I had one of these as a kid; the slow way it drew the graphics onto the screen [1] for a new activity was an aesthetic in itself, like a coloring book being drawn and colored in before your eyes, a perfect loading screen for kids.
Wikipedia notes: The system will "draw" images by filling in areas of the screen with color one line at a time; it is not known whether this is an effect employed for the student's enjoyment or if it is due to the slow processing time of the system.
Probably due to the slow processing speed. That thing had like a rinky-dink Z80 and the most basic of graphics chips[0]. It probably couldn't do much besides a simple frame buffer, so you saw the CPU draw the entire screen, laying down the outline vectors and then flood-filling enclosed areas with color. There is something comfortingly "80s graphics" about watching this unfold in front of your eyes, similar to watching an old CAD drawing regen, or the effect in videos like Advanced Video Group's "Bearobics": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWMNsuIeY0Y
That said, I find it grating when I watch programs like Microsoft Teams draw themselves visibly, like old Windows 1.0 programs.
[0] The graphics logic is entirely custom, implemented in a Toshiba gate array, and it isn't something well-known like a TMS9918A or something else based on that design.
That does look cool, I'm assuming they stored a lot of the graphics as a series of drawing and flood fill commands as a way to save ROM space, similar to how the old Sierra DOS adventure games did their graphics.
Similar to how Pixar made their first movie about toys because CG made everything look plasticky back then and they realized they couldn’t get away with making a movie with humans or animals on screen for the whole movie.
The best creative people lean into the limitations of technology.
On early game systems, Atari computers and stuff, the physical two-position switch is usually for choosing which analog channel you want the analog-mode TV to be set for so the game display will show up when the TV is tuned to that particular legacy analog channel.
You would choose either channel 3 or 4 from the external RF adapter, or a switch on the game console itself.
There were not any recognized markets where different TV stations were broadcasting on both 3 & 4 within the same realistic radio range.
Remember, when Atari moved beyond mere game consoles to the more decently powerful home computers, it was a drop-in wiring replacement for the previous unit at home. They booted fast to ROM game cartridges, and plenty of people turned them off when they were done playing, but others tried to keep them powered at all times to maintain high scores in games that didn't support saving them.
One cartridge was not a game, it was for programming Basic, and booted to the immediate command line. This one didn't retain any code you would write so probably more people kept their Atari or Commodore on 24/7 then if possible, if they were doing some programming.
IOW your programming environment was always just one of many channels on your TV remote, it popped up instantly, and was right where you left it previously.
Unless of course an "Evil Maid" came along with bad intent, but it was usually an errant vacuum cleaner or rambunctious pet that did the deed :\
I had a look at some VTech computers at the local Toysrus (or something like that) recently, and amazingly they don't look much more advanced now than what they offered in the mid 1990s. That's pretty hard to pull off, but I think today it's a deliberate choice.
Does anyone know if a list exists with various models of these Vtech machines, and what hardware is in there?
I come across Vtechs semi-regularly in places like thrift stores & flea markets. And wouldn't mind having a go at some.
The model discussed here seems fairly hacking/modding friendly (discrete Z80, cartridge port etc). But I suspect most Vtechs are dirt-cheap, undocumented ASICs + tiny LCD screens. No fun hacking that (besides ~0 collectors value).
Seems quite advanced for a '88 educational toy. For comparison, I got a VTech SmartStart for xmas in the early '90s and it had just a short 14-segment display line and could mainly be used together with accompanying paper books :-)
This thing was slow as balls, but as a kid I didn't really know any better... I could be wrong, but I really feel like edutainment really fell away once everyone could get a real computer with an internet connection.
Holy shit, blast from the past! My dad had got one of this and when I was born my family had already moved back to India. I booted this up when I was about 10 years old and I was so mesmerized. It was impossible to afford any game consoles for my family so this took a lot of my time. I was so impressed with how everything fit together, the robot was cute… I loved it.
My dad also had got a Tatung Einstein which never worked. Last time I went back to India (I moved to the US for higher ed) I opened it up and was excited to see that they are a bunch of chips that they taught me in Comp 101 (they were basic TTL flip flops). I brought it back with me.
I still have it, and one day I hope to have enough time and space to open it up and translate it into an FPGA as a way to brush up on my basic digital signal knowledge.
Is there any VTech device that can non-trivially run Doom? I.e. it's fast enough, but not fast enough for cheap tricks like running a VM or an emulator. That would be fun.
