I had a Vic-20 back in the mid-80's when I was about 11. I once tried to code Trivial Pursuit in Basic and spent weeks trying to make the pies and wedges and a circular board. When I finally succeeded in getting something that almost worked I started the process of entering the questions by hand. I typed in one card before running out of memory and didn't have the knowledge to design a workaround. In disgust I sold the Vic 20 and bought a guitar. Thanks to the Vic 20 I have been a professional musician all my life 😅
In 1982 my first software company wrote games for the VIC-20. We wrote our games in Assembler because of its speed and compactness. The one key point that isn't clear in this video is that the memory location that held graphics changed when you added a memory expansion cartridge, and each different memory expansion option (there were 3K, 8K and 16K versions) changed the memory map in a different way. What this means is that you couldn't write one set of code that would support every expansion option. You would need to write a completely different version of your app for each unique memory configuration, which was quite impracticle. Had Commodore designed the VIC-20 with a static memory location for video RAM regardless of added RAM, I suspect that they would have sold a lot more memory cartridges and the non-cartridge games would have featured expanded versions for higher memory systems.
The 3k expander didn't move anything though. Only the bigger ones did that. It mapped into the RAM gap between adr. 1024 and 4095, which further suggested that the machine was originally intended to have the Super Expander features on-board.
Did you write the games for the VIC on the machine itself or was there a different computer to help you? Hand coding assembler and putting in each digit with help of the machine monitor seems awfully tedious...
@@WinrichNaujoks If he was doing this in 1982 there weren't that many choices for development. I imagine they were using an expanded machine perhaps linked directly to a non-expanded one for quick turn-around during testing. Nowadays it would be so much easier to develop for those old 8 bit systems because of the multitude of tools (software and hardware) available.
I can't believe how slow the pixel draw was on that system. Today's computers with modern GPU's can draw at like a billion times that speed. Really makes me wonder what things are going to look like in another 30 years.
I thought it was slow because it was in BASIC, but the circle functions where programmed in assembly!! This means that even in native machine code it is still not very fast. Although, the 6502 processor was only running at 1 MHz
I would love to see a show where you did a showcase of more of these VIC 20 and C64 specialist add-ons. I've seen the several you've done already and found them highly informative and entertaining.
i LOVE this channel! My first computer and game console was a vic 20. I am now sitting in front of a triple screen 7680x1440 on a pair of GTX 1080's in SLI...64gigs of ram and a huge list of other things too. I have had everything in between all these years too. Great memories. I would LOVE a C64 and an expansion cartridge :D
Awesome. I had (still have) the VIC20 and the 3K expander. Became necessary as my coding got too large when I was a kid. Started my coding career right there in 1980 and still going strong today writing large system software for multinationals. The skills I learned back then are still valid today!
Still, to this very day, the Vic-20 remains the single worst investment I've ever made in my entire life! I worked all summer cutting grass, cleaning garages, etc. to get the money to buy one. By the time I finally had enough money to get it home, not long (6 months later?) the C-64 came out. All of my friends had a total gaming monster, while I had a useless hunk of plastic, that could barely do anything. Yes, I'm still pissed off!!!
Larry, you should have learned to program it. I did. Many hours of fun. Computers aren't just gaming machines and the Vic 20 was a long way from being a "useless hunk of plastic, that could barely do anything" you were just a useless kid who could barely do anything. Onya for at least earning the money to buy it yourself.
Thank you for the insult, but not quite. I did learn to program it, even machine language later on with the C-64 (did you learn machine language?) But it was so limited that I could not program very much. It simply wasn't built for serious programming. (As serious as a person could get in those days, that is). The C-64 was pretty much a solution for all of that. I was able to program everything I ever dreamed of and a even dreamed up few utilities that weren't available either. I never regretted buying the C-64! Again, thanks for the insult. But once again the nourishing teats of wisdom have failed!
I had a VIC-20 and I had a ton of fun with it.. mostly building various things to connect to the user port. Robot arm, misguided attempt at video acquisition, that sort of thing.
wow, I would have LOVED that 3k expander when I was a kid with my VIC 20. I never even imagined being able to make graphics and sound like that from BASIC back then. thank you for showing this off.
I remember doing some graphics, but I don't remember doing the sound commands. I got it too late for it to be interesting or meaningful before leaving for college.
The 8K and 16K RAM (VIC-1110 and VIC-1111, respectively) Expander Cartridge were released in the same period when the VIC-20 (aka VIC-1001) was released in Japan in 1980.
I picked up one of these at a market in Salisbury UK today. I just thought - that looks interesting, so I bought it. I'd then youtube it when I get home. Was not disappointed.😂
I turned a Super Expander into a 35K RAM expansion with enable switches. You just need a 32K static RAM and a logic chip to do it. Then, you may load the Basic extension from disk should you need it.
I had a Vic 20 as a kid around 1981, i loved that thing! I had a few games on cartridge but my favourite was an adventure game set in a nuclear power plant i think but cant remember the name. I had a graphic expander which you could make and animate graphics on as well as an I/O card, you could attach inputs and outputs that could be programmed from the Vic 20
That sounds nice. I think there were only a couple programs using it in the Compute!'s Gazettes I had. And since I got it when I was done programming on the VIC-20, but using ~56K on the Plus 4, it wasn't that helpful. Had I got it earlier, maybe it would have had enough RAM to run an assembly program?
