80 column adaptors for the C-64

[deering@ubc-visi]

I am looking for an 80-column adaptor for the Commodore 64 to
support ASCII terminal emulation and word-processing. This week
I tried out the "Video Pak 80" cartridge by Data 20 Corp. and this
is what I found:

Pro: - It provides a very readable 80 columns by 24 lines
on a monochrome video monitor.

- It gives you erase-to-end-of-line and erase-to-end-
of-screen functions which are useful when using the
so-called "screen editor".

Con: - It doesn't support use of user-designed characters in
RAM, but rather uses only the C-64 character ROMs.
That is unfortunate because the C-64 ROM set does
not include all the ASCII characters and is therefore
inadequate for terminal emulation.

- The software ROM supplied in the cartridge is mapped
into address 9000 hex in the C-64 address space, just
before the Basic interpreter. That's fine if you are
using Basic but it is a very bad location for non-Basic
applications which want to use a maximum amount of
contiguous RAM.

- The terminal emulation software built into the cartridge
has one very serious flaw -- you have to shift to get
lower case characters! (It may have other problems as
well, but I did not investigate any further after
discovering that bit of stupidity.) However, you can
always use a different terminal emulation program and
ignore the one provided in the cartridge.

- The C64TERM program that comes with the VICMODEM works
OK with the cartridge UNLESS you enter its menu mode.
The menu does not appear, which makes it difficult to
set options and such. (It also may hang up the system
at that point; I don't remember exactly.)

- A number of useful programs fail to work when the cartridge
is plugged in, such as the "DOS Wedge", SUPERMON64, both
monitors which come with the assembler system, and (naturally)
the character editor program. When things fail, you often
have to power the computer off and on to get it back to a
usable state.

- It is very slow in writing the screen. A Basic program which
takes 9 seconds to list on the normal Commodore screen takes
16 seconds to list in the cartridge's 40 column mode and
28 seconds in 80 column mode (all times are approximate).
Also there is an unpleasant flicker when scrolling, and the
CNTRL key does not perform its normal function of slowing
down the scrolling rate.

- The cartridge extends 5 inches beyond the back of the
keyboard, which makes it awkward for operating on your
lap. That might also be a problem on shallow desks.

- It costs too much -- $279.99 Canadian (retail).

Perhaps some of the problems can be fixed. For example, maybe there
is a way to access RAM-based character sets; maybe it is possible to
copy the code into a more sensible place in memory. Such possibilities
are not mentioned in the skimpy documentation provided. I tried
the obvious things; I don't feel like disassembling the ROMs to find
out.

Now, does anybody know of a better (in any dimension) 80-column adaptor
for the Commodore 64?

Steve Deering, Vancouver decvax!microsoft!ubc-vision!deering