Recreating the VIC-20’s VIC Chip (6560) in an FPGA - Part 1

The Commodore VIC-20, released in 1980, was a groundbreaking home computer that brought personal computing to the masses. Central to its display capabilities was the VIC chip (Video Interface Chip), known as the 6560 in NTSC regions. In this multi-part series, we will explore the process of recreating the 6560 VIC chip using an FPGA. This first part covers an introduction to the VIC chip’s architecture, the basics of NTSC video, and the key challenges involved in the FPGA implementation.