Great video! IIRC one could use the Super Expander as standard 3K expansion RAM with the VIC-20 if, and only if, the expander was plugged into a memory expansion board. That board allowed 1) multiple RAM expansion cards to be plugged into the VIC's expansion port, and 2) turning off selected memory blocks on each RAM expansion card. I think the Super Expander commands were in block 5, so if you turned off that memory, you'd get the full 6565 bytes or so, and programs that needed 3K expansion would run without problems (but you'd lose the graphic and sound commands). Ah, memory - uh, memories. Thanks for sharing!
I thought there was such a thing allowing multiple expansion cartridges, but never saw it. The 8K and 16K seemed so expensive, getting a board to hold both was out of the question.
That video brings back the memories. Vic-20 was my first computer. I had one of super expander cartridges, just like you explained. I remember playing the game hard hat climber which I typed in from the magazine compute's gazette. Didn't have a joystick so my Dad made one out of a can lid mounted on a bit of sponge stuck to a bit of wood, with 4 screws to act as contacts for up, down, left and right. And a doorbell switch as a fire button. It wasn't the most elegant joystick, but it worked well.
Spot on about software support for these kinds of expander carts. I was doing commercial development for the C64 around 1984/85 and initially considered Simon's BASIC for the C64. But this would have limited the market for my software to essentially zero, so I needed to re-implement the routines that used the extended commands in my own ML routines. Plus there were distribution rights that my publisher didn't want to deal with, all of which added over a month of development time and necessitated investing in a BASIC compiler (Blitz!) for general speed improvements.
This video takes me back to my childhood and being a young teen in the 80s. My father bought the vic20 and was using it from home for his work. He'd connect to compuserve over the 9600k baud modem and do email. The coolest add on we had was a voice synthesizer cartridge. Once plugged in, you could make the vic20 say all kinds of funny things.
seeing your videos of 80's hardware and software made me realize just how far computers have progressed over the last 3 decades. Thank you for doing what you do!
I absolutely LOVE videos about lesser known devices/accessories/etc (not games) for old computer systems like this. Please keep up this type type of video.
The first computer I got to use and program on was a Vic-20. I had no cartridges and didn't even know where I could buy any if I wanted. I had the tape drive and maybe 3 or 4 very simple games on it. But that was enough apparently. Once I found the Introduction to BASIC Programming book that came with it (my parents bought the machine from some other guy they knew so I have no idea if those books came with every one) I was off to the races. I immediately fell in love with programming. I carried the books with me everywhere I went. Probably the most important machine I encountered in my life, really. 38 now and I've been programming ever since. Couldn't imagine not doing it.
I don't own a single piece of vintage electronics, but I love these videos as a consumer of information regarding how technology has progressed through the last century. Would love to see more obscure peripherals because you're 100% right, it's great to preserve the history of how humanity has gone from mechanical computers up to today and everything inbetween.
Obscure peripherals no one has ever heard of is what makes this channel interesting. That and those (how this thingy works) videos. Keep the good stuff coming mate.
Its the same as with Simons Basic for the Breadbin. It was made because BASIC V2 kinda sucks but no one used it for something they released. I think the first time i heard of a game demanding an upgrade was Dungeon Master for the Amiga, which balantly said "1 MByte or get lost!"... now imagine if game devs on the Commodore did the same and said "REU or get lost!", what games we could have. ;)
Nice :D Maybe you can show some newer hardware too, like the SD2IEC, an AVR-Based SD card interface that can be homebrewn, or the Chameleon, a 1541 emulation in a FPGA, throwing 16 MByte REU and a 6502 turbo into the mix while we are at it, or the Retro Replay, an Action Replay "remake" with a clockport with a RR-Net attached. Once used the last one at a hackerspace party on a SX64 with Contiki as a webserver.
Excellent video, the VIC-20 is a very interesting older brother to the C64. I liked the AI video, I didn't agree exactly on what was being concluded and deduced but I would have loved to see a healthy intriguing discussion taking place instead of what happened. I think it is okay to disagree and communicate about it and be friendly, that's what I personally tried in the comment section of the video that was taken down. Sadly this constructive discussion didn't happen and I can understand why the video was taken down because of people being disrespectful. A lot of work goes into these videos and to see one go to waste saddens me. Anyways keep up your excellent work. You can't please them all but that's okay. Keep up the excellent work I say - this one was a gem! :)
Commodore owned the MOS chip foundry. They could have easily added another 3k RAM and a ROM chip and additional joystick port and still kept the costs low. I think Commodore was just being cheap.
Can you please make a video about the Commodore 16? you briefly mentioned it in the video about the incredible musical keyboard, but we haven't seen it since
Great video sir, I love seeing these old peripherals. I wasn't old enough to enjoy them in their time but I inherited alot of this old tech in the early 90's when I was a kid.
Reminds me a lot of the graphics commands in the Plus/4 and C16's BASIC 3.5. We had precious little to lord over the C64 with its sprites and SID other than graphics, disk and structured programming commands (and windowing and scrolling with Escape codes... and 8 fabulous shades of black)
I got the Plus/4 before getting the 3K expansion, so didn't use the latter much. Commodore really went into the ditch or dead-end with the Plus/4 and C-16, when their line of development was PET > VIC-20 > C-64 > C-128 > AMIGA.
This is very helpful to me. I had done a video myself a few months ago, just un-boxing a VIC-20, and playing a text-based adventure. But, I was very curious how the Expander cartridges worked, and what the Pros and Cons were to them. This has answered all my questions regarding them. Thanks so much for making this video. Also, any idea why the EPROM burner didn't just include the start ROM on-board? Seems unnecessary to have to load it separately every time. I feel like the odds of damaging that chip is high due to all the handling.
