"Move over Atari. William Shatner would like to introduce to you, the Commodore Vic-20. The wonder

[tblue37]

computer of the 1980s."

Link to tweet

[OAITW r.2.0]

1. The VIC-20 was the 1st computer I owned.

Last edited Sat Aug 27, 2022, 11:49 PM - Edit history (1)

Learned BASIC on it. 1st MicroLogic Flight Simulator, too*. {*On edit, I think that happened when I upgraded to the C-64}

But the wife had an IBM PC for work. (2) 5-1/4 floppies. And a modem! So I could run LOTUS 1-2-3 DOS and connect with a BBS, Mid 80s was an awesome time....

[Ferrets are Cool]

4. Me too. I had almost forgotten about it. My pride and joy was the 720 baud modem.

[House of Roberts]

2. A company I worked for in 1984 had a CNC programmer

who bought a new Commodore 64, and used it to plot toolpaths for an ellipse. He even got it to load into the ASCII computer so it could be sent to the CNC mill we needed to run the part with. That was pretty cutting edge (pun intended) technology at the time,

[OAITW r.2.0]

6. That was an era of change for machine tools.

CNC programming changed the game and multi-axis machining centers changed the concept of metal fabrication. Now we are into printing fuse-able powdered metal that has hi-strength properties. Great for design validation. From idea to actuality.

[keithbvadu2]

3. We laugh at them now but those early brands of computers were fantastic at the time.

We laugh at them now but those early brands of computers were fantastic at the time.

Accessible to the ordinary consumer.

.

[OAITW r.2.0]

7. Yeah, not me. I went the VIC 20 route....saved a lot of money.

That I later spent scaling up my PC capabilities. I probably spent close to $15,000 in PC upgrades in the 90's....

[highplainsdem]

12. God, that price! But that was back in the days when even

fairly slow laser printers were over a thousand dollars (which would be like $2300+ today).

[mitch96]

5. Holy crap, a blast from the past.. I had a VIC-20 way back when.. nt

[highplainsdem]

8. Didn't have that, but did have an Osborne, which was

supposedly "portable."

(Glad we're long past those days, she added, typing on a tablet screen...)

[highplainsdem]

9. Also had an Atari Portfolio, the world's first palmtop computer.

[LudwigPastorius]

10. I hope The Shat was able to take the bread he made from those commercials and...

buy himself a more realistic hair helmet.

[Orrex]

11. I absolutely loved my C64

[IngridsLittleAngel]

13. I owned one... Briefly

Got it in the late 80's and wound up trading it to an aspiring collector for a number of goodies for my C64 - a couple disk drives, some joysticks, a number of pieces of software and... I don't recall what else. By that point, I'd owned a C64 for a few years and was totally attached to it, so, I can't say I had a ton of interest or need for a VIC-20. Which is why I traded it for the sake of getting some goodies for my C64 system.

Still, no doubt that the VIC-20 impacted computer history. First color computer to sell for under $300. First computer and modem combination to sell for under $400. First computer to sell a million units (eventually sold over 3 million before it was retired in 1985). While the true "wonder computer of the 80's" probably wound up being the C64, the VIC most certainly made history itself.

And no question: It did indeed put both the Atari 2600 and Intellivision to shame with what it could do compared to both.

[jmowreader]

14. I quickly learned to hate mine

You had to either buy an expansion RAM board that cost as much as the computer did, or learn to code EXTREMELY carefully to get a program into the 3kb RAM in that thing.

It was a glorious day when I finally got an Apple IIc.