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The machine ran basic games on cassette such as Frogger, Scramble, Space Invaders and Moon Patrol. The computer was discontinued in 1985 to make way for more advanced home computers.

Release[]

At its UK launch, Tesomexet claimed that the £98, TX8000-branded version was the cheapest colour home microcomputer on the market. However, this was not enough to ensure its success against the dominant ZX Spectrum and similar machines already on sale [1]. Most notably, the Spectrum-like Oric 1 was selling for £99 at this point, and offered a far higher specification than the Texet for little difference in cost.

The "Dick Smith"-badged VZ 200 was more successful in Australia, where it proved popular as a first computer. [2]

An improved version known as the VTech Laser 310, or the Dick Smith VZ 300 was released later. [3]

Technical Specification[]

The Laser 200 was designed and built by Video Technology (VTech) in Hong Kong and derived from the Tandy TRS-80. Based on a Zilog Z80A CPU driven by a television colour burst crystal (3.5795454 MHz), it offered 16 KB of ROM containing Microsoft BASIC, 8 KB RAM and four-colour graphics at a resolution of 128×64 or 64×32, or 32 columns and 16 lines of eight-colour text. The Laser 200 used the MC6847 Video Display Generator (VDG) chip for graphics. The Laser 200 apparently came with 2KB of RAM. Laser 210 came with 6 KB of RAM. The Laser 310 came with 16 KB of RAM. (Old-Computers.com)

Emulation[]

VZ200 & VZ300 emulator

MESS MESS supports all the variants of the Laser 200 series, including the Fellow. In MESS each system has a seperate BIOS ROM. In addition The Laser 200 has a seperate ROM for Germany and The Netherlands. Germany & Netherlands; The driver for the German Laser 210 is listed as a Sanyo Laser 210. MESS bundles the Laser 100 drivers with the Laser 200 family. Take note MESS doesn't consider the Laser 200 to be a clone of the TRS-80, however.

Reference dispute[]

Different sources (MESS and Old-Compuers.com) disagree on whether the Laser 100 and Laser 200 are in the same machine family and whether they are partial clones of the TRS-80 Color Computer. Also Silicium.org lists different RAM ammounts from either MESS or Old-computers.

References[]

  1. Bennett, Bill, Texet TX-8000 review, Your Computer magazine, April 1983. Retrieved 2007-03-21.
  2. Dick Smith VZ-200, thepcmuseum.com. Retrieved 2007-03-21.
  3. Video Technology Laser 310, old-computers.com. Retrieved 2010-04-18
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