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VIC 20: Difference between revisions
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[[File:commodorevic20 3233.jpg|frame]] The first computer of any kind to sell a million units, and an ancestor of the [[Commodore 64]].
Jack Tramiel, founder and president of Commodore Business Machines, had always been interested in the low end of the market, and expressed this in Commodore's first computer, the Personal Electronic Translator [PET], in 1977. But in 1979, a spreadsheet program called VisiCalc became a [[Killer App]] for the [[Apple II]] (and the [[
The new computer used the PET's 6502 CPU and operating system, but had a lot less memory, just 5K, and the MOS 6560 Video Interface Chip [VIC], which produced 22×23 character graphics with eight colors. VIC also produced four channels of sound. The new computer also had a cartridge port, and an [[Atari 2600]]-compatible joystick port. It did not have the built-in display or cassette drive of the PET. Instead, it had a 'breadbox' case, with a port for a cassette drive, and could connect to TV sets. VIC eventually became the computer's name, but project manager Micheal Tomczyk thought that Vic sounded like a truck driver's name, so he attached a friendly number to the end. It went on sale in Japan in October 1980 as the VIC-1001, and in the United States in May 1981 as the VIC-20, for $299.95.
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[[Category:Videogame Systems]]
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