Commodore Advert - January 1982

This nice gate-fold sales material was made for the VIC-20 a few months after its UK launch.

It's full of archetypal 80s people looking at screens, and the blurb contains information on how the VIC 20 can help with home accounts, menu planning and even as a small-business machine.

This latter suggestion is perhaps a little optimistic given the VIC-20's 23-character display line.

It also shows in detail all the available interface connections, and included a full-size image of the computer in the middle of the booklet.

What VIC-20 can do for you, and some archetypal 80s families

Commodore announced some possible follow-ups to the VIC-20 at the Commodore Computer Show in London on the 3rd-5th June, 1982, although these seemed to be along the lines of "throw out a load of random stuff and see what sticks".

These included the VIC-10 - a £100 (£460 in 2024) bottom-of-the-range games and music synthesizer which used a 6566 video chip, the same SID sound chip that had been developed for the Commodore 64 and which provided a 40-column hi-res display, together with 2K RAM.

Oh, and no resident BASIC, as this was available as a cartridge for extra cash.

Even so, apart from the last two features, the VIC-10 was actually much better on paper than the VIC-20 it was meant to be the poor relation of.

Also announced was the VIC-30 - the same as the VIC-10 but with 16K RAM and a 20K BASIC/OS built in, at a cost of £250 (£1,150) - and the £400 (£1,840) Commodore 64, which was more-or-less a VIC-30 but with 64K RAM, the ability to accept a second processor, and moveable memory mapping^[1].

Of all these machines, only the '64 saw the light of day, although a 16K machine known as the Commodore C16 was also released.