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Vicky Twenty - home made Vic20 - case closed

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 contacts and rub the conductive pads with soft pencil, as some of the keys on this particular keyboard were a bit difficult. 
Note the pink LED, it's not as searing as it appears in the photos.


original feet and badges replaced. I have the silver serial number sticker from this case, removed without damaging it, but I'm not putting it back on because I feel the serial number and other information relates to the  computer that the case used to be part of. (It does say 'made in England' though which is still true for Vicky.)

I love the finish. I can taste strawberry milkshake when I look at it. It really looks like pink injection-moulded plastic. I had intended to buy a C64 white keyboard (the one with the graphics on the front of the keys) because I thought it would go better with the pink, but I now like the brown keys very much. They're original Vic stylee, they match the badges and penultimate cart.

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  1. robcar16 July 2022 at 02:06

    Hey, great project! This definetely deserves more interactions (views and comments). I don't know about others, but it took me a while to publish this comment; I had to create an account in blogger, which I hadn't. Maybe others had the same difficulties too. So, just don't give up and let's keep in touch!

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