Laser computers from VTL

On Fri, 21 Mar 1997, Stefan Walgenbach wrote: There's actually five complete paragraphs in the article dealing with the VZ200 and Video Technologies Ltd. which I could type in if you're interested. It was VTL's first computer, so indeed they may not have been well known yet. I actually hadn't heard of them until I found my Laser 3000 in a thrift shop. Well, nope, that wouldn't be Apple-compatible! My Laser 3000 is Apple compatible. Sort of. But the thing has a very "prototype" feel to it. There are several bugs in the BASIC, some software decisions that weren't too bright, and when I had to open it to fix the power supply (a wire from the socket into the PS had actually worked loose!) I noticed what looked like hand soldering and some "corrections" with pieces of wire going between pins of chips. Ewww! :) Also the colour set it displays in the extended graphics modes seems to depend on the phase of the moon. Not for the basic 8 colours, but for "mixed" colours made with alternating pixels... something I wouldn't normally consider "legal", but for an Apple clone is positivily FANTASTIC! :) Oh, there are some hardware bugs, too, dealing with the graphics modes. And I'm not entirely convinced that the sound chip is completely accessible. If Video Technologies always made systems like this... well, interesting, but a bit shoddy. :) Nor do I, but I always hope. I've made some docs of my own for the L3000. On my Laser 3000, it's done in the same way as on the Apple ][. You even have to get into the monitor to load machine language files. I was actually testing software on it by loading it on the Apple from disk, finding the starting address and length, and saving to cassette. The Laser's cassette in was connected to the Apple's cassette out, with an amplifier between. That worked well, and quite a lot of the games I tried worked. A lot of my old BASIC programs didn't work, though. :/ Doug Spence ds_spenc(a)alcor.concordia.ca