I didn't miss it.. and although a little bit different from the others I think it was quite interesting! If you think that are TV shows that cost millions of dollars to make and are way less interesting and accurate than what this guy does, that gives him a great lot of credit on his achievements! In all of his videos it's easily shown that he adores this stuff and I think that those people that started disliking that A.I. Video like crazy are a bunch of cry babies and spoiled kids used to have everything given for granted!
This is the type of content that should be heavily supported in TH-cam to at least counteract the other type of useless one that's usually composed of brainless teenagers playing FPS while heavily cursing to try to earn a quick buck!
I might agree that his approach might have been a little bit naive.. but maybe that was on purpose in order to reach a bigger audience that does not have a clue about how A.I. works (nor it wants too with a lot of detail).. having that, I still don't consider it to be a bad video!
I had this cartridge!! ❤️ Loved my VIC-20, Jupiter Lander and Omega Race! ❤️ Had no tape recorder at first and had to type in every basic games every time before I could play. Every time... 😝
Wow what a blast from the past. I had the SuperExpander, and i remember typing the Garfield programme. That was like 33yrs ago !. Thanks for the flashback.
That bit about putting the EPROM into the ZIF socket and then running the program by the SYS command was fascinating and quite clever. I wish there were more programs that would load like that!!
Love your channel. It brings back so many memories from my youth. You should make an episode or two on all of the peripherals that you have laying around that don't warrant a individual episode.
Much love for the Vic-20. As a 10 or 11 year old, I spent many hours programming on that ol' tub and the 3.5k limit was a right pain. Gotta be careful that my nostalgia goggles don't steam up! ;-)
One factor leading to the low memory was the price of RAM in the early 80's. Dynamic RAM was pretty bad, static RAM was crazy expensive. The VIC-20 had static RAM (5Kbyte), so putting 18 or 6K in it would have increased the price too much (I'm guessing a bit there on the reasoning at Commodore). - I had one as a kid... did not like it that much. I really liked the C-64. - Eddy
After reaching the limits of the VIC-20 without getting a memory expander, I wanted a C-64. There was a price war with TSR resulting in the prices going down. Instead my dad sent me a Plus-4, which I couldn't do anything with since the tape drive port wasn't compatible with the VIC-20.
The 2 RAM chips in the EPROM programmer are 6116 CMOS SRAMs, which are 2Kx8 each, for a total of 4KB of RAM. I would expect that they are used to hold an image of the source or destination EPROM chip in the socket. Presumably either a 2716 2Kx8, or 2732 4Kx8 EPROM. That huge ferrite inductor/transformer would be for a switching converter to generate the rather high (21.5V, IIRC) programming voltage needed for the 2716 series chips, from the much lower voltage rails available from the VIC-20.
I have a VIC-20 but only because it has a kick ass version of Omega Race. For the Eprom burner, 2K and 4K makes it capable of copying or making Atari 2600 ROMs.
Omega Race was a good game on the VIC-20 I got later. I got my VIC-20 with Radar Ratrace, their take on Rally X. Supposedly it was licensed but they didn't use the cars.
Big Thumbs up, I loved it, I am glad you are back to your roots, your last video scared me. Again, great job and thanks for sharing, keep them coming!!!
You mentioned HAM radio in earlier video. Can you perhaps do a video or series of video on what is HAM radio, it's history and how it works? Possible for anyone to get started in it? Great video as usual!
Even cooler, would be to highlight some of the ham radio cartridges/boards made for the 8-bit machines, such as the above VIC-20 and C64. Also, if you're interested in ham radio, here's a good starting point: www.arrl.org/what-is-ham-radio It's a great hobby.
Thanks JonsMG for the website. Lots of great info there. Still would be great if Dave can talk us through some of this and show us his equipment. I had no idea there were cartridges for 8 bit machines. Wow!
I had a Vic-20 with Super Expander in the 80s, I was gutted when I later got a C64 and discovered it was not included as standard or even available for it.
I know this is an old video, but just tripped across your video. I used to work at Gloucester Computer Company in the early 80's. We used to make the PROMqueen for the VIC20 and a larger version for the C64 almost 40 years ago! Talk about memories! These were marketed as simple microprocessor development systems used to build other single board computers. We also sold V20 and C64 cartridges for EPROMS that you could put EPROMS into that would auto boot for games and other software. Wow! I remember taping the board layouts for some of those cartridges back in the when the process was purely optical. This was my first computing job. Taught me a quite a bit about electronics and 6502 programming. I miss those days! I don't know who TACTEC is, but it is NOT the original company.
Thanks for another great video. I hope you're not upset about the mixed reaction to your AI video. I think it's great that you tried something different.
... in which he proposes an idea that's even more absurd than a government conspiracy: "In actuality, I was thinking more along the lines of some random guy like me creating it in his basement and just deciding not to tell anyone about it [...]". Happy to see him back on things he actually knows a thing or two about. Love the retro computing stuff.
Ah, 30 years ago I spent hundreds of hours melting my brick with the Super Expander! I also had a cartridge, which I believe was called 'Programmer's Aid', which boosted RAM by 8k and added BASIC editing functions such as 'renumber'. I was SO frustrated that I couldn't use both cartridges at once.
Someone in another comment reminded me that if you got more than one RAM cartridge you were supposed to get a memory board so you could use them both at the same time.
The VIC20 was the first computer I bought with my first paycheck. Cost about $97, about 1983? Even bought a FORTH cartridge, but never had the resources to learn it.
