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Announced at an International Managers conference in London in April 1980 by Commodore's founder Jack Tramiel, the Vic 20 was an advancement of the original Commodore PET, purpose designed for the home market. The VIC 20 was revolutionary in that it offered colour graphics at a modest price and used the same 6502 processor as the PET. The Video Interface Chip (VIC) provided up to 16 colours, 8 for the foreground and 8 for the background or border.
Its name was derived from the decidated chip that controlled the screen display - the Video Interface Chip or VIC, but in the early days of development it didn't really have a name. Most of the engineers liked the name Vixen, and sketches of a cute little fox to be used as a logo were even prepared. The name Vickie was also mentioned, but after months of procastination (sorry, serious research using thesauri and such), VIC was decided. However VIC by itself sounded a bit naked, so they decided to add a number. The only meaningful number was VIC-22 (based on 22 columns) but given Tramiel's "user friendly computer" attitude at the time, it wasn't considered to be "friendly" enough, so 20 was used instead. Ironically Vixen was vetoed as a name because it had undesirable connotations in German, but VIC later turned out to mean something even worse. As a result, the German model was called VC-20 and translated as "Volks Computer" (the "People's Computer"), and the Japanese model was called the VIC-1001. Incidentally, the Japanese model included uppercase English letters, PET graphics and Japanese characters.
| VIC 20 | Technical Specifications |
| Microprocessor | MOS 6502 |
| System Memory | 2K ROM - 3K RAM |
| User Area | 3K RAM - 3K if Basic Interpreter not used |
| Keyboard | Qwerty layout - 66 keys including 4 function keys |
| Display | 22 columns 25 lines 255 displayable characters |
| Resolution | 192 x 200 pixels |
| Colours | 16 - 8 for the foreground and 8 for the background or border |
| Sound | 3 tone generators + white noise generator |
| Input/Output | RS232C Commodore Serial Port |
| Cassette Drive | C1531 Cassette Drive port |
| Joysticks | 2 Joystick ports |
| Other | ROM Cartridge port |
| Price | NZ$895 |
| Datasette | NZ$199 |