deering@ubc-visi (08/04/83)
I am looking for an 80-column adaptor for the Commodore 64 to support ASCII terminal emulation and word-processing. This week I tried out the "Video Pak 80" cartridge by Data 20 Corp. and this is what I found: Pro: - It provides a very readable 80 columns by 24 lines on a monochrome video monitor. - It gives you erase-to-end-of-line and erase-to-end- of-screen functions which are useful when using the so-called "screen editor". Con: - It doesn't support use of user-designed characters in RAM, but rather uses only the C-64 character ROMs. That is unfortunate because the C-64 ROM set does not include all the ASCII characters and is therefore inadequate for terminal emulation. - The software ROM supplied in the cartridge is mapped into address 9000 hex in the C-64 address space, just before the Basic interpreter. That's fine if you are using Basic but it is a very bad location for non-Basic applications which want to use a maximum amount of contiguous RAM. - The terminal emulation software built into the cartridge has one very serious flaw -- you have to shift to get lower case characters! (It may have other problems as well, but I did not investigate any further after discovering that bit of stupidity.) However, you can always use a different terminal emulation program and ignore the one provided in the cartridge. - The C64TERM program that comes with the VICMODEM works OK with the cartridge UNLESS you enter its menu mode. The menu does not appear, which makes it difficult to set options and such. (It also may hang up the system at that point; I don't remember exactly.) - A number of useful programs fail to work when the cartridge is plugged in, such as the "DOS Wedge", SUPERMON64, both monitors which come with the assembler system, and (naturally) the character editor program. When things fail, you often have to power the computer off and on to get it back to a usable state. - It is very slow in writing the screen. A Basic program which takes 9 seconds to list on the normal Commodore screen takes 16 seconds to list in the cartridge's 40 column mode and 28 seconds in 80 column mode (all times are approximate). Also there is an unpleasant flicker when scrolling, and the CNTRL key does not perform its normal function of slowing down the scrolling rate. - The cartridge extends 5 inches beyond the back of the keyboard, which makes it awkward for operating on your lap. That might also be a problem on shallow desks. - It costs too much -- $279.99 Canadian (retail). Perhaps some of the problems can be fixed. For example, maybe there is a way to access RAM-based character sets; maybe it is possible to copy the code into a more sensible place in memory. Such possibilities are not mentioned in the skimpy documentation provided. I tried the obvious things; I don't feel like disassembling the ROMs to find out. Now, does anybody know of a better (in any dimension) 80-column adaptor for the Commodore 64? Steve Deering, Vancouver decvax!microsoft!ubc-vision!deering