The Vic-20 was a quirky system compared to its competitors. You mentioned the lack of RAM and the outdated BASIC, but you left out one of its most bizarre omissions. There's no hardware support for sprites. This made video games a bit of pain to program.
If you feel like having not enough informations for some devices, but you want to talk about them anyway, you could make a "group video", where you just randomly pick the devices you prefer and say what you wanted to. While I appreciated that you showed us the EPROM programmer, I was a bit surprised, since it has almost nothing to do with the video, apart being a VIC-20 expansion. Nice video as always!
i am completely fascinated at this old technology and at the same time grateful that I got to live during the NES era. I didn't have to worry about lack of memory that much.
This was the life of the computer enthusiast back in the 1980's. The TI99 4/a had the same thing in 2 cartridges; Mini Memory and Extended BASIC. Mini Memory added assembly language programming along with the extra BASIC commands.
I learn new things about old tech all the time from you 8 bit guy. As a 80's baby, my first PC was a Tandy 1000 which I only learned enough to start exe. programs such as Kings and Police Quest. Later owned a 100 MHz Pentium running Windows 95, later 98. miss those giant loud tough PCs. Also remember being pissed when I bought a Gateway and it had no floppy drive! only DVD rom. the nerve.
This video was in no way "mundane"; it's exactly the type of thing we like about this channel.
Aviel Menter How is this video mundane?!
I had a Vic-20 back in the mid-80's when I was about 11. I once tried to code Trivial Pursuit in Basic and spent weeks trying to make the pies and wedges and a circular board. When I finally succeeded in getting something that almost worked I started the process of entering the questions by hand. I typed in one card before running out of memory and didn't have the knowledge to design a workaround. In disgust I sold the Vic 20 and bought a guitar. Thanks to the Vic 20 I have been a professional musician all my life 😅
I love that you have uses "around the house" for an 8K EPROM programmer.
Ya same😃
Wait? Doesn't EVERYONE?
In 1982 my first software company wrote games for the VIC-20. We wrote our games in Assembler because of its speed and compactness. The one key point that isn't clear in this video is that the memory location that held graphics changed when you added a memory expansion cartridge, and each different memory expansion option (there were 3K, 8K and 16K versions) changed the memory map in a different way.
What this means is that you couldn't write one set of code that would support every expansion option. You would need to write a completely different version of your app for each unique memory configuration, which was quite impracticle.
Had Commodore designed the VIC-20 with a static memory location for video RAM regardless of added RAM, I suspect that they would have sold a lot more memory cartridges and the non-cartridge games would have featured expanded versions for higher memory systems.
So normal games can't see any exoansion ram on the system?
The 3k expander didn't move anything though. Only the bigger ones did that. It mapped into the RAM gap between adr. 1024 and 4095, which further suggested that the machine was originally intended to have the Super Expander features on-board.
Did you write the games for the VIC on the machine itself or was there a different computer to help you? Hand coding assembler and putting in each digit with help of the machine monitor seems awfully tedious...
@@WinrichNaujoks If he was doing this in 1982 there weren't that many choices for development. I imagine they were using an expanded machine perhaps linked directly to a non-expanded one for quick turn-around during testing. Nowadays it would be so much easier to develop for those old 8 bit systems because of the multitude of tools (software and hardware) available.
Thanks for this valuable insight.
wow this thing was doing 4k gaming back in '81. Nvidia could learn something from the commodores
Funny joke.
This comment aged pretty well.
@@eleydb They did indeed learn, we now have the Nvidia 64 with better RAM.
Nice
@@McCoy-00 Is that wheelchair mario 64?
I had on of these Super Expander cards. It really made it possible to write bigger and more sophisticated programs.
Wow! I had one of these! I was over the moon when I could draw circles using the cartridge. What memories, thanks for reviving them! ❤
I can't believe how slow the pixel draw was on that system. Today's computers with modern GPU's can draw at like a billion times that speed. Really makes me wonder what things are going to look like in another 30 years.
I thought it was slow because it was in BASIC, but the circle functions where programmed in assembly!! This means that even in native machine code it is still not very fast. Although, the 6502 processor was only running at 1 MHz
Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 Vr with real time haptic feedback
@@fabian999ification Depends on the algorithm they picked and how well it's implemented. Assembly language doesn't guarantee speed.
@@fabian999ification They are likely generic routines and not especially optimisesd.
Computers will be merely legend in the end times.
I'm so grateful for this TH-camr. 8-bit-guy provides solid content with ALL of his videos. Thank you!!
I would love to see a show where you did a showcase of more of these VIC 20 and C64 specialist add-ons. I've seen the several you've done already and found them highly informative and entertaining.
Never "mundane", always awesome. Bringing back cool memories from my childhood early years of computing. Thank you and keep it up.
i LOVE this channel! My first computer and game console was a vic 20. I am now sitting in front of a triple screen 7680x1440 on a pair of GTX 1080's in SLI...64gigs of ram and a huge list of other things too. I have had everything in between all these years too. Great memories. I would LOVE a C64 and an expansion cartridge :D
Congratulations.
I have a GTX 1060
Awesome. I had (still have) the VIC20 and the 3K expander. Became necessary as my coding got too large when I was a kid. Started my coding career right there in 1980 and still going strong today writing large system software for multinationals. The skills I learned back then are still valid today!
I still have my VIC20 and Super Expander cartridge! I have fond memories of exploring the new commands with it!
Still, to this very day, the Vic-20 remains the single worst investment I've ever made in my entire life!
