Ayale-com.472
net.micro
utzoo!decvax!yale-com!evans
Sat May  1 21:22:26 1982
VIC Query Responses
A week or so ago I asked for opinions on the VIC-20.  Six people asked me to
post the replies I received, so here they are.  I only got two responses
(thanks if you are one of those two).  Does anyone have a different opinion?


                                               Eric Evans
                                               decvax!yale-comix!evans


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22 column display?  YECCCH!  If you can spare a few more bucks, check
the OSI Challenger I (around $300 as an assembled board, cabinet and
power supply extra), or the TRaSh-80 color computer ($400 list, some
discounts available).  Otherwise, you might consider a Sinclair ZX81
($100 kit, $150 assembled) with a decent keyboard (around $50 depending
on what/where).  This requires a (very) small amount of hardware
hacking to carry off.  Yes it hasn't got as many gizmos but it's
assumed you can't afford them anyway.


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The Toronto Board of Education bought several of these turkeys last year.
I only have the details of the cretinisms from my mother who works for a
rival Board of Ed (Toronto Separate Schools) and talked to teachers using
these machines to  see if The Separate School Board should buy them -- so
this is rather second hand evidence which does not cover all the flaws
(and none of the features) of this micro -- but here goes --

1)  One of the chips (at least) is bad.  The screen wobbles and goes into
reverse video as a result.  Even machines which were perfect at the time of
purchase went bad in 2-3 months.  The went to the stor for that, and presumably
were shipped to Commodore--but the friendly computer store wasnt telling.

2) The power supplies are bad in some machines.  These seemed to be store
fixable -- but  in at least one case enough damage was done during a power
surge that the  unit smoked as all its chips fried.  Another send back to
Commodore

3) The cables arent long enough.  (This is supposed to have been fixed by
Commodore now -- I have no idea if it really has, or whether this was only
a local problem)

4) They arent blindingly fast.

5) They dont stand up to student use -- keyboard get jammed (and not with jam)
quite frequently.   The pet doesnt -- I dont know what the difference is.

If I  were you I would wait and see what the new set of  68000 based systems
are like.  I have seen three advertised recently for aproximately 4K --
unless you have to get something now it wuld probably be better and see if
you can get a good one of these.

                                               Laura Creighton

                                               decvax!utzoo!laura


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