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 =============================================================================== 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. =============================================================================== 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 =============================================================================== ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.