Lobsters retrocomputing - 13 Sep 2026

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1983 in the United States was the year the low-end home computer market exploded, and a cavalcade of hopeful new market entrants crowded that year's shows. At the January Winter Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas (above from Computer Gaming World issue 3.2), it took the Las Vegas Convention Center, the Hilton Convention Center, the Riviera Convention Center, the rest of the Riviera and the old Rotunda to contain it all. Mattel introduced the Aquarius for $199 [$670] licensed from Radofin, also in Kwun Tong (with a 3.58MHz Z80A and 4K of RAM, cassette storage, no bitmap graphics option and a rubber chiclet keyboard), Texas Instruments hawked the TI-99/2 for $99 [$330] (with a 2.7MHz TMS9995, 4K of RAM, cassette storage, no bitmap graphics option and no colour, and a plastic chiclet keyboard), Sanyo proffered the PHC-20 also for $99 as the midrange of the pocket computer PHC-10 and higher-end PHC-25 (with a 3.58MHz Z80 clone and 4K of RAM, cassette storage, no bitmap graphics option and no colour, and a rubber chiclet keyboard), and at the higher end came the Panasonic JR-200U for $349 [$1170] (with a 0.89MHz 6800 clone and 36K of RAM, cassette storage, no bitmap graphics option, and a rubber chiclet keyboard), the NEC PC-6001 also for $349 (with a 4MHz Z80 clone and 16K of RAM, cassette storage, but bitmap graphics and a rubber chiclet keyboard that was quickly replaced with a typewriter-style one), and the Spectravideo SV-318 for $299 [$1000] (with a 3.58MHz Z80 and 16K of RAM, also bitmap graphics, and a rubber chiclet keyboard). There were multiple conversion kits to turn the Atari 2600 VCS into a low-end computer of its own, several with rubber chiclet keyboards, and even a completely unlicensed ripoff of the T/S 1000, the Unisonic Futura 8300 (with a rubber chiclet keyboard) for $99. Not to be outdone, Timex Sinclair themselves announced the T/S 2000, a modified US version of the ZX Spectrum, with 16K or 48K of RAM, a 3.5MHz Z80, colour bitmap graphics and a rubber chiclet keyboard; the 16K version started at just $150 [$500].

The latecomers arrived at the Summer CES in Chicago, though by that point the rot was already setting in. Against the background of Commodore slashing prices even lower on the VIC-20 and C64 to Texas Instruments' profound discomfort, Mattel suddenly decided the Aquarius needed a sequel (i.e., the other system Radofin was developing; price point to be determined but without a rubber chiclet keyboard); Timex Sinclair replaced the T/S 2000 with the enhanced T/S 2024 and T/S 2048 with higher resolution graphics, more RAM and a plastic chiclet keyboard, plus an upgraded T/S 1500 which was a T/S 1000 with 16K of RAM and a rubber chiclet keyboard; Rabbit Computer (who? also from Hong Kong) introduced its own Z80-based Rabbit RX83 with 2K of RAM, BASIC, three-channel sound, cassette storage, bitmap graphics and a plastic chiclet keyboard for $99; and Tomy unveiled the Tomy Tutor for "under $150" [$500] with a 2.7MHz TMS9995 (from a 10.7MHz crystal), 16K of RAM, cassette storage, bitmap graphics and a rubber chiclet keyboard. In the fall Tandy, never one to be left out of a race to the bottom, delivered the MC-10 Micro Color Computer for $120 [$400] with an 0.89MHz 6803 and 4K of RAM, cassette storage and bitmap graphics, and a rubber chiclet keyboard. Even Commodore, failing to learn its lesson from the critically maligned Max Machine, was working on their own ultra-low-end family of computers to follow on to the C64 - one of which (the 116) would have a rubber chiclet keyboard.

And, oh yeah, one other system made its debut at the Winter show.

