VIC NX

VIC NX is my incarnation of the classic VIC 20. The mail goal is to create a fully compatible VIC 20 clone, but with some extras.

It fit in the original breadbin box. The only things that will hint on differences is two things;

• The obvious different side panel to the right. It contains 2 buttons, reset and power. The power connector is a USB Type-C needing a PSU able of delivering 5V/3A. Next to the power-vutton is the standard 9-pin DSUB for joystick, paddles and lightgun. Besides that is the SD card socket.
• The LED on-top is also a give-away. It is frosty clear when unpowered. As soon as you attach a USB Type-C power supply it starts fading in/out in green. Power on and it lights up a steady red. It also shows a fast blinking red on over current, violet when recovert, of the FLASH, is initiated. And finally any activity on SD or WiFi will flash it white.

Hidden inside is a few extras. First of it is built with modern SMD parts that is readibly available. The exceptions are the 4 original chips 6522, 6502 and 6560/61. It does handle the 65C02 also.

In addition to this there is the following extras;

• Full memory in BLK0, and the extra 3k is accessable for the VIC chip. This also means that the 3k expansion chip select pins RAM1-3 is permanently high.
• CHARROM is located in SRAM at $8000 - $8FFF and freely changable unless you write protect it. This is automatically loaded with whatever font you like at boot-up.
• IO2/3 also have the possibility of having SRAM. This is also accessable byt the VIC chip.
• Color RAM is located at $9400 - $97FF as usuall. However it has 16 banks of 1k for extended color resulution in y-axis.
• BLK1,2,3 and 5 can either be routed to the cartridge slot, or internal SRAM. It is possible to write protect it.
• BLK6 and 7 has 512k banked FLASH memory.
• There is also a true UART that can be switched in to the RS232/Serial pins on the userport. Achieving way faster serial communication. The chip itself manages 1Mbps, but I doubt the VIC NX can sustain that.

There is also a built in Meatloaf circuit that gives WiFi and SD attached to the IEC port.