VIC-20
The VIC-20 is an 8-bit entry level home computer that was sold by Commodore Business Machines. The VIC-20 was announced in 1980, roughly three years after Commodore's first personal computer, the PET. The VIC-20 was the first computer of any description to sell one million units, eventually reaching 2.5 million. It was described as "one of the first anti-spectatorial, non-esoteric computers by design...no longer relegated to hobbyist/enthusiasts or those with money, the computer Commodore developed was the computer of the future."
History
As the Apple II gained momentum with the advent of VisiCalc in 1979, Jack Tramiel wanted a product that would compete in the same segment, to be presented at the January 1980 CES. For this reason Chuck Peddle and Bill Seiler started to design a computer named TOI. The TOI computer failed to materialize, mostly because it required an 80-column character display which in turn required the MOS Technology 6564 chip. However, the chip could not be used in the TOI since it required very expensive static RAM to operate fast enough.As the new decade began, the price of computer hardware was dropping and Tramiel saw an emerging market for low-price computers, that could be sold at retail stores to relative novices rather than professionals or people with an electronics or programming background. Radio Shack had been achieving considerable success with the TRS-80 Model I, a relatively low-cost machine that was widely sold to novices and in 1980 released the Color Computer, which was aimed at the home and educational markets, used ROM cartridges for software, and connected to a TV set. Atari also released in 1979 the low-end 400, aimed at the home and educational markets, in addition to the high-end 800, and both could also use cartridges and connected to TV sets.
Development
In the meantime, new engineer Robert Yannes at MOS Technology designed a computer in his home dubbed the MicroPET and finished a prototype with help from Al Charpentier and Charles Winterble. With the TOI unfinished, when Jack Tramiel was shown the MicroPET prototype, he immediately said he wanted it to be finished and ordered it to be mass-produced following a limited demonstration at CES.The prototype produced by Yannes had few of the features required for a real computer, so Robert Russell at Commodore headquarters had to coordinate and finish large parts of the design under the codename Vixen. The parts contributed by Russell included a port of the operating system taken from John Feagans' design for the Commodore PET, a character set with the characteristic PETSCII, an Atari CX40 joystick-compatible interface, and a ROM cartridge port. The serial IEEE-488-derivative CBM-488 interface was designed by Glenn Stark. It served several purposes, including costing substantially less than the IEEE-488 interface on the PET, using smaller cables and connectors that allowed for a more compact case design, and also complying with newly imposed FCC regulations on RFI emissions by home electronics. Some features, like the memory add-in board, were designed by Bill Seiler.
Altogether, the VIC 20 development team consisted of five people led by Michael Tomczyk, the product manager who recruited the group and dubbed them the VIC Commandos. Commodore founder Jack Tramiel initially gave Tomczyk the title VIC Czar and later appointed him product manager. Tomczyk insisted on several features including full-size typewriter keys, programmable function keys, and a built-in RS-232 interface. Michael later contracted and co-designed a $100 modem, the VICModem, which became the first modem to sell 1 million units. According to one of the development team, Neil Harris, "e couldn't get any cooperation from the rest of the company who thought we were jokers because we were working late, about an hour after everyone else had left the building. We'd swipe whatever equipment we needed to get our jobs done. There was no other way to get the work done! they'd discover it was missing and they would just order more stuff from the warehouse, so everybody had what they needed to do their work."
At the time, Commodore had a glut of SRAM chips, so Tramiel decided these should be used in the new computer. The result was arguably closer to the PET or TOI computers than to Yannes' prototype, albeit with a 22-column VIC chip instead of the custom chips designed for the more ambitious computers. As the amount of memory on the VIC-20's system board was very small even for 1981 standards, the design team could get away with using more expensive SRAM due to its lower power consumption, heat output, and less supporting circuitry. The original Revision A system board found in all silver-label VIC-20s used 2114 SRAMs and due to their tiny capacity, ten of them were required to reach 5 KB of system RAM. The Revision B system board, found in rainbow logo VIC-20s switched to larger 2048-byte SRAMs which reduced the memory count to five chips: 2× 2048-byte chips + 3× 2114 chips.
Image:Commodore VIC-1001 left-hand keyboard closeup.jpg|thumb|The VIC-1001 is the Japanese version of the VIC-20. It has Japanese-language characters in the ROM and on the front of the keys.