I worked all summer cutting grass, cleaning garages, etc. to get the money to buy one. By the time I finally had enough money to get it home, not long (6 months later?) the C-64 came out. All of my friends had a total gaming monster, while I had a useless hunk of plastic, that could barely do anything.
Yes, I'm still pissed off!!!
Larry, you should have learned to program it. I did. Many hours of fun. Computers aren't just gaming machines and the Vic 20 was a long way from being a "useless hunk of plastic, that could barely do anything" you were just a useless kid who could barely do anything. Onya for at least earning the money to buy it yourself.
Thank you for the insult, but not quite. I did learn to program it, even machine language later on with the C-64 (did you learn machine language?) But it was so limited that I could not program very much. It simply wasn't built for serious programming. (As serious as a person could get in those days, that is). The C-64 was pretty much a solution for all of that. I was able to program everything I ever dreamed of and a even dreamed up few utilities that weren't available either.
I never regretted buying the C-64!
Again, thanks for the insult. But once again the nourishing teats of wisdom have failed!
I had a VIC-20 and I had a ton of fun with it.. mostly building various things to connect to the user port. Robot arm, misguided attempt at video acquisition, that sort of thing.
Jonathan Pullen Was that after the release of the Commodore 64?
Relax. At least you didn't buy the mattel aquarius. th-cam.com/video/ZlZn8ejso-4/w-d-xo.html
wow, I would have LOVED that 3k expander when I was a kid with my VIC 20. I never even imagined being able to make graphics and sound like that from BASIC back then. thank you for showing this off.
I remember doing some graphics, but I don't remember doing the sound commands. I got it too late for it to be interesting or meaningful before leaving for college.
Thank you for the informative program, cheers from New Zealand.
Man that takes me back ... after saving pocket money to buy the cassette recorder, the super expander was next ... Oh those 'CIRCLES" ... great vid!
The 8K and 16K RAM (VIC-1110 and VIC-1111, respectively) Expander Cartridge were released in the same period when the VIC-20 (aka VIC-1001) was released in Japan in 1980.
I picked up one of these at a market in Salisbury UK today. I just thought - that looks interesting, so I bought it. I'd then youtube it when I get home.
Was not disappointed.😂
I turned a Super Expander into a 35K RAM expansion with enable switches. You just need a 32K static RAM and a logic chip to do it. Then, you may load the Basic extension from disk should you need it.
Wheres a link and schimatics for it?
We need those death star planns.
@@everythingpony schematics*
@@cadenhood plans*
cazzozzo fucking reply nigga. We need them plans, right here right now
I had a Vic 20 as a kid around 1981, i loved that thing! I had a few games on cartridge but my favourite was an adventure game set in a nuclear power plant i think but cant remember the name.
I had a graphic expander which you could make and animate graphics on as well as an I/O card, you could attach inputs and outputs that could be programmed from the Vic 20
Mission Impossible was text adventure #3 from Scott Adams Adventure Games. I had #1 Adventure Land and I think Pirate's Cove and Voodoo Castle.
"Too mundane" lol I could watch these all day
Oh the nostalgia... I remember programming a breakout style game found in a magazine for my vic-20 and that 3k expansion was soooo helpful!
That sounds nice. I think there were only a couple programs using it in the Compute!'s Gazettes I had. And since I got it when I was done programming on the VIC-20, but using ~56K on the Plus 4, it wasn't that helpful. Had I got it earlier, maybe it would have had enough RAM to run an assembly program?
Please do some more restoration projects, for some reason watching your videos on how you clean the cases and electronics is super relaxing.
Great video! IIRC one could use the Super Expander as standard 3K expansion RAM with the VIC-20 if, and only if, the expander was plugged into a memory expansion board. That board allowed 1) multiple RAM expansion cards to be plugged into the VIC's expansion port, and 2) turning off selected memory blocks on each RAM expansion card. I think the Super Expander commands were in block 5, so if you turned off that memory, you'd get the full 6565 bytes or so, and programs that needed 3K expansion would run without problems (but you'd lose the graphic and sound commands). Ah, memory - uh, memories. Thanks for sharing!
I thought there was such a thing allowing multiple expansion cartridges, but never saw it. The 8K and 16K seemed so expensive, getting a board to hold both was out of the question.
The more obscure and useful the technology the better. A+++ would watch again.
That video brings back the memories. Vic-20 was my first computer. I had one of super expander cartridges, just like you explained.
I remember playing the game hard hat climber which I typed in from the magazine compute's gazette. Didn't have a joystick so my Dad made one out of a can lid mounted on a bit of sponge stuck to a bit of wood, with 4 screws to act as contacts for up, down, left and right. And a doorbell switch as a fire button. It wasn't the most elegant joystick, but it worked well.
Spot on about software support for these kinds of expander carts. I was doing commercial development for the C64 around 1984/85 and initially considered Simon's BASIC for the C64. But this would have limited the market for my software to essentially zero, so I needed to re-implement the routines that used the extended commands in my own ML routines. Plus there were distribution rights that my publisher didn't want to deal with, all of which added over a month of development time and necessitated investing in a BASIC compiler (Blitz!) for general speed improvements.
This video takes me back to my childhood and being a young teen in the 80s. My father bought the vic20 and was using it from home for his work. He'd connect to compuserve over the 9600k baud modem and do email.
The coolest add on we had was a voice synthesizer cartridge. Once plugged in, you could make the vic20 say all kinds of funny things.
As a ham radio operator, I approve this video!
seeing your videos of 80's hardware and software made me realize just how far computers have progressed over the last 3 decades.
