Latest finds....

From: Phil Guerney <guerney_at_uq.net.au>
Date: Fri Feb 19 07:06:02 1999

Sellam said:

>VZ200, eh? Interesting. Maybe you Oz-nerds can shed some light on this.
>I recently acquired a Dynasty Smart Alec Jr. Its a small computer with a
>chiclet keyboard. Almost reminds me of a Mattel Aquarius. Anyway, on the
>bottom the label reads that its a model VZ200, made by VTech (or Video
>Technology) circa 1982. Is this the same thing perhaps as a Dick Smith
>VZ200?


As Andrew Davie said, seems so. I have the VZ200 and VZ300 as sold by Dick
Smith, and the VZ 200 manual says copyright Video Technology 1983 on the
first page.

To all "Oz-nerds" (as opposed to Yank-nerds or Limey-nerds?:) - in the book
"Programming the Dick Smith Electronics VZ300 Personal Computer" by Tim
Hartnell, there is a section on attaching a disk drive (Cat X-7302) via a
floppy disk controller (X-7304) which can take two drives. You also need the
16K memory expansion (X-7306). I have the latter, but I have never laid eyes
on a VZ disk drive. I assume they are rare - if you had the sort of money I
expect they wanted for them in 1986-7 (the system units were still being
advertised in Aust Personal Computer in June 1987 for $A169 including
datacasette and 4 programs) you would have bought a better computer!

The boot screen with the disk drive attached is supposed to say
VIDEO TECHNOLOGY
DOS BASIC V1.2
READY

So has anyone ever seen that?

Phil
in Brisbane, Australia.
Received on Fri Feb 19 1999 - 07:06:02 GMT