Commodore CASSIOPEI, User Manual

Page: 33 / 76

8 Supported computer models
8.1 Commodore VIC-20
The VIC-20 is the predecessor of the C64 and has many limitations. However the Cassiopei opens
up a whole new range of possibilities, due to it's large available storage memory.
How to use:
Configure the Cassiopei to be used on a VIC-20 computer, this is required in order to define all
timings of the Cassiopei for this type of computer, see the chapter “Configuring the Cassiopei”. Do
not attempt to use the Cassiopei while it is not configured.
The Cassiopei's requires the following sequence of commands independent of it's operating mode.
LOAD <return>
or
shift + RUN/STOP (this is even better because it saves the user the trouble of typing RUN later)
The computer will now ask you to “press play on tape”:
–
press the PLAY button on the Cassiopei to load the currently selected game/program
–
press the MENU button in order to load the menu program to define your new settings.
The Cassiopei menu program is to be used for selecting the file and/or changing the configuration
of the Cassiopei Navigating through the menu is possible using the VIC-20 keyboard function keys
or by moving the joystick up/down and fire to select. The Cassiopei menu program is a program
that can detect the memory configuration and relocate itself without any problems or user
interaction. Therefore this program works on all memory configurations of the VIC-20. However,
this is not the case for the huge amount of software that was written in the early days of the VIC-
20. And therefore some games/programs will simply not run if used in the wrong memory
configuration. The next few pages of this manual are intended to explain this in more detail.
When a program is loaded using the Cassiopei's fastloader, the program is executed directly after it
has finished loading. However .TAP files do no use the Cassiopei's fastloader and depending on the
.TAP file used it may be required to type in RUN.
Note:
2019-10-27 Page 33 of 76 CASSIOPEI v2.0