Thank you for doing what you do!
I absolutely LOVE videos about lesser known devices/accessories/etc (not games) for old computer systems like this. Please keep up this type type of video.
The first computer I got to use and program on was a Vic-20. I had no cartridges and didn't even know where I could buy any if I wanted. I had the tape drive and maybe 3 or 4 very simple games on it. But that was enough apparently. Once I found the Introduction to BASIC Programming book that came with it (my parents bought the machine from some other guy they knew so I have no idea if those books came with every one) I was off to the races. I immediately fell in love with programming. I carried the books with me everywhere I went. Probably the most important machine I encountered in my life, really. 38 now and I've been programming ever since. Couldn't imagine not doing it.
Please make more peripheral-centric episodes like this, they're really interesting and not at all mundane/boring as you mentioned you think.
I remember getting my Super and being happy I could type in _Haunted House_ from _Compute_ magazine!
Why are your videos so good, christ I can't live without weekly dose of them.
I don't even own or plan to buy old stuff.
"...if it could do at least 8k EPROMS I could probably find some interesting uses for it around the house..." - I hope ol' Murray never changes.
Just Gusta_Cz oldest thing I got is an old Windows 7 enterprise computer without wifi.
Just Gusta_Cz I own a whole bunch of old stuff (tube radios, computers, TVs etc.) but it was all given to me for free
Even if you dont (I dont either) its still interesting to learn, because it also makes you understand new computers :)
@@TH-camPizzer Oldest thing I have is probably my Sega Genesis.
I don't own a single piece of vintage electronics, but I love these videos as a consumer of information regarding how technology has progressed through the last century. Would love to see more obscure peripherals because you're 100% right, it's great to preserve the history of how humanity has gone from mechanical computers up to today and everything inbetween.
Obscure peripherals no one has ever heard of is what makes this channel interesting. That and those (how this thingy works) videos. Keep the good stuff coming mate.
I had the Super Expander for the Vic20!!!! Ahhh good memory (and memories)
Talk about apt timing, I have just had a Vic 20 bundle delivered this morning and it came with the super expander :)
Please keep doing peripheral & programming-oriented videos, they're great!
Its the same as with Simons Basic for the Breadbin. It was made because BASIC V2 kinda sucks but no one used it for something they released.
I think the first time i heard of a game demanding an upgrade was Dungeon Master for the Amiga, which balantly said "1 MByte or get lost!"... now imagine if game devs on the Commodore did the same and said "REU or get lost!", what games we could have. ;)
Speaking of Simons' Basic.... guess what will be in an upcoming video? :-)
Nice :D
Maybe you can show some newer hardware too, like the SD2IEC, an AVR-Based SD card interface that can be homebrewn, or the Chameleon, a 1541 emulation in a FPGA, throwing 16 MByte REU and a 6502 turbo into the mix while we are at it, or the Retro Replay, an Action Replay "remake" with a clockport with a RR-Net attached.
Once used the last one at a hackerspace party on a SX64 with Contiki as a webserver.
I can't wait for that video, this is one of my favorite channels.
Excellent video, the VIC-20 is a very interesting older brother to the C64.
I liked the AI video, I didn't agree exactly on what was being concluded and deduced but I would have loved to see a healthy intriguing discussion taking place instead of what happened. I think it is okay to disagree and communicate about it and be friendly, that's what I personally tried in the comment section of the video that was taken down. Sadly this constructive discussion didn't happen and I can understand why the video was taken down because of people being disrespectful.
A lot of work goes into these videos and to see one go to waste saddens me. Anyways keep up your excellent work. You can't please them all but that's okay. Keep up the excellent work I say - this one was a gem! :)
lactobacillusprime More like a runtish cousin to the C64
Please make more vids like this, love hearing about and seeing the stuff they had for these old computers.
2:30 One of the reasons this machine had only 5KB of ram was to get it retail price to just under one hundred dollars - a hook for the customers!
Commodore owned the MOS chip foundry. They could have easily added another 3k RAM and a ROM chip and additional joystick port and still kept the costs low. I think Commodore was just being cheap.
They definitely got in a price war with Tandy in a couple years with the C-64.
To me its great to see things like this. I grew up in the 70s.. I never knew the history of the products.. great channel
Can you please make a video about the Commodore 16? you briefly
mentioned it in the video about the incredible musical keyboard, but we
haven't seen it since
Andrew here is the link for the c16 videoth-cam.com/video/ICiZbUypMlQ/w-d-xo.html
Great video sir, I love seeing these old peripherals. I wasn't old enough to enjoy them in their time but I inherited alot of this old tech in the early 90's when I was a kid.
Reminds me a lot of the graphics commands in the Plus/4 and C16's BASIC 3.5. We had precious little to lord over the C64 with its sprites and SID other than graphics, disk and structured programming commands (and windowing and scrolling with Escape codes... and 8 fabulous shades of black)
yes! The BASIC 3.5 on the Plus/4 and C16 is my favorite version of Commodore BASIC. The BASIC 7.0 on the 128 was too slow and overcomplicated.
I thought it was basically the same, just with more of everything? Sprite commands and such... too bad if it was slower.
im in love with my VIC but I have got a plus 4 as bits on the side.
I got the Plus/4 before getting the 3K expansion, so didn't use the latter much. Commodore really went into the ditch or dead-end with the Plus/4 and C-16, when their line of development was PET > VIC-20 > C-64 > C-128 > AMIGA.
I could watch videos like this all day. It's very interesting stuff, keep it coming!
