Downloading and transferring Vic-20 software

Transferring programs from tape or disk

1541 disk drive and D64 images

Transferring files between the PC and the Vic-20 is easiest when you have a 1541 disk drive at your disposal. All you need is a (easy-to-make) cable (cable specs) to connect your 1541 up to the PC printer port, and some software to handle the communication. There are several such programs available at funet.fi. Some of these also allow transfer of PRG files into and from D64 disk images.

If you don't have a 1541, there is also some direct transfer software, including a program that uses a cable that connects to the Vic's user port, and one that emulates the 1541 side of a Vic<->1541 connection. I couldn't get the last one to run; it kept resetting my Vic.

In case you're only interested in PRG-D64 conversion, I have found some freeware PRG <-> D64 converters (dir_d64.zip for D64 -> PRG, copy2d64.arj for PRG -> D64). They are not very luxurious, but they are small and do the job. Apparently they can't create new D64 images, so an empty D64 image may come in handy.

Vic C2N Tape

For those who need to transfer tapes, there are some tape transfer utilities supplied with, alas, the registered version of some C64 emulators. Also, they may not work for the Vic-20 because the Vic's baud rate is a little different from the C64's. Meanwhile, many people have been asking for a proper tape transfer program. I've had some correspondence with two people who were so kind to share some information about the tape format. Hopefully, one of us will write a tape transfer program that uses the soundblaster to read tapes. It may even be possible to incorporate real tape support into the PCVIC emulator using a Hamcomm-type device (similar to the one the C64-emulator programs use). Right now, the plans are only vague but I'll keep you informed.

Problems with downloading ?

Downloading from wwwseti.cs.utwente.nl

If you can't seem to download stuff from the wwwseti mirror, try the main homepage instead.

It appears our HTTP server treats all binaries as ASCII files. Forcing them to download as non-text (example: in Netscape, shift-click) should work some, but not all, of the time...

Downloading with Netscape for Windows

It appears that Netscape for Windows corrupts binary files (you can check this easily: usually, extra bytes are added) when it downloads them as type ASCII. This causes problems with sites like wwwseti.cs.utwente.nl and ftp.funet.fi.

There is a way around it. Instead of downloading a file with the usual shift-click, click on it so it will appear (as garbage) in your browser's window. If you have enabled caching, the file will have been created in Netscape's cache directory, and you can get it from there.

Downloading from Funet

The funet.fi site offers HTML-indexed versions of their directories. Unfortunately, some browsers have problems with downloading HTML links with spaces in them. So, instead of

  http://ftp.funet.fi/

you may want to try:

  ftp://ftp.funet.fi/

Bug in Minuet FTP

It appears Minuet can't stand spaces in FTP filenames. What happens is that Minuet only recognizes and shows the word following the LAST space in each filename.