Saturday, January 7, 2017

My Hardware #3 - Commodore VC-20

The next computer in my collection is a boxed Commodore VC-20. I got it from an internet auction around 2 years ago for an equivalent of 40 euro. The box is in good condition, and the VC-20 itself needed only a bit of cleaning. One thing that I noticed is that the serial number on the bottom chassis doesn't match the one on the mainboard. But as everything works fine, it isn't an issue for me. Unfortunately there was no power supply in the set, and it was an oldest VC-20 with a 2-prong power connector, so I couldn't use the C64's power supply, as with newer models.
The cool power supply, that you see on the pictures on the bottom of the post was assembled by my good friend Darek, who posted a great YouTube video with the whole assembly process, and my VC-20 running some scene demos:



Besides making the power supply, Darek also recapped the VC-20, and mounted some heatsinks on the VIC chip, which tends to get too hot.

Overall the VC-20 is a nice little machine, even if it lacks the graphics and sound capabilities of the C64. I didn't play many games on it, but I use it frequently to watch scene demos. Maybe in the past few years there wasn't many demos coming out for the VC/VIC-20, but there is planty of good quality prods on pouet.net, by groups like ORB, PwP, or Dekadence. Below are some videos of IMHO the best VIC prods:







For people interested more in VC/VIC-20 I strongly recommend visiting the DENIAL VIC-20 webpage and forum.

My VC-20:

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