In 1983, I got my first computer, a VIC 20, at my birthday. Christmas same year, got me a long neck (industrial?) Handic color CRT monitor. Handic was mostly known for it's walkie talkies and other radio equipment, like police radio scanners.
Nice Commodore VIC-Switch video. I'm glad my VIC-Switch video helped with your review. It was nice seeing you do some extensive testing with the different computers and drives.
Hi Everyone. This time Retro Relix reviews, restores and performs numerous serial switch tests on the 1983 VIC-SWITCH from Handic Software AB. Afterwards, we play the games featured during our testing. Enjoy...
My senior year in school, which started in the fall of 1983, we had one of those with 1 1541 disk drive and 1 printer with at first 7 and then later 8 C-64s.
Important note: Burst mode is in absolutely no way related to fastload cartridges. Epyx fastload, nor any fastloaders, can enable burst mode. Burst mode requires a CIA chip in the drive. You would need a 1570, 1571, or 1581 drive for this. Burst mode additionally requires the CIA chip in the computer to be correctly routed to the serial bus. You would need a Commodore 128 (running in 128 or cp/m mode) for this.
I think there was a hack that routed some serial port wires to the user port and needed a program to support it on the C64 to allow the burst mode. I may be wrong though.
I sold some these to a School here in NSW Australia, they did work, but when C64 was NEW, the 1540 or 41 Disk Drive was $1299.00, Printers stated around $800, when released, So Sharing them worked, but dived off when the 1541 was $199.00 by the End of it's run ..
I remember my secondary school had 2 of them, one side was just 4 c64's sharing 1 drive/printer and the main group was 8 sharing the drive/printer. I remember helping the teacher load Logo and Cave of the word wizzard I think that was it's name. It was slow as you may have guessed and sometimes loading would hang and you would pull out the serial bus cable of the computer causing the hang. I remember sometimes the 1541 getting the red light on disc spinning all the time fault from time to time. I can't remember the chip causing that.
Ehhh ? I am Retired, So no warranty repairs available here .. @@steviebboy69but disconnecting the Serial Lead while accessing a Disk, is not a good Idea, anyway ...
My elementary school had these. The only thing I clearly remember them being used for was to load Logo onto a bunch of C64s from one drive. I remember playing around programming the turtle a little bit, but nothing detailed about what we or I did with it stands out in my memories.
