Will never forget the day my Dad took us to Sears and bought the Laser Turbo XT. That thing was a monster, but I wouldn't be in IT today without it. I only wish he had listened to me instead of the salesman when he was talked into an EGA monitor even though the PC only had a CGA card. Thanks for the memories, David!
@@huleyn135 my dad was a computer scientist in the 80s so I got an Apple II and he built a 486Dx2. He is still a computer scientist so he saw the rise of pc to today.
@@Δημήτρης-θ7θ valid point, probably one the salesman made as well. though Looking at that thing I think it would have been unlikely to upgrade it with an EGA card. Likely by the time they upgraded computers VGA was on the market and common.
It's possible your compact XT may have been able to output in EGA. On the bottom of the case there is a panel to adjust the bios switches and on the settings list next to that there is an option for "external EGA". I haven't seen anyone test if EGA output is possible, however, Vtech's follow model released a year later, the Laser compact XTE, definitely had EGA. So I'd be interested to know exactly what the EGA output setting does on the original compact XT.
It's also funny that some animes put other fruits (including oranges and pineapples) on laptops (which are clearly supposed to be mac books), just to avoid the same legal issues.
@@joelmartin2549 yeah I know (the whole dump restore things), but this Is the first since the freeze (that I've noticed) that had a normal thumbnail for his content, and he was in his normal recording position (behind the desk... in "the room"😆.)
What a big coincidence. Was at a church garage sale and I saw the Laser128 ex in the box. Thought it would be useful or worth a few bucks. Collecting Amigas I wasn't really excited about the find until I opened and the whole package has never been used or unpackaged. Total new old stock, what a surprise.
Wow I loved my Laser 128.. I learned to program and modify programs well thanks to very smart friends that were older and showed me how to edit binary/hex and duplicate 5 and a quarters.. I found too the majesty of Ultima early versions, and the birth of really good computer games. The best Apple Clone ever Laser - way to go! Best adventure together VTECH!! I still love your electronics and toys - going to check now whatcha been up to the last 38 years. Gradts on your jam back in 1986 - was listening to Peter Gabriel that year and you are the Sledgehammer!
In my senior year of high school I worked in a computer store. We sold a lot of Laser 128's. They were very popular. Many did come in for repair though.
@@XxUltimateGodzXx thats something id also like to know i have a 128, and mine has been dead reliable, would be nice to know what the more common failures can be
@@XxUltimateGodzXx Unfortunately I don't know. The store I worked at as an 18 year old dealt mostly with businesses and the majority of their sales were PC's and setting up networks. The shop had a small line of software and computers for consumers. The techs complained that too much of their time was being taken up by fixing the Laser 128's. They talked about teaching me how to use the oscilloscope and fix them to free them up, but I ended up leaving to go to school full time.
My computer science teacher in middle school had a Laser 128, and I have to admit, it was a great machine! Almost made me buy it but I opted for the Commodore 64 because all of my friends had it.
All my friends had Apple so I want to get an Apple but when I saw the price, I couldn't afford it. I ended up buying an Atari 800. All my Apple friends laughed and said that I couldn't play games on it because, according to the Basic manual it could only use 4 colors. Then the real documentation came out and it turns out it has 15 different modes, could put 128 colors on the screen at the same time, had sprites, and built in hardware scrolling. That's when the Apple because a "business" computer even though the Atari was probably better for business too (you could write a 40K program and have it only take up 16K of ram using page flipping).
Laser 128 is the computer that my computer lab had when i was in elementary school. Just a few years later they were teaching us microsoft programs and shortly after that i was playing doom on my home pc. Strange how time can be tracked as a child. Great videos keep up the awesome work.
I had the Laser 128 when I was 9 years old in 1986. I begged for that computer and loved it dearly. I turned my back for 5 mins in my teens and my Dad gave it away to someone who had no idea how awesome it was. Still wish I could get that computer back, even though I don't really have a use for it. I used to use Print Shop using an Okidata Printer, Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing, Kid Nikki Radical Ninja, and a shareware game called Agent USA. Damn that computer ruled so hard.
The "Power Out" on the XT might have been for the external disk drive. I actually picked up a number of external 37-pin floppy drives at Computer Reset on a couple of my trips, it wouldn't surprise me if one of those could be adapted to that port fairly easily.
We had an Apple //e growing up, and my parents eventually bought a used Laser 128EX/2 as well since the Apple was getting used by me and my brother so much. The EX/2 also had MIDI ports!
@@johnknight9150 I liked them both. I’d prefer one or the other depending. For instance, we had a modem in the Apple, and it’s “finish” was better. I think we might have had more memory in it as well after scavenging a bunch of memory chips from 80 column cards in discarded //es when a local business switched to PCs. But the Laser’s turbo mode was good for doing things that needed more speed.
I learned a few things from you that pertained to my childhood, but then I just wanted you in the background to soothe me like the sound of rain. Amazing channel. You're doing everything right.
VTech not only makes kids toys, but is a MAJOR contract manufacturer for a lot of big name brands you'll find at your local big-box store. I remember in college some 25+ years ago that one of my roommates opened up his PC and found that VTech made the motherboard. He was surprised that his computer and his nephew's toy computer came from the same folks!
on second thought not that surprising. If you can design a board with cheap shitty components on it you can probably do the same thing with better parts. Might actually be easier in some cases with higher end parts being more integrated. North and South bridge beat individual IO chips for ease of board design.
Yes V-Tech has found a niche in that they make either Kids toys, or older tech like cordless land line phones, but they also make the tech that goes into other brands stuff, they are a lot like foxconn in that way, but for me it does kinda show that just because something has a badge that says made in china doesnt always mean it will be shit, like theres so much bashing on how stuff that comes from the PRC is crap compared to stuff made in country, it gets kinda irritating after a bit, because well its just not always true.
