This was one of the many small micros launched into the home market in 1983. It did not really stand a chance against the plethora of machines already on sale.

It was known as the Seltron 200 in Italy and Hungary and the Dick Smith VZ200 in the Oceanic territories, and is similar in capability to the Mattel Aquarius and Video Color Genie.

Programs were loaded from cassette, and were copies of the big arcade games of the early 80s, such as Hoppy, a Frogger clone.

The machine used the Z80 processor, and initially shipped with 4K of RAM, and at a similar price to the 16K Sinclair Spectrum. This was rapidly increased to 8K within weeks when sales stalled, but even this did little to improve the amount of machines sold. A 16K RAM expansion was also available, taking the total up to 24K. The machine also had a 16K BASIC ROM and 2K of video RAM.

There were three boards inside, the processor, video and voltage regulator.

It was architecturally similar to the TRS-80 Model One, but was not compatible with it. Coding was done with keywords, like the Spectrum, but was not reliant on them.

A TX8000 branded version was launched in the UK, costing only £98, but a lack of software, even though it had a reasonably fast BASIC for programming meant it did little in the market place.

Vtech would become a major player in the education market, producing pre school and primary school age machines for early learning, as well as machines to make computing simple.

It was succeeded by the Laser 310.

Features:

• 9 colors
• 16K bytes ROM
• Microsoft BASIC
• Full on-screen editing
• Advanced graphic and sound features

Manufacturer: Vtech
Date: November 1983

This exhibit has a reference ID of CH32404. Please quote this reference ID in any communication with the Centre for Computing History.

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