 Welcome back to Retro Tech. Today we're gonna go over a couple of different things. I wanna go over something I recently picked up at an old pawn shop, and that is a Commodore computer. That's this Commodore Vic 20. Now this is the predecessor to the Commodore 64. I'd like to go through it just a little bit briefly, talk about the package I picked up. And then what I wanna do is run a demonstration of what I'm planning on doing is I'm gonna run the video signal from the Commodore 64 Vic 20 to this Sony PVM eight inch test monitor I have. And then I'm gonna daisy chain the signal from that to this consumer CRT, which is just a Samsung 19 inch television from the year 1997. So sit back, see if you learned something today. I hope you enjoy this episode. And right here on the left hand side is obviously the Vic 20 computer. And Vic 20 ran a form of basic, which was an early operating system for computers in the 1980s. What I need to tell you about this unit is it's got its own power supply. This is a later version of it. There was an earlier version that had a power supply that was two prong. That's not this unit. This has its own Commodore power supply. And if you ever get a Commodore computer with this type of power supply, you must check the power supply even if it appears to be working because it can appear to be working and just fry your Commodore computer. And I will go through that in a future episode on how to test that. Some other things to note, this has RF output but I don't use that, I use composite. And that's just got the same style of plug as a Sega Genesis 1 or Mega Drive, but it's not the same pinout. So you can't just use a Sega Genesis cable with your Commodore computer. But that's the input I'm gonna be using. I've got some other cables on the table here that are pretty high quality with our higher quality gold BNC inputs to have a good connection for our daisy chain. My VIC-20 came with a box and it came with something else that's very important when you're getting an old computer. That's these wonderful spiral heavy duty manuals. Mine came with these two manuals and for a couple dollars more I was able to get this big box set of VIC-20 programs, games, graphics and more. And what you need to know is that this kind of computer, if you have never used one before, it's really great because it can be a gaming machine similar to the Atari gaming computers and the actual Atari. It actually had a little bit better performance for graphics than the Atari 2600. So it's like a little bit better Atari 2600 but it also has so much more capabilities to run software, to write your own programs and this test monitor is a SOTY Trinitron. It is a PVM8041Q. I'm gonna run a daisy chain from behind it using composite. I'll go from the Commodore to this and then to the consumer TV. What you need to know too about the Commodore VIC that's very nice is it will, it has a single controller port on the side of it. And let's go back down to the computer and take a look. It has a single port on the side of it right here for a controller port and it's a very familiar port because that actually will work with any of these controllers I have next to these boxes. So what I've got here real quick is a Atari joystick standard and then I've got a very nice Wico controller. I've got even the Sega Genesis 3 button controllers will work in there as well as these other third party controllers and then even paddle controllers. So if you have any of those controllers you can get them real cheap but they work on this machine too. Anything that has that same pin out. So the Commodore VIC 20 may have been developed in the early 80s but there are still new cartridges coming out as we speak for it. I don't know of any new ones that are gonna be developed soon but I did find these two and just so you know I bought these with my own money these are gonna be tested here in a minute but what we've got here first on the bottom is the pen ultimate cartridge and that one is a very nice cartridge that allows for RAM expansion. So the Commodore VIC 20 had very little RAM to use and very little memory at all so you had to use cartridges to either play the games or you needed cartridges that would expand your RAM but all those RAM expansion options up to 35K are available just through this cartridge and then the second cartridge is a brand new game that came out earlier this year called Cheese and Onion. They're both sold by the futurewas8bit.com and I'm gonna test them out. I'm excited to see the pen ultimate cartridge is also a multi-cart and I believe it has about 40 VIC 20 games that are the most popular games. We'll check it out and see how it looks. The first thing I'm gonna do for my daisy chain setup is to insert my AV cable into the back of my Commodore computer. Then I will take my other ends to the back of the PVM. I will be plugging in my RCA adapter for this test. I'll be using line A, so the line in will go on there and I'll be doing a daisy chain out to the TV so I can go ahead and put a second B and C on the line out on this monitor. Now I'm taking my hookups and I'm going in on the input and with my other cables, I'll go, I use a high quality monster cable for the RCA, through the video, and then a less quality for audio. Now let's go to the back of the TV. And there it is plugged into the back of the TV. While most of you know how to do this, I just want to make sure everyone does. Now that I have on my video and audio lines run, I have my TVs plugged in. I have my power supply on my Commodore plugged in and now I just need to come around and plug the power supply into the Commodore. Then I will power on the PVM, the Commodore, and the TV and let's see if we're getting our picture. I can see right away on the CRT. Our basic screen is up and there we go on our test screen. So as you can see here, this will work wonderfully. You can daisy chain like this with any PVM that has an output and that output can go to anything that is an eligible device. It doesn't have to be another television. It could be a