attempt to explain how many instructions per second the Core microarchitecture can execute.
The Vic 20 was ridiculously primitive by today’s standards but at the time it was great. It was probably the first really affordable home computer in the US. We bought ours at Toys R Us for $300. This is what the Vic 20 looked like when you turned it on:
CBM BASIC V2 * * * *
3583 BYTES FREE
READY.
█
The computer was essentially a blank slate, ready for you to type in a BASIC program. If you wanted to load a program from cassette tape, you did this:
LOAD
PRESS PLAY ON TAPE
It took minutes to load a program from cassette tape and sometimes it didn’t work and you had to reload the program. As mentioned previously, there were cartridges with games available. I had Jupiter Lander, Omega Race, and Gorf.
I had an assembly language program published in this magazine. It was nice to see the magazine again.
The Vic 20 was very peripheral-compatible with the Commodore 64. The Vic had its own disk drive available (the 1540), and later Commodore disk drives like the 1541, 1571, and 1581 could also be used with it. High-quality printing was available (as several folks have mentioned), though printers were ghastly expensive back in the day. Several companies produced interfaces that allowed the use of IEEE-488 and RS-232 devices giving access to business-class peripherals. Spooling to the printer could be done through a lot of these interfaces; a user might be limited to a few pages in memory, but it was possible to use programs that would serially load word processor files and spool them out so that they all printed in one large batch. It used Atari-compatible joysticks, which meant that the highest quality and greatest variety of controllers until the NES days were compatible with it, and one could even hook up the Commodore 1350 mouse (or use the 1351 if you know how to activate digital mode).
As far as computing capabilities, it was deliberately low-powered compared to its contemporaries (the original Apple II, Atari 400/800, TI-99/4a) because it was meant as an entry-level machine. There was a big push by home computer marketers to try to win over consumers from the video games market, so having a games-playing system priced competitively with game consoles that could also introduce computers was the goal; once you got someone used to using computers, you could then entice them into upgrading systems. Commodore performed admirably with the Vic. As cheap as an Atari 2600, with a good keyboard (something amazing at the time, as most cheap systems tended to use chiclet or membrane keyboards), graphics competitive with then-current 2600 titles. It was incredibly popular during its short life, and seemed to work as expected; it caught the eyes of games players who then upgraded en masse to the Commodore 64 once it was released (which was made parts-compatible to the Vic to make sure that the large Vic audience didn’t get lured by Atari or Apple).
The Vic/C64 range also turned Commodore into a big player in computer gaming, which was interesting because of their roots as a business-furniture/supplies company (they made swivel chairs, filing cabinets, thermostats, calculators and such) and that their initial moves into computers were as logical outgrowths of their calculator lines-- fusty business machines great for office work and terrible at games-playing. It came to haunt them within just a few years; the stigma of being good games machines meant that folks who wanted to keep upgrading to more powerful computers-- or who needed serious systems for school and office-- ignored the C128, B-series, and the incredible Amigas.
There were a few other players in the game - the Oric 1 (and later, Oric Atmos), The Dragon 32, a slew of MSX-based compatibles and some weird ones that never really went anywhere, like the Jupiter Ace
The first two models of the Apple II — the original II, and the II Plus — were 40-column, uppercase only. You could buy third-party cards to give you 80 columns and lowercase letters, but that was extra, and non-standard. The IIe, which came out in 1983 (after the limited heyday of the VIC-20, I think) had 80-columns and lowercase as a standard option, and soon after as a built-in feature.
All the Apple II models could also be hooked up to standard television, like the Commodores. They all had composite video output, built in. However, 80-column text mode was pretty much useless on a standard TV. You really needed a dedicated monitor, preferably monochrome, to use 80-column text.
About right. The instruction times range from 2 to 7 cycles, with typical instructions lying more in the range of 3 to 5.
I actually got started on a Commodore PET (one of the later ones, with a real keyboard). It belonged to what we in Michigan call the intermediate school district, where I had access via a relative. It had real disk drives; none of that cassette crap. I felt sorry for my cousin who only has a VIC-20 with a cassette at home. Except I was envious that he (you know) had it at home. I had to make due (eventually) with a TRS-80 MC-10. My neighbor and best friend satisfied my more advanced needs with his C=64, until I saved my paper route money and one-upped him with my C=128. Of course all my games were pirated C=64 games, but all my programming was done on the C=128.
Those really were the days. I learned 6502/8502 assembly language so I could write my own BBS (I had to translate Commodore ASCII to standard ASCII and back, and assembly was fast at it). I then used that to write my own text-based windowing system. I think I also was one of the first pre-LGPL users in integrating a SID-player binary with a kick-ass user interface (yeah, it worked with a Commodore analogue mouse!).
Aside from Ahoy! and Compute’s Gazette, there was Run magazine. I was published there (only in the Magic Tricks column, though).
I used to read Compute! magazine regularly, and I’d visit a local chain computer store called Software City to get programs and to buy special ten-minute audio cassette tapes to use with my Commodore 64. (You could certainly use the regular 90-minute audio cassettes, but short tapes made it easier to store programs.) Later, once I switched to using IBM PC computers, I would visit Egghead Software to buy computer programs.
Mine is a real commercial product, and I think it has at least 60 games on it. And I really paid $5.
Note: it has no keyboard interface; the LOAD “*”,8,1 just starts up the menu program which lets you select a game and play that. So you couldn’t actually program the thing in BASIC, but you can play all those old games.
You also saved it twice or trice on different cassettes, because if the tape had any problem including stretching, pinching or being eaten, the data was lost on that tape. You also list the files saved on the tape and used the tape recorder counter so you knew where to start trying to load the data, unless you liked to have the entire side of a tape play trough for 15 to 20 minutes to get to the file you wanted. You also listened to the data on loud speaker until you heard silence, and then you could tell the computer to load the file. You just got an error if you started the player in the middle of the wrong file.
besides a tape counter, which would read different with different recorders, you could also record a voice statement (using a microphone) about what was next.
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.
I can’t believe that I forgot I finished this game. I just found a web page with it and it all came back to me. We tried to sell it to Tandy but they weren’t interested.
Oh, the VIC-20. I had a few cartridges for it, some text adventure games (most of which, as I recall, I never beat, they were very frustrating), and some arcade style ones. I remember Night Driver, Frogman (the closest thing I knew of at the time to Pac-Man in the home), and Omega Race. Also had some games on cassette: a clone of the ever-popular snake game, some sort of “Sub Hunt” game, and a Break-Out clone. Fun times.
Never tried word processing on the 20, but boy was GEOS ever a revelation on the C-64. Did numerous homework assignments on that.
That’s cool. I wonder how it’s selling. I was in a bar once that had a big plasma TV mounted on the wall inside the screen part of a mural of a '50s era TV with the actual dials and a pair of rabbit ears attached to the wall- similar concept.
