// HACKER NEWS — CYBERSECURITY
A Dick Smith VZ200 without the Dick Smith
For the preservation of our precious bodily fluids, we must remove the scurrilous larrikin influence of Australia upon our American home computers, and I know exactly where to start! Why allow Dick Smith's name (even though he'd already sold Dick Smith Electronics' controlling interest to Woolies by then but stop ruining my intro) to corrupt this, um, rubber-keyed diminutive beige home computer when we can return it to its prior, pristine, plasticky state as it once rolled out from a glorious Asian factory?
... after, of course, we compare this seppo VTech VZ200 with the Dick Smith units and the bumper crop of crap American home computers in 1983, and fix the keyboard and video. Then, to avoid wrecking it with a botched logic board repair, we'll bolt on a USB serial port using the very latest peripherals from down under, write cycle-counted Z80 assembly language to blast data to it at 57.6kbps, and hack a few games. Because only this will make the VZ200 great again!
Let us also acknowledge that the cultural context of 1980's home computers was naturally somewhat different between the United States and Australia, and I think that's primarily why the NTSC VZ200's fate was rather unlike the DSE rebadge's. There's not a lot of early history on these particular machines, but we'll try to construct a coherent one; similarly, as there are many down-under perspectives on this machine, I'll give an alternative view from the North American side as a kid growing up during that era.
Initially VTech, as it became known, concentrated on video games, primarily as an OEM for the more profitable North American and European markets. Their first products were Pong clones, released in the United Kingdom as the Grandstand Adman T.V. Game 2000 (black and white) and Adman T.V. Game 3000 (colour) in 1977, both based on the Texas Instruments TMS1965N, TI's clone of the well-known General Instrument AY-3-8500 Pong-on-a-chip (compare with the rather more complex MOS 7601). Grandstand was a brand name of Adam Imports, then a substantial toy and games importer to the UK and for a period of time New Zealand, and had other Asian contacts, notably Tomy. If the picture on VTech's history page is to be believed, and I point out there are some verifiable inaccuracies on that page, VTech continued to produce other consoles for Grandstand/Adam like the (deep breath) Grandstand Adman Colour TV Game 3600 Mk III, which used a regular AY-3-8500 and was produced until 1979. For the portable market, VTech produced a number of handheld LED, VFD, LCD games, sold under various brands and through retailers such as Radio Shack.
VTech was hardly the only such Hong Kong tech company, of course; across the Bay in Kwun Tong was EACA, established in 1975 by Guangzhou escapee Eric Chung. EACA also produced consumer products such as radios and its own video games, notably the 1978 Colour TV Game, also based on the TMS1965N and variously sold under other brands such as the Sonesta Hide-Away TV Game.
EACA, among others, noticed all three systems used largely off-the-shelf hardware and discrete TTL logic, and quickly planned for a clone computer to expand their product line. With respect to the TRS-80, the only custom part other than the system ROMs was a Motorola MCM6670 "character generator," effectively another ROM with character bitmap data used by the video circuit. Since it was the market leader, third-party support for the platform was growing and Tandy had little presence outside the United States, Chung decided to start there first.
The Sorcerer arguably found greater success in Europe than it ever did in the United States, particularly in the Netherlands where the licensed Compudata Sorcerer became the default government-supported educational system, and certainly in Australia due to Dick Smith's dogged promotion. Still, even in the US it was considered relatively expensive at $895 [$4580], and with tariff and import costs tacked on it didn't price itself well to the