COMPUTE! in their March 1983 reporting called it "the first under-$100 [$330] color computer." Anticipated to hit American store shelves in April, the new VTech VZ200 featured 4K of RAM (expandable to 16K for $45 [$150] and 64K eventually), 12K of ROM (remember these numbers) with BASIC, and a simple push-pull piezo for sound. Two kilobytes of the 4K was allocated to the 6847, which used it to generate its default 32x16 text display, 64x32 semigraphics or 128x64 bitmap graphics. It had built-in jacks for cassette, TV and composite video, and shared its booth with the CreatiVision which VTech planned to sell States-side for $189 [$630], with the BASIC cartridge for $10 [$33] and an inevitable rubber chiclet keyboard for $30 [$100]. It isn't clear where the name VZ200 came from, possibly a riff on "ZX," but the computer's low cost even amongst a sea of low-cost computers still attracted positive attention. Creative Computing got a 4K VZ200 in for review in their May issue (accounting for publishing delays this would have to have arrived in February or early March), though they noted that they had no chance to try the peripherals or software. The article has some glaring technical errors - among others, they said the CPU was a 6502 - but reviewer David Ahl called the machine "a compact microcomputer with a great deal of capability and many unexpected features at a very attractive price." Although the review found the 4K of RAM "sparse" and was openly critical of the keyboard, particularly the absent space bar, single SHIFT key, nonstandard layout and the keys' inconvenient tendency to stutter, Ahl was nevertheless impressed by the full-screen editor ("a pleasure") and the 12K ROM implementation of BASIC (unbeknownst to him, secretly derived from the TRS-80 with added support for the on-board hardware), concluding the VZ200 to be "a great value for the suggested retail price of under $100."

There are certain attributes of the machine shown in both the COMPUTE! and Creative Computing photos that don't match released units, but we'll address this later on.

Collectively American industry rags used various euphemisms like "low cost home computers" and "computers under $300," like this Creative Computing Winter CES cover showing the VZ200, the Timex Sinclair 2000 (in its original form), the Texas Instruments 99/2, the Mattel Aquarius and the Spectravideo SV-318. Personally, however, I lump these computers together as the "crap home computers." I use this term with only love, and this uniquely terrible subtype of the home computer was indeed greatly loved, because as the ZX80 had demonstrated, ordinary people could now finally afford them. Heck, my first computer - the Tomy Tutor, introduced at Summer CES - was one of these 1983 crap home computers because it's what we could afford. We couldn't afford a Commodore 64 right then, but we could afford that. Not for nothing did Jack Tramiel thunder, "computers for the masses, not the classes!"

What these systems all had in common, other than crummy keyboards, a striking preference for the Z80 and an unabashedly low starting price, was aspirational and arguably fraudulent marketing, plus inadequate specifications requiring upgrades at additional cost to be practical - if there were any to begin with - alongside substandard quality control, a poor selection of software, and weak to non-existent customer support. Made cheap to sell cheap, most of these computers failed outright (e.g., the Mattel Aquarius) or were never even released (e.g., the TI 99/2).

The glut that hit the U.S. market that year not only soured many American consumers on home computers generally, but their game-heavy libraries were also likely a contributing factor to the 1983 video game crash. Although managing to move over half a million units, Timex Sinclair was not immune to this effect, and the company became unprofitable as the sales crossfire between Commodore and Texas Instruments forced the T/S 1000's street price below $50 in mid-1983. The situation was compounded by Timex's ill-considered decision to make the more expensive T/S 2068 (the eventual sole member of the 2000 family) largely incompatible with the ZX Spectrum, robbing it of the extensive British Spectrum software library, and the joint enterprise that was once expected to dominate the American home computer market collapsed in early 1984. Even large players like Texas Instruments and Warner Communications-era Atari took hundreds of millions of dollars in losses, with only Tandy (due to their strong retail presence) and Commodore (due to the C64's prodigious installed base and their vertically integrated manufacturing) able to weather the maelstrom effectively.

VTech suffered nearly as badly in the United States as the others, severely harming the VZ200's North American launch and forcing the States-side CreatiVision release in its console form to be cancelled completely. Fallout from the Tandy EACA-PMC lawsuit further unsettled VTech management, causing them to remove more obvious signs of their unlicensed Microsoft BASICs' original TRS-80 provenance and disable certain keywords (more on that later). For Summer CES 1983 VTech attempted to recover by reworking their then-disorganized and otherwise unrelated computer offerings into a unified "Laser" brand. The VZ200 and the CreatiVision's computer morph accordingly became the Laser 200 (still $99) and Laser 2001 (now $299 [$1000]) respectively, and VTech added their own 64K Apple II clone, the Laser 3000, for $699 [$2300].