capture card or anything. Let's go ahead and fire up one of these game cartridges. You must turn the Commodore back off before you put your cartridge in. This cartridge just loads right in the top, takes a good little squeeze, ready to go. Turn the power back on and you see we've got our operating system which actually tells us this is the pen ultimate cart and it gives us a list of games and there's a way to exit to basic at the bottom as well as to set up all of your RAM settings. So what I'm gonna do here now is maybe just let it run for a little bit. That's gonna be the most part of the technical speak. If you have any questions or comments about that part, please leave them below. But I'm gonna kind of run through some of these games so you can just kind of see how the Commodore works, how this cartridge works and then a little later on we'll also test the cheese and onion game which I'm actually more excited about. The first test I wanna show you is that I've just got this standard three button controller from a Sega Genesis Mega Drive plugged in and this is great. It just goes up and down and I mean it scrolls right through the games very easily. One of the very first games I wanted to pull up on here is Donkey Kong because this is actually a great version of Donkey Kong loading Donkey Kong. You just select it and there it is. It looks really a lot better on the PVM. Press F1 for options. F1 to start and there we go. F1 to start and I mean it plays like a dream. When you're using this stuff on these old CRTs you will get no lag which is one of the best things about going back and playing on these old machines is just having everything perfect on your timing. So let's go up here and try that. Okay, so there's two buttons on the cartridge. The one to the right is a reset button just resets you back to the game and then there's another button on the other side which appears to take you back out to the main menu. So let's try another game that's pretty popular on here, Choplifter. Oh yeah. So you can see here. I think this game looks great on CRTs especially you get some scan lines in there and you can get those scan lines even with just a composite input. There is an S video option for the Commodore VIC-20 which maybe I'll cover sometime in the future but as for now, I think you just gotta press F1. Well that changes the colors actually. And then you can actually even just some games move around your screen right there. Choplifter. Wow, so that just looks really good. You wouldn't believe the VIC-20 could do this but on a graphics comparison, you're talking about one step again above the Atari 2600. Which I really like Atari 2600 so I'm gonna feature some of those in some upcoming episodes. I've got a bunch of different types of Atari 2600s but really this is just a whole different level, better in just about every way as far as graphics is concerned. I really like the look of this. Let's try another game. Okay, so this is when I was looking for mutant camels. This one's just great. I love the way how it's just the attack of the mutant camels. It's very odd and really just something great from the 80s and wait till you see, this thing should look good on here the graphics wise but it's got this nice board. Oh yeah, that's what you wanna play through. This is a lot of fun to play on your CRT. I mean this is actually something that I think people nowadays would enjoy. Now if we wanna talk a little bit more about how daisy chaining works. Daisy chaining, I mean right now I'm just using composite but you can daisy chain any signal that has an output for a daisy chain on your monitor. And it will work with, there's no limit on the number of monitors. So you can keep daisy chaining, you could put, there we go, you could put as many monitors in a row as you want to. And that's what they used to do with these when they were using them in broadcast settings most of the time, they would just line them up. But anyway, I feel like you get the good idea here that if you're into retro computing, this is a great product. I mean to have all these games in one place and also have all the RAM options available is the deal, a really great deal. I'm gonna get a tape deck for this and we'll have some other accessories that I might follow up on the future. I will also do a demonstration on how to test your Commodore power supply in a very short video coming up in the future. Let's go ahead and take a quick look at the new game. Back to the new game, I've just put it in the Commodore, flip the power switch on, and wow, okay. I'm gonna just let this run for a minute while I take a look at this. And I'm gonna just focus in on CRT for a moment. Obviously different ways to play, get ready. And this is really why I wanted to check out this game. It's, wow, this is just about like a platformer like Mario or something, and I had heard that. The controls are amazing, and you can tell that I will not have to worry about my timing. Ooh, being off, unless it's my fault. I think the point is you just collect these pills, stay away from this bad stuff, you can go through, oh, different areas, okay. Very cool though. I can't say how, I'm so happy that people are still making these things. I'd like to eventually one day come up with a game for something like this, just to keep these machines going. That was a good fall. Very cool, the way they use the graphics on here, and I just can't believe that's just from this little Vic-20. Anyway, you can kinda get the gist of it. I might do a video playing some more. I've got some people that wanna come over and play this later. I might let them do a little bit more demo on this video channel. And, but anyway, I appreciate you staying with me if you stayed all the way to the end. I hope that you learned something. If you have any questions about the Commodore Vic-20 or running a daisy chain setup like we did today, if you'd like a closer look at anything, please leave it in the comments or message me, and let me know. Thanks again for watching Retro Tech. Have a great day.