I had one of these as a kid; the slow way it drew the graphics onto the screen [1] for a new activity was an aesthetic in itself, like a coloring book being drawn and colored in before your eyes, a perfect loading screen for kids.
Wikipedia notes: The system will "draw" images by filling in areas of the screen with color one line at a time; it is not known whether this is an effect employed for the student's enjoyment or if it is due to the slow processing time of the system.
[1] https://youtu.be/r71ejYkkmDY?t=64
Probably due to the slow processing speed. That thing had like a rinky-dink Z80 and the most basic of graphics chips[0]. It probably couldn't do much besides a simple frame buffer, so you saw the CPU draw the entire screen, laying down the outline vectors and then flood-filling enclosed areas with color. There is something comfortingly "80s graphics" about watching this unfold in front of your eyes, similar to watching an old CAD drawing regen, or the effect in videos like Advanced Video Group's "Bearobics": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWMNsuIeY0Y
That said, I find it grating when I watch programs like Microsoft Teams draw themselves visibly, like old Windows 1.0 programs.
[0] The graphics logic is entirely custom, implemented in a Toshiba gate array, and it isn't something well-known like a TMS9918A or something else based on that design.
That does look cool, I'm assuming they stored a lot of the graphics as a series of drawing and flood fill commands as a way to save ROM space, similar to how the old Sierra DOS adventure games did their graphics.
That’s cool.
Similar to how Pixar made their first movie about toys because CG made everything look plasticky back then and they realized they couldn’t get away with making a movie with humans or animals on screen for the whole movie.
The best creative people lean into the limitations of technology.
On early game systems, Atari computers and stuff, the physical two-position switch is usually for choosing which analog channel you want the analog-mode TV to be set for so the game display will show up when the TV is tuned to that particular legacy analog channel.
You would choose either channel 3 or 4 from the external RF adapter, or a switch on the game console itself.
There were not any recognized markets where different TV stations were broadcasting on both 3 & 4 within the same realistic radio range.
Remember, when Atari moved beyond mere game consoles to the more decently powerful home computers, it was a drop-in wiring replacement for the previous unit at home. They booted fast to ROM game cartridges, and plenty of people turned them off when they were done playing, but others tried to keep them powered at all times to maintain high scores in games that didn't support saving them.
One cartridge was not a game, it was for programming Basic, and booted to the immediate command line. This one didn't retain any code you would write so probably more people kept their Atari or Commodore on 24/7 then if possible, if they were doing some programming.
IOW your programming environment was always just one of many channels on your TV remote, it popped up instantly, and was right where you left it previously.
Unless of course an "Evil Maid" came along with bad intent, but it was usually an errant vacuum cleaner or rambunctious pet that did the deed :\
I had a look at some VTech computers at the local Toysrus (or something like that) recently, and amazingly they don't look much more advanced now than what they offered in the mid 1990s. That's pretty hard to pull off, but I think today it's a deliberate choice.
Does anyone know if a list exists with various models of these Vtech machines, and what hardware is in there?
I come across Vtechs semi-regularly in places like thrift stores & flea markets. And wouldn't mind having a go at some.
The model discussed here seems fairly hacking/modding friendly (discrete Z80, cartridge port etc). But I suspect most Vtechs are dirt-cheap, undocumented ASICs + tiny LCD screens. No fun hacking that (besides ~0 collectors value).
Seems quite advanced for a '88 educational toy. For comparison, I got a VTech SmartStart for xmas in the early '90s and it had just a short 14-segment display line and could mainly be used together with accompanying paper books :-)
This thing was slow as balls, but as a kid I didn't really know any better... I could be wrong, but I really feel like edutainment really fell away once everyone could get a real computer with an internet connection.
Holy shit, blast from the past! My dad had got one of this and when I was born my family had already moved back to India. I booted this up when I was about 10 years old and I was so mesmerized. It was impossible to afford any game consoles for my family so this took a lot of my time. I was so impressed with how everything fit together, the robot was cute… I loved it.
My dad also had got a Tatung Einstein which never worked. Last time I went back to India (I moved to the US for higher ed) I opened it up and was excited to see that they are a bunch of chips that they taught me in Comp 101 (they were basic TTL flip flops). I brought it back with me.
I still have it, and one day I hope to have enough time and space to open it up and translate it into an FPGA as a way to brush up on my basic digital signal knowledge.
[dead]
Is there any VTech device that can non-trivially run Doom? I.e. it's fast enough, but not fast enough for cheap tricks like running a VM or an emulator. That would be fun.
Why is the copper routing so funky? Were the PCBs drawn by hand?
That is correct.