But by then it was too late. Although VTech never attempted to introduce the black-and-white model in America - and the T/S 1000's plummeting price would have made it impossible to make money on anyhow - the colour VZ200 fared little better, virtually disappearing from North American store shelves by the end of 1983 with no evidence any Laser 200 units were ever sold there under that name. In Family Computing's inaugural September 1983 issue the columnists mention the SV-318 and even the stillborne T/S 1500, but nothing on the Lasers, and Creative Computing around that time was only running ads for the 3000. A few VZ200s were rebadged by Texas door-to-door nuisance business Dynasty Computer Corporation as the Smart Alec Jr., though like their multi-level marketing attempt at rebadging the spent Exidy Sorcerer, they sold barely at all (the company folded in November). On the other hand, the (now) Laser 200 got off the ground in Europe under its own name and others, most notably through Sanyo, but also through Salora, Seltron and Texet. It launched there alongside the black-and-white model as an ultra-low-end system, originally dubbed the Laser 100, but after the ROM change becoming the Laser 110 with the same Level II BASIC of the colour version.

However, there was one market where the VZ200 had particularly strong success, and that was of course Australia, though not exactly in its original form. History does not preserve the thought process of Dick Smith Electronics management, but DSE's probable aim was to nose past the Commodore VIC-20 on price and capability (DSE themselves even sold them for a time), which was colour and shipped with 5K RAM. That immediately excluded the black-and-white variation, since the ZX81 had since landed in Australia and the potential profit margin wasn't enough to bother, and it is instead more likely that during negotiations DSE prevailed upon VTech to strengthen the colour system and keep the price low. VTech's solution was a small 6K daughterboard retrofit that could replace the 2K system RAM chip, internally expanding the unit to a more appealing 8K (the other 2K video RAM chip was left unmolested) while still being able to use previously manufactured components. This modified VZ200, badged as a Dick Smith computer and subsequently sold elsewhere by VTech as the Laser 210, appeared in the 1983-84 catalogue as "new for 1983" at just A$199 [approximately US$220 spot and US$720 in 2026 dollars].

Although Tim Hartnell in his Australian Personal Computer April 1983 preview speciously characterised it as "to Dick Smith's specifications" (likely only the RAM complement was), he got quickly used to the keyboard, approved of the BASIC implementation (faster than the ZX Spectrum's) and full screen editor, noted the characters to be "rather like those produced by the TRS-80 Color Computer" (true!), and compared the memory loadout favourably to the VIC-20's. He was similarly pleased with the cassette tape performance and the included documentation, with about his only complaint being the weak sound. His editor Sean Howard was equally impressed, famously remarking that "I'm certainly going to buy one," which DSE promptly and repeatedly used in their advertising. The computer became an immediate hit via DSE store shelves and mail order starting in May, sold with DSE's own tape software and rebranded VTech peripherals such as the essential 16K memory expansion pack. It launched simultaneously with Dick Smith's rebadge of the hapless CreatiVision, sold as the Wizzard [sic] for A$295, both the first of many VTech rebadges DSE would eventually sell. Although nothing was going to catch the Commodore 64 by then, which had the same stratospheric sales there as it did most other places, the DSE VZ-200 had the added good fortune of ZX Spectrum manufacturing issues that eroded its availability, giving the DSE VZ-200 almost unrestrained run of the Aussie low-end market from which the VIC-20 was already fading and the ZX81 all but gone. In 1984 it remained a strong seller at its new lower price of A$169, dropping to A$99 by the end of the year.

I think that suffices for a more detailed backstory; we'll talk a little more about its later history in Australia and VTech's overall as a postscript at the end. For now, we'll turn our attention to this orphaned American unit. A convention I'll establish from now on in this and future articles: although Dick Smith was not consistent on the hyphenation, variously rendering it VZ-200 and VZ200, in the few places it appears the American version was invariably written without one, so I'll write "VZ200" for the North American computer and "VZ-200" for the Australian computer.

This VZ200 set was from an eBay auction a few years ago that I dug out from the storage unit to test since I hadn't really worked with it much. By this point I'd acquired a Aussie VZ-200 and VZ-300, which we'll get to in a moment, so it was nice to pull this American unit back out as comparison. It came with the 16K RAM expander and a set of joysticks.

