I was doing what they called “pryo”at a Audio/ Video store in my hometown for 2 weeks or so and the VIC-20 had just come out. Since I by that time had already played around with my friends ZX-81 writing simple basic programmes the store owner asked me if I could programme anything just to show the screen moving and so forth. Who was I to say no with such an opportunity to play around with a computer rather than stand in a shop trying to guide customers on things I had no clue about. I managed to write some lines of code to show the store name in changing colors and so forth.. very basic programming for sure 🙂 Anyway a few months later I was in the store with my dad and bought the Vic 20 and a tape machined for it.  This was end of 81-beginning of 82. Man that tape memory gave us a hard time.

The problem with the thing was that the mechanics for the opening/closing and activation of the start and stop was so rough on the edges that you needed like a kilo of pressure to push down the buttons and then when you pressed stop the play and record buttons would fly up with such a force that the screw for adjusting the magnetic pickup  fixing point  would simply come loose.  Thus 90 % of the time the cover was open for the tuning. Effectively you could buy a brand new cassette with software on that could not be read so you had to tune it. And then ofcourse when saving your on programmes you could not be sure if the header was aligned the same each time. Thus you had to be an expert tuner in the end to get access to any software you had made.

I loved the VIC 20. It was the machine that taught me the computer language Basic more than any other  computer. While I had enjoyed the ZX81 my friend had I could never get used to the  pre-fixed keys for the commands that had to be pressed. I preferred just to write the commands as normal text.  Unfortunately none of us had paid attention to the typing lessons though in 7th grade as by that time there was not even talk about computers and typing for the sake of typing on a typewriter was for sure not cool in our books. I think though most of the guys who grew up in that age became the fastest two finger typists anyone has seen 🙂