Skip to main content

Questions tagged [vic-20]

For questions about the Commodore VIC-20

Filter by
Sorted by
Tagged with
24 votes
2 answers
4k views

Why does the VIC-20 have 5KiB of RAM?

Why does the VIC-20 have 5 KiB of RAM? Why not a multiple of 4 as any other systems, e.g 4 KiB or 8 KiB. Is there a technical reason for that?
Biff Iam's user avatar
  • 2,229
6 votes
1 answer
1k views

Why does the Vic-20 have two VIA chips?

The Vic-20 uses the 6522 VIA for peripheral I/O. However, it has two of them. I find this surprising, particularly considering minimizing cost was an important design goal. Is there a reason why it ...
rwallace's user avatar
  • 63.6k
5 votes
4 answers
3k views

How does memory addressing/mapping work in 8-bit systems?

If I attach a 16 KIB EEPROM to a 6502 or similar, and put some kind of operating system on it, it will run fine, but won't have access to any other chips. So, when a Commodore VIC20 had 5k of ram and ...
user10868's user avatar