The box advertises 9 colo(u)rs, 16K "bytes" of ROM - more than the 12K of the CES units - Microsoft* BASIC, though the asterisk only indicates it's a trademark, "full on-screen editing" and "advanced graphic & sound features." A red flourish at the bottom prominently touts its "4K BYTES" of RAM.

The side of the box has some alleged screenshots. My personal favourite is the police officer game in which you apparently either have severe haematuria or recently took rifampin and pee red onto passing cars, or at least that's what I think is going on. I enjoyed Potty Pigeon on the C64, so this would seem like my kind of game. Unlike the front and a couple of the side panels which are English-only, this side is labeled in English, German, French and Spanish, where you can easily find the biblioteca. You can also see more clearly that the red blurb on top advertising "WITH 4K BYTES RAM" and "NTSC 4K" is in fact a sticker, so this box was almost certainly not exclusive to North America and may not have been exclusive even to 4K systems. The back of the box is also labeled in all four languages and purports to show the VZ200 as part of this complete breakfast with a light pen, "television or monitor," joystick, cassette, "16K/64K RAM memory expansion module," and printer interface. The light pen, interestingly, was unavailable on either side of the Pacific, though it was sold for the Laser series in Europe and would work unmodified with the VZ-200. On the other hand, I can't find any evidence that anything other than the joysticks and 16K expander were sold in North America, and I have never seen a 64K expander (though I am told it exists). Two of the boxes have price tags, the computer and the RAM expander, but unusually the computer started at $129.95 and then got increased to $149.95. Neither price matches its well-documented MSRP of $100. Unfortunately I can't make out the actual retailer, even with an extreme enlargement. On the RAM expander box, however ($69.95), the store's name is legible: Heathkit. Zenith Radio Company (now Zenith Electronics, a subsidiary of LG), which had acquired the hobby electronics retailer in 1980, poured substantial money into expanding the firm as a Radio Shack competitor. This extended to opening a number of Heathkit Electronic Centers across the United States and also in Canada, where there were outlets in (at least) Mississauga, Calgary, Edmonton, Montreal, Ottawa, Vancouver and Winnipeg.

Although the eBay seller was also American, I've concluded that these were likely products produced for the United States but ultimately sold in Canada, possibly as remaindered stock. For readers outside of North America, Canada used the same NTSC video standard and 110 VAC outlets, so it would have "just worked." Also, the 1983 Canadian dollar exchange rate was roughly about C$1.23 per US$1, explaining at least the initial price, and while the lack of markedly predominant French labeling might have prevented its sale in the Montreal outlet, that wouldn't have enjoined it elsewhere. As far as its provenance, however, the fact it wasn't labeled that way suggests Canadian sale was not initially contemplated, and it also has U.S. Federal Communications Commission clearance (I'll show you in a bit).

The computer sits inside a Styrofoam sandwich as most systems were shipped at the time. There's a small amount of scuffing which I'm not pleased about but also means this machine at least did get used.

Compare the label and the keyboard to the previous COMPUTE! and Creative Computing pictures. Those earliest systems are labeled as a "VZ200 Personal Computer," not a "VZ200 Color Computer," and the colour labels over the number keys were absent. In fact, this same keyboard is used for the B&W Laser 110, though those early VZ200 systems must have been colour given that their colour capabilities were widely reported at the time. On the other hand, the VZ-200 that appeared in very early Dick Smith marketing like the flyer above was labeled a "VZ200 Color Computer" exactly like this one, including the American spelling.

The keyboard consists of 45 keys, with a bottom right SPACE key in the corner, only one SHIFT on the bottom left, and no ESCape key. Necessarily, many have multiple functions accessible with the CTRL key or CTRL-ENTER key combo. Most of these alternative functions are one-touch BASIC keywords like the Sinclair machines, though unlike those computers, you are not obligated to use them and can spell keywords out if you want. Semigraphics characters are also selected by key combination, as well as moving the cursor, inserting and deleting characters, and interrupting a BASIC program.

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Original: http://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2026/09/a-dick-smith-vz200-without-dick-smith.html