Vic-20 on a 10 Worst List

[Fester]

The Vic-20 is a good childhood memory for me. It was the first 'puter I ever set my eyes on.

Dan Tynan, PC World remembers it differently. :-)

The 10 Worst PCs of All Time

Fester

[Rabbi]

I didn't think that the VIC-20 was so bad for its day.  I think the article is unfair.

[amazing]

the vic 20 is a cool machine too..i still use it time to time
and in that time it was the best u could get

[PMC]

No mention of the creaking Spectrum +2A?  What about the Commodore Plus 4 or the Sinclair PC200?

All much more worthy than the VIC of a place in the list of shame.

[Ilwrath]

Yeah, I think the VIC got a bad rap, there.  Sure, it was underpowered, even for the time, but it was cheap and easy to use.  It also paved the way for the C64, which was probably the single most important computer of its time.

If they had to pick a Commodore product, there were tons more worthy.  The +4 as someone already mentioned was quite a useless machine.  The Amiga 600 would be another fine choice.  Any machine that is less powerful and less compatible than the one it was supposed to replace sounds like a winner in this competition...

[adolescent]

C16 or Plus/4 were much worse.  And, how dare he insult Captain Kirk!

[Plaz]

The Vic-20 was crummy, but I don't think it deserves to be in the worst 10. Where's the sinclair, Colt PC10, plus 4, the 80186 PC clone (yup I worked on those) and especially the tandy "color computer I"? The tandy also came with 4K mem, but had ever poorer support than the Vic. Both the Vic and tandy could get more memory installed BTW. I would probably put Vic some where around 20-25th worst.

Plaz

[PPC]

This one about the apple III is hillarious:

"users were supposed to pick up the machine and drop it to re-seat the chips. List prices between $4300 and $7400, depending on configuration, only added to the misery."

 :madashell:  The VIC is a great machine.

I still use it to create electrical engineering courses documents and images with the super expander cartridge.

I also make this: http://www.eskimo.com/~areed/vic/supervic_cartridge.htm

I also think the fact that it was so underpowered forced people to exhibit a lot of resourcefulness when programming it.

Look at Windows Vista and see what happens when people have just too much memory and processing power to waste... bloatware!

[Darrin]

This article wasn't fair on the old VIC-20.  This was my first computer and obviously the writer was a bit hazy about what computers were competing with the VIC at that time.  In the UK, the main competion was the ZX81 which was monochrome, had a membrane "keyboard" and came with a whopping 1KB of RAM.  Suddenly the VIC's 3.5KB looks huge.

According to the article, most other computers came with "16KB of RAM".  Hmmm... if I remember correctly, a 16KB RAM was available for the ZX81 at a cost of about 3 times that of the computer and due to the iffy connection to the computer (it looked like a pack of cigarettes stick onto a VHS video tape when attached) it could cause the ZX81 to crash if you jolted the computer.

Anyway, I used my VIC with a "Super Expander" for an extra 3KB of RAM (I think), additional BASIC commands and "high res" graphics.

[Darrin]

eslapion wrote:
 
I also make this: http://www.eskimo.com/~areed/vic/supervic_cartridge.htm

That's sweet.  I'd have killed for one of them back in my VIC days.  By the way, my VIC-20 still works after all these years, but is in storage at my brother's house in the UK.  He should still have my Super Expander too.

[hooligan]

I still have a Vic-20, and it was one of my first computers. Lets face it fellows, it _was_ crap. Fond memories of it doesnt make it a better computer :-)

[skurk]

The Vic-20 was OK, at least you can do SOMETHING with it.  Play games, code, whatever.  I never owned one, but used one at my friends house, including playing with one in the Vice emulator.  I've tried worse:

I once owned a zx81, now that was crap.  The socalled keyboard wore out, so you had to really squeeze your finger really hard in order to get a response.  It also came with 1kB RAM and was terribly slow despite its 3.25MHz Z80.

Why that one is not on top of the list is beyond me.

[Plaz]

Around 1984 I also built a 20k expansion out of spare parts from work for my Vic to make it more use-able. But the 20 charater display was really it's weakest point. I'd have to say that's probably why it wound up in this guys worst 10. At the time I much prefered a pixelated monocrome 80 char displays over what the Vic had. Sure some of the games were OK, but I got more fun out of my Atari 2600 and quarters at the arcade than the Vic.

Plaz

[TheMud]

I LOVED my Vic 20 - After that I had an Commodore 16 :-P ... And then it went all Amiga for me... I skiped the C64 back then ;-)