This is very helpful to me. I had done a video myself a few months ago, just un-boxing a VIC-20, and playing a text-based adventure. But, I was very curious how the Expander cartridges worked, and what the Pros and Cons were to them. This has answered all my questions regarding them. Thanks so much for making this video.
Also, any idea why the EPROM burner didn't just include the start ROM on-board? Seems unnecessary to have to load it separately every time. I feel like the odds of damaging that chip is high due to all the handling.
I'm enjoying the reviews and teardowns of 8-bit home computing peripherals. Please keep it up!
Great video as usual!
Sayntavian I actually have yet to see a bad video from this guy!
I didn't miss it.. and although a little bit different from the others I think it was quite interesting! If you think that are TV shows that cost millions of dollars to make and are way less interesting and accurate than what this guy does, that gives him a great lot of credit on his achievements! In all of his videos it's easily shown that he adores this stuff and I think that those people that started disliking that A.I. Video like crazy are a bunch of cry babies and spoiled kids used to have everything given for granted!
This is the type of content that should be heavily supported in TH-cam to at least counteract the other type of useless one that's usually composed of brainless teenagers playing FPS while heavily cursing to try to earn a quick buck!
I might agree that his approach might have been a little bit naive.. but maybe that was on purpose in order to reach a bigger audience that does not have a clue about how A.I. works (nor it wants too with a lot of detail).. having that, I still don't consider it to be a bad video!
Holy crap! Would you people just let it go already!
Amazing.. Please keep doing these kind of videos. This channel is an online archival museum which stays in history.
Glad to see more videos from you
Another great and interesting video. Brings back memories of me writing BASIC programs on my VIC-20.
I just love those add-on cards episodes. Please, keep them coming!
I had this cartridge!! ❤️ Loved my VIC-20, Jupiter Lander and Omega Race! ❤️ Had no tape recorder at first and had to type in every basic games every time before I could play. Every time... 😝
I wonder if the Immortal John Hancock has all this stuff in his crazy collection?
Wow what a blast from the past. I had the SuperExpander, and i remember typing the Garfield programme. That was like 33yrs ago !. Thanks for the flashback.
loved your vid! been watching for a long time now, i love your channel!
That bit about putting the EPROM into the ZIF socket and then running the program by the SYS command was fascinating and quite clever. I wish there were more programs that would load like that!!
Oh, man, I remember the Commodore VIC-20 and the SUPER Expander.
Love your channel. It brings back so many memories from my youth.
You should make an episode or two on all of the peripherals that you have laying around that don't warrant a individual episode.
Just curious… where are you getting these sample programmes from? Thanks.
Much love for the Vic-20. As a 10 or 11 year old, I spent many hours programming on that ol' tub and the 3.5k limit was a right pain.
Gotta be careful that my nostalgia goggles don't steam up! ;-)
Ah, my first computer. I've probably still got Super Expander somewhere. And a light pen!
I've never even owned a vic 20 and I still find this stuff fascinating! Thanks 8-Bit Guy!
One factor leading to the low memory was the price of RAM in the early 80's. Dynamic RAM was pretty bad, static RAM was crazy expensive. The VIC-20 had static RAM (5Kbyte), so putting 18 or 6K in it would have increased the price too much (I'm guessing a bit there on the reasoning at Commodore).
-
I had one as a kid... did not like it that much. I really liked the C-64.
- Eddy
i guess a vic-20 with 64k would have cost much more than a c-64
After reaching the limits of the VIC-20 without getting a memory expander, I wanted a C-64. There was a price war with TSR resulting in the prices going down. Instead my dad sent me a Plus-4, which I couldn't do anything with since the tape drive port wasn't compatible with the VIC-20.
The 2 RAM chips in the EPROM programmer are 6116 CMOS SRAMs, which are 2Kx8 each, for a total of 4KB of RAM. I would expect that they are used to hold an image of the source or destination EPROM chip in the socket. Presumably either a 2716 2Kx8, or 2732 4Kx8 EPROM. That huge ferrite inductor/transformer would be for a switching converter to generate the rather high (21.5V, IIRC) programming voltage needed for the 2716 series chips, from the much lower voltage rails available from the VIC-20.
I have a VIC-20 but only because it has a kick ass version of Omega Race. For the Eprom burner, 2K and 4K makes it capable of copying or making Atari 2600 ROMs.
Quite honestly, Omega Race is the only reason I kept my VIC as long as I did.
Omega Race was a good game on the VIC-20 I got later. I got my VIC-20 with Radar Ratrace, their take on Rally X. Supposedly it was licensed but they didn't use the cars.
Big Thumbs up, I loved it, I am glad you are back to your roots, your last video scared me. Again, great job and thanks for sharing, keep them coming!!!
You mentioned HAM radio in earlier video. Can you perhaps do a video or series of video on what is HAM radio, it's history and how it works? Possible for anyone to get started in it? Great video as usual!
it's like a normal radio but it can only be used by pigs
Even cooler, would be to highlight some of the ham radio cartridges/boards made for the 8-bit machines, such as the above VIC-20 and C64.
Also, if you're interested in ham radio, here's a good starting point: www.arrl.org/what-is-ham-radio
It's a great hobby.
+post #876218 Lol
Thanks JonsMG for the website. Lots of great info there. Still would be great if Dave can talk us through some of this and show us his equipment. I had no idea there were cartridges for 8 bit machines. Wow!
Hmmm SDR on a C64? that would be kinda awesome
I had a Vic-20 with Super Expander in the 80s, I was gutted when I later got a C64 and discovered it was not included as standard or even available for it.
