Commodore's $100 VICmodem Was Technically Illegal in Canada
Commodore 1600 VICmodem
In 1982 Commodore shipped the 1600 VICmodem, the first modem to break the $100 barrier, built by Anchor Automation with just seven chips and no autodial. Users dialed by hand, then swapped the handset cord into the modem's jack. Commodore likely sold around 140,000 units, not the million one executive claimed. In Canada, modular handsets were illegal, so the bundled rotary phone couldn't work with the modem without the VIC-1605 adapter.
I don't know about anyone else, but I find it amusing that the modem was technically illegal in Canada if you used it the way Commodore and Anchor Automation originally intended.
- jim_lawless
In Fall of 1984, a friend bought one of these for his Commodore 64. He talked me into buying one for my C64. We chatted clumsily with the spartan terminal software for a while. I had an ad for a local BBS in a magazine. We called that BBS which had a list of numbers for other BBS's in town. We started calling those.
During those days of calling a lot of BBS's on a regular basis, I was calling on a rotary-dial phone. That got to be hard on the finger if you encountered a busy signal. It wasn't too long before my friend and I each picked up a Westridge sutomodem ... which was a workalike for the Commodore 1650 automodem ( both the Westridge and the 1650 had auto-answer and auto-dial (pulse) capabilities.
If I remember correctly, on a C64, you could push the vicmodem to 400 and 450 baud for boards that supported it, but the communications errors were higher. It garbled characters frequently ... usually attributed to line-noise.
In the latter 80's, I had gotten rid of my old computer gear and was getting ready to buy something new. In the interim, I picked up a VIC-20 with a vicmodem for about $25. That allowed me to visit the local BBS's until I got some better hardware.
- cbm-vic-20
I had one of these! You had to load the terminal software from the included cassette tape, pick up the telephone, dial the digits (literally, we didn't have TouchTone), wait for the Bell 103 handshake tones, then quickly unplug the handset and plug the cable into the modem. Set the handset aside so you don't accidentally hang up.
Then enjoy BBSing on the 22x23 display! Good times.
- Singletail
A friend found one discarded in a phone booth, and gave it to me, the only VIC-20 owner he knew.
It changed my life. It gave me places to go when I really needed them. It gave me an escape. I am forever grateful.
Shoutout to the rest of the PhoneLine Phantoms, Army BBS, Datanet, and especially Paladin's Palace, for which I can still dial the number on a rotary phone in the dark.