In 1982, computers seemed like a thing in the future for the majority of people. But Commodore was doing what they could to make them affordable. After creating the first color computer that would sell for less than $300, the first 64k computer to sell for less than $600, and the first disk drive for less than $300, Commodore wanted a sub-$100 modem to go with all of that. They outsourced the design to Anchor Automation, and the VICmodem, model 1600, was what they came up with. It reached the market in March 1982.
The first modem that cost less than $100
The information age was very much in its infancy, but if you didn’t want to miss it, a VIC-20 with a cassette drive and a VICmodem would let you participate at the lowest possible price. Ex-Commodore executive Michael Tomczyk claims it was the first modem to sell a million units, but I’ve never seen one with higher than a six-digit serial number, so that figure may be a little optimistic. I think they sold closer to 140,000 of them.
The 1600 VICmodem was about as basic of a modem as you could get. The main component on its PCB was a Motorola MC14412, and there were only six other chips on the board. Commodore being Commodore, they cut the price aggressively.
Limitations of the Commodore 1600 VICmodem
The VICmodem’s biggest limitation was its inability to dial the phone on its own. Acoustic coupler modems weren’t uncommon at the time. With an acoustic modem, you dialed the phone, then placed the handset on cups so the modem could, essentially, talk and listen on the phone using a speaker and a microphone. It was cheaper than building an autodial-type modem.
But Commodore couldn’t meet the price point it wanted with an acoustic coupler modem. Instead, after you picked up the phone, dialed it, and heard a modem carrier, you unplugged the handset and plugged the cord into the back of the 1600. This let them eliminate the speaker and microphone, reducing the parts count.
In theory this could give a cleaner signal than you would get from an acoustic coupler. In practice, I don’t know how much difference it made. My 1600 was very noisy, much noiser than the 1670 I replaced it with.
And by noisy, I mean garbled characters on the screen. If you got a clean signal, the text was very readable. But if the signal wasn’t clean, you got random characters mixed in with whatever your transmitting. That was why you needed a protocol like Ward Christensen‘s Xmodem to transfer files.
This wasn’t the way most other modems on the market operated, but since Commodore came into a small market and flooded it with an estimated 140,000 units, that gave them some sway in defining how a modem was expected to operate, at least until it became possible to build more capable modems and hit that $100 price point.
And that ended up being a problem, especially in Canada.
The phone problem
The other problem with this approach was not all phones had modular handsets. Rotary phones with hardwired handsets were still very common in 1982-86, so the 1600 wasn’t much of a bargain if your phone didn’t work with it. Commodore had an adapter to solve that, called the VIC-1605, which has a story of its own.
In Canada, Commodore bundled the 1600 with a special phone with a Commodore logo on the front, Northern Telecom’s version of the Western Electric 500. Problem was, it was a rotary phone with a hardwired handset, so you couldn’t use it with the 1600, defeating the purpose. Commodore didn’t realize this until they’d already taken delivery.
That was a problem. But it turned out Commodore had another problem. A bigger problem. A legal problem.
It turns out that modular handsets were illegal in Canada at the time. To solve the problem Commodore found itself in, Commodore came up with the VIC-1605, an adapter with an RJ-9 jack for the VICmodem and two RJ-11 jacks. This let customers plug the phone directly into the modem, and then plug the modem into the wall. Then they could dial the phone, then flip a switch on the adapter when they heard the carrier, and the modem took over.
As far as I know, Commodore didn’t include the VIC-1605 with the VICmodem unless they bundled it with the phone, which is a shame. I don’t know how many other people did this, but I bought a VICmodem without knowing it wouldn’t work with any of our household phones, which all had hardwired handsets.
The Canadian Commodore logo phone is a prized collectible today.
What the Commodore VICmodem was like
Aside from the RJ-9 jack to plug your phone cord into, the 1600 just had a red LED on the side and a slide switch that you used to tell the modem if you were making or receiving a call. More sophisticated modems took a command and knew from the command you used whether it was originating or answering a call. But the VICmodem had to be told.
Realistically, Commodore’s later 1650 modem was a better value because it included dialing capabilities and didn’t rely on your phone. If you had to buy a different phone to use the 1600, then the 1650 usually ended up being cheaper.
Commodore closed out its remaining stock of 1600 VICmodems in 1986. C.O.M.B. Liquidators sold them for $19 apiece, which seemed like a ridiculously low price for a modem at the time. That was especially true if you didn’t know the catch, that you needed a modular phone. C.O.M.B. was where we got ours. In its advertising and in its catalog, C.O.M.B. clearly showed the modem connected to a phone, but didn’t mention anywhere that it required a modular handset. If you were excited at the possibility of getting a modem at a super low price, it was really easy to overlook that detail. Or at least I overlooked it. That was how I got mine, and while I used commercial services like Compuserve and Q-Link, I ended up mostly using bulletin boards. Including to pirate software.
The 1600’s legacy
The 1600 was a minimum viable product even by 1982 standards, so by 1986 it was really outmoded. But it provided consumers an introduction to telecommunications at the lowest possible price for about 4-5 years. You could buy one, decide if it was something you were going to use regularly, then upgrade to something better like a 1670.
And let’s talk about that Canada thing. 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. Things were changing faster than the law could keep up with. That was one of the things that made the early 1980s great.
As for Anchor Automation, they went on to produce other modems for Commodore computers, some of which it sold under its own brand name. If you had a Commodore 64, 128, or VIC-20 in the 1980s, it’s possible your first modem was another modem made by Anchor Automation, even if you didn’t have a VICmodem.
Value of a Commodore 1600 VICmodem
I don’t like giving valuation opinions but I’ve studied the VICmodem enough to give one in this case. A loose VICmodem is worth less than $10. An example with a low serial number may be worth a bit more, or it might just sell more quickly.
The most I’ve seen a boxed example sell for is $36. A boxed, complete example with a receipt and all the paperwork is interesting, but condition will be key to getting top dollar. A ratty box is worth more than no box, but the closer the box looks to like-new condition, the more it’s worth.
And if you’re looking to sell one, showing the serial number seems to help. I’m not sure if that’s because people are interested in the serial number, or because it’s a good way to gauge its condition. The serial number seems to be more fragile than the rest of the printing, based on examples I’ve observed.
The VICmodem is rarer than the computers it came with. But there’s not a ton of demand for it either, since there’s not really any use for one these days. It’s super slow and the phone lines it worked with are increasingly uncommon. It’s a curiosity, and the few hundred people who are interested in one, like me, probably already have one.
I’ve been tracking VICmodems on Ebay for years, trying to figure out how many were built. Prices are all over the place. I’ve seen lots of them listed for $50. I’ve never seen one sell for that. And I’ve seen some listen on Ebay for 4 years now, with no takers. That tells me the price is too high.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.