New Stuff For Old Stuff :: Blog

T his parcel from Rod at Future Was 8-bit has landed at the perfect time.  The Vicky Twenty board is a clone of the Vic20, tape loading should work, but since breathing life into my Vicky, I haven't tried it yet. Andy at Hewco makes consistently excellent Vic20 games - Vic Nibbler, Pumpkid, Escape 2020, Cheesy Trials and more... Hewco games have their own folder on my SD2IEC card. I will add this, I won't be loading from tape every time, but doing it occasionally is fun. Tape loading is something I guess we're all grateful that we don't *have* to do any more, but the nostalgia is strong when you occasionally do it because you want to. (Muscle memory automatically typed ,8 after the quotes though...)  I'm using a black datasette here (with adaptor) because of half a dozen datasettes, this is the one that works the best. (I guess I should learn how to service the others.) Perfect! Fitting a playable game into the unexpanded Vic's 3.5k is an admirable achievemen...

S ince early on I'd felt that pink was the right colour for my Vicky Twenty (so named and gender-reassigned by Rob, designer of the board ). I've been undecided about the case. One option was to design a perspex enclosure, with transparent top / opaque pink keyboard bezel. Another is to spray an original case. I went for the latter to remain in keeping with the classic breadbin design, and used the most blotchily-yellowed of the cases I have. Badges, stickers and feet removed, case scrubbed. The paint is Plastikote satin cameo pink . The can doesn't mention primer so after a test on the inside, here goes: Several thin coats later, here we are reassembling her. Internal SD2IEC fitted and slot cut in the case. I'd love to tell my teenage self that I'd be fitting a storage device into a Vic that stores gigabytes on a thin card around an inch square. No-one needs to see more pictures of keys being scrubbed. In this case I stripped the keyboard to clean the pcb conta...

S ince completing the board I've spent a few days scratching my head over why it hasn't been starting up.  Long story short, I had assumed that the W65C02S (available new today) was a drop-in replacement for the original 6502. It isn't*  With a borrowed 6502 in place, it's working well, and the picture is great.  *  (NB  The Byte Attic has designed an adaptor board . I'm in two minds because it doesn't look very discreet.)

M y Vicky Twenty is very nearly complete.  As things stand, the board and every single component is new*. The processor and VIAs are newly-manufactured (W65C02 and W65C22).  Obviously the Vic1 chip isn't manufactured today, but there is 'new old' stock about. I have been able to buy a Vic 1, date code 1987 (which seems very late). It obviously hasn't been in a computer before, passes the acetone test and works. The same goes for two of the ROMs - character and BASIC. But I haven't been able to buy a new-old Kernal ROM (901486-07). I am able to borrow one - all of the boards I have, have this particular ROM socketed. I don't know whether all of this indicates that the Kernal has proved less reliable than the other two. I recently bought a TL866 for another project. Of all the retro-computing hardware things I've had to learn to do, making ROMs has been one of the simplest. So far, everything has been very easy and worked first time.  I'm not sure that it...