In April 1980, at a meeting of general managers outside London, Jack Tramiel declared he wanted a low-cost color computer. When most of the GMs argued against it, preferring Peddle's more sophisticated design, he said: "The Japanese are coming, so we must become the Japanese!". This was in keeping with Tramiel's philosophy which was to make "computers for the masses, not the classes". The concept was supported at the meeting by Tomczyk, newly hired marketing strategist and assistant to the president; Tony Tokai, General Manager of Commodore Japan; and Kit Spencer, the UK's top marketing executive. Peddle disagreed with the decision and left the company with other engineers, so an engineering team in Commodore Japan led by Yash Terakura helped finish the design. The VIC-20 was marketed in Japan as VIC-1001 before VIC-20 was introduced to the US.
When they returned to California from that meeting, Tomczyk wrote a 30-page memo detailing recommendations for the new computer and presented it to Tramiel. Recommendations included programmable function keys, full-size typewriter-style keys, and built-in RS-232. Tomczyk insisted on "user-friendliness" as the prime directive for the new computer, to engineer Terakura, and proposed a retail price of. He recruited a marketing team and a small group of computer enthusiasts and worked closely with colleagues in the UK and Japan to create colorful packaging, user manuals, and the first wave of games and home applications.
Scott Adams was contracted to provide a series of text adventure games. With help from a Commodore engineer who came to Longwood, Florida, to assist in the effort, five of Adams's Adventure International game series were ported to the VIC. They got around the limited memory of VIC-20 by having the games reside in a ROM cartridge instead of being loaded into main memory via cassette as they were on the TRS-80 and other machines. The first production run of the five cartridges generated over $1,500,000 in sales for Commodore.
Evolution
The VIC-20 went through several variations in its three-and-a-half years of production. First-year models had a PET-style keyboard with a blocky typeface while most VIC-20s made during 1981 had a slightly different keyboard also shared with early C64s. The rainbow logo VIC-20 was introduced in early 1983 and has the newer C64 keyboard with gray function keys and the Revision B motherboard. It has a similar power supply to the C64 PSU, although the amperage is slightly lower. A C64 "black brick" PSU is compatible with Revision B VIC-20s; however, the VIC's PSU is not recommended on a C64 if any external devices, such as cartridges or user port accessories, are installed, as it will overdraw the available power. Older Revision A VIC-20s cannot use a C64 PSU or vice versa as a different connector was used.Decline
The VIC-20 was a bestseller, becoming the first computer to sell over a million. In total, 2.5 million computers were sold. In summer 1982, Commodore unveiled the a more advanced machine with of RAM and considerably improved sound and graphics. Initial sales of the C64 were slow but took off in mid-1983. The VIC-20 was widely available for under $90 by that time. Commodore discontinued the VIC-20 in January 1985.Perhaps the last new commercially available VIC-20 peripheral was the VIC-Talker, a speech synthesizer. Ahoy! wrote in January 1986, "Believe it or not, a new VIC accessory... We were as surprised as you."
A VIC-20 is used to enter the Excommunicado order on John Wick at the 1:53:39 mark in the movie, John Wick: Chapter 2 as well as at the 12:02 and the 1:30:06 marks in the movie, John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum.
Design
The VIC-20 was intended to be more economical than the PET computer. It was equipped with 5 KB of static RAM and used the same MOS 6502 CPU as the PET. The VIC-20's video chip, the MOS Technology VIC, was a general-purpose color video chip designed by Al Charpentier in 1977 and intended for use in inexpensive display terminals and game consoles, but Commodore could not find a market for the chip.While newer PETs had the upgraded BASIC 4.0, with disk commands and improved garbage collection, the VIC-20 reverted to the 8 KB BASIC 2.0 used on earlier PETs as part of another of the design team's goals: 20 KB system ROMs. There are no dedicated sound or graphics features.
The VIC-20 has a composite output, which provides a sharper, cleaner picture if a dedicated monitor is used. The TRS-80 Color Computer and Atari 400 have only RF video output. An external RF modulator was necessary to use the computer with a TV set.
The "20" in the computer's name was widely assumed to refer to the text width of the screen or that it referred to the combined size of the system ROMs. Bob Yannes claimed that "20" meant nothing in particular and said "We simply picked '20' because it seemed like a friendly number and the computer's marketing slogan was 'The Friendly Computer'. I felt it balanced things out a bit since 'Vic' sounded like the name of a truck driver."