You'll be happy to hear that there was/is a Super Expander for the C64, not quite as common as the Vic-20 version, but it's out there...
Good work David.
I know this is an old video, but just tripped across your video. I used to work at Gloucester Computer Company in the early 80's. We used to make the PROMqueen for the VIC20 and a larger version for the C64 almost 40 years ago! Talk about memories! These were marketed as simple microprocessor development systems used to build other single board computers. We also sold V20 and C64 cartridges for EPROMS that you could put EPROMS into that would auto boot for games and other software. Wow! I remember taping the board layouts for some of those cartridges back in the when the process was purely optical. This was my first computing job. Taught me a quite a bit about electronics and 6502 programming. I miss those days! I don't know who TACTEC is, but it is NOT the original company.
It seems commodore could've gone a lot further in the market if they woulda just added those chips to the motherboard as standard.
Or even as a pack-in with a new system. It would have been even better if the Super Expander hadn't conflicted with the Programmers' Aid cartridge. :)
If only there had been a VIC-20 Super with this built in. It would have cost more of course, but would have been a huge hit.
His shirt says "what happens in the Holodeck stays in the Holodeck" and I think it might have been a wink to we all know what.
PLPantherPL I think you might be right on with that thought. Nice observation. But, more importantly... where can I get one of those awesome T-Shirts?
Thanks for another great video. I hope you're not upset about the mixed reaction to your AI video. I think it's great that you tried something different.
Again an excellent video. More commodore stuff, please :-)
Great video, thanks for showing those to us. It's always interesting to see what was available and their features and quirks.
Why was the Artificial intelligence video removed?
..because none of his methods were grounded in reality at all... coming from someone who has made an ai that learns to write sort-of well.
I saw in one of his 8 bit keys episodes he said in the comments he ultimately removed it because of copyright issues with the Star Trek footage used
he wrote a long statement about deleted AI video on his patreon page:
www.patreon.com/8BitGuy1
... in which he proposes an idea that's even more absurd than a government conspiracy: "In actuality, I was thinking more along the lines of some random guy like me creating it in his basement and just deciding not to tell anyone about it [...]".
Happy to see him back on things he actually knows a thing or two about. Love the retro computing stuff.
Why would I, ganymedeIV4? Never said anything to that effect. And what's with the attempted insult? Chill, dude.
David, appreciated the video. I like these kinds of obscure accessory videos. Def worth the time to record some history about them.
Back in 1980 you needed a 4K screen for coding. 3:19 .
That "4K" means four kilobytes of random access memory.
@@melissanovak8261 r/woosh
Ah, 30 years ago I spent hundreds of hours melting my brick with the Super Expander! I also had a cartridge, which I believe was called 'Programmer's Aid', which boosted RAM by 8k and added BASIC editing functions such as 'renumber'. I was SO frustrated that I couldn't use both cartridges at once.
Someone in another comment reminded me that if you got more than one RAM cartridge you were supposed to get a memory board so you could use them both at the same time.
The VIC20 was the first computer I bought with my first paycheck. Cost about $97, about 1983? Even bought a FORTH cartridge, but never had the resources to learn it.
The Vic-20 was a quirky system compared to its competitors. You mentioned the lack of RAM and the outdated BASIC, but you left out one of its most bizarre omissions. There's no hardware support for sprites. This made video games a bit of pain to program.
As he said, it looks like BASIC came straight from the PET, so maybe the lack of sprites was part of that, too.
Oh man, those Ataris. I had those two as a kid. I miss them.
I really dug the music for your game. Good stuff!
If you feel like having not enough informations for some devices, but you want to talk about them anyway, you could make a "group video", where you just randomly pick the devices you prefer and say what you wanted to. While I appreciated that you showed us the EPROM programmer, I was a bit surprised, since it has almost nothing to do with the video, apart being a VIC-20 expansion. Nice video as always!
Well, that was sort of the idea... since it might be a while before I come back to the VIC-20, I figured that was the best place to show it.
nice music
i am completely fascinated at this old technology and at the same time grateful that I got to live during the NES era. I didn't have to worry about lack of memory that much.
I liked the AI video. It wasn't only about AI, it was philosophical too.
I enjoyed that sample from your game as well as the visual graphics. The visual graphics help me understand easier.
I wonder what computers will look like when our current computers are out of date.
LackedPuppet 902 probably like old computers
Well Cave, you would know a thing or two about that, seeing as you left a trail of old to new behind through sheer science!
@joshbeech I think you should write 64 bit guy instead of 8 bit guy.
This was the life of the computer enthusiast back in the 1980's. The TI99 4/a had the same thing in 2 cartridges; Mini Memory and Extended BASIC. Mini Memory added assembly language programming along with the extra BASIC commands.
Isn’t it spelled EEPROM? I don’t know, just asking.
oh okay i didnt know that. eprom and eeprom are different? okay well i guess i know now! thanks.
Eep! The ROMs are back!
*uv* light
Officer Meow Meow Fuzzyface *UV* light
I learn new things about old tech all the time from you 8 bit guy. As a 80's baby, my first PC was a Tandy 1000 which I only learned enough to start exe. programs such as Kings and Police Quest. Later owned a 100 MHz Pentium running Windows 95, later 98. miss those giant loud tough PCs. Also remember being pissed when I bought a Gateway and it had no floppy drive! only DVD rom. the nerve.
Great video. It's nice to see tech that is no longer used today, being used again. Thanks.