@QuadRaSphere Records and Radio They generally would stick to home landline phones and some home security stuff as well as kid products, but they would also just bridge into OEM and ODM systems for integrated circuits of all sorts, which is why youd occasionally see their name on the motherboard for a computer made by another company. since their core business model seems to be make integrated circuits for other companies its kinda hard to boil down what all V-Tech actually made
Thank you for all the time and effort you put into these videos! I grew up in the Commodore 64-bubble and never heard of the computers you frequently show us, super interesting!
The Laser DOES have extended graphics modes, the owner's manual for my EX does state so. There are some videos on my channel demonstrating a simple program in that mode at 1MHz and 2MHz.
@@theodoros_1234 I'm baffled why people are up-voting this. Go watch the videos, they aren't demonstrating new modes. It's just using the 'HGR2' mode. The gold label original laser 128 (not the EX) can do 560x384 and allows you to change the border color of the screen. It's noted on the packaging and computist #66 details the soft switches to use it. I've tried it and both interlace (384 line) and border color work. I've messaged David with the details.
I remember Pineapple Computers, a friend of mine had one in the 80s. FYI the company is still in operation, or at least remnants of it. They don't assemble computers anymore but operate a few shops here in Malaysia. I more or less grew up at one of their outlets, I'd be over there every weekend browsing through their games. Back then, a game cost a little over a dollar a disk and about 2 dollars for a photocopy of the manual... Lol *edited for typos
My brother and I got the 128 for Christmas when I was in the 4th grade. My mom got it from Service Merchandise on recommendation of my 4th grade teacher. We had it connected to a composite monitor that we would later also connect the NES to. I was still using that thing to write reports when I entered high school before upgrading to using a 286.
Your videos are the only tech videos that really get my attention. I don't have a computer hardware interest (or tech interest in general) but I always love watching your videos. I find them both fun, interesting and informative. Thanks to you I now know more about old than new technology. Please keep up with your awesome work!
Whenever I hear V-Tech, I just think phones. I had a V-Tech cordless phone right around 98/99 I really liked. It was black and had a fairly large Caller ID screen, and it had an ergonomic contour. I guarantee if you 25 or older, you or someone you knew had this phone. I sold a lot of them at Service Merchandise. I worked in the electronics dept, and it a decent job, especially for a high schooler. But they were gonna close down the electronics dept, so I quit. Not too long after that they did close it down, then the whole store/chain.
I remember those phones! I also remember we had a Service Merchandise! I always loved going into the back of the store to look at their electronics section. I saw my fist DVD being played on a large rear projection TV. It looked so clean and vibrant on that TV, I was amazed at how good video could look, it was sharper then what we had via cable TV then, and that looked pretty decent after having watched most of my TV off air tell high school. In college I later worked at the cable company and local TV stations and that raw video from the studio camera looked even better than what the DVD's were doing. But DVD's were certainly a close second to live video from a studio camera.
Wasn't V-Tech the same company that had those boxes with a flip down keyboard and a 7-inch CRT screen, that you could plug into your home land line jack and connect to other users, like a rudimentary early version of the internet? I won one of those, and a year's service, in a radio call-in contest. You know, "We'll take the seventh caller with the correct answer to this question?" Well it was just random luck, I knew the answer and I was the seventh caller, and I got lucky. Then, a few years later, the same thing happened to a friend, and he won a brand new Harley. ... Holup...
@@jefff3886 im not sure, what you described sounds the the french mintel system, but that was a free machine used only in france, or maybe the Amstrad emailer, from the uk that did sorta make it here for 5 and a half minutes, but V-Tech did make quite a lot of stuff that just kinda slotted into industries that already existed so who knows, maybe it would help if you had an idea of what the machine may have been called, for a google search.
Our school had more Lasers than it did Apples in the mid 80's. The Apples were int he main office and the library, while the resource rooms that did have pc's had Laser 128's
I still have my Laser Compact XT. I didn't know they were so rare. Shortly after I bought mine I expanded it as much as I could. As you can see on David's video, there is a COM2 port that is blocked off. If you bought a 16550 UART and a 1488 and 1489 RS232 to TTL driver/receiver chip set, along with a 9-pin PC board mount connector, you could populate COM2 yourself and get it working. Likewise, if you wanted an IBM 8-bit ISA expansion port you could get a 62 pin right-angle bus slot and solder it onto the motherboard. I never found an external drive and never really needed one. Mine came with a 1MB RAM expansion card built-in so I configured that as a RAM drive in case I had a need for more disk storage albeit very volatile storage.
That would also be my guess since its DC, but its also nowhere near the Expansion port, and theres another switch by the mono switch that said something, then it said LCD or at least it looked like it did, my thought then becomes did they also build an LCD monitor for use on the XT like they did on the 128, if they did then that power out could have been for that, since an LCD monitor will use not only less power but also wouldnt require an AC input like a CRT would.
The "DC power out" port wasn't a great idea, since if a peripheral plugged into there it wouldn't come with its own power supply and thus could only be used with the Laser; and the Laser's own power supply would have to be hefty enough to run the peripheral whether you ever had one or not.
It would make perfect sense to use it for an external drive. I suspect that massive 'external drive connector' is just a floppy cable with a d-sub connector. that way an exteral drive could be just a standard ibm-compatible floppy drive with an adapter board. ( I wonder if one was ever mader...)
When i was in 7th grade i worked for a computer store that doubled as a user group and BBS with fidnonet gateways. I got to take a laser 128 / XT home for a bit along with some dated televideo stuff to run a node form my area code for the local school. this brings me back. :D
The 37 pin SUB--D connector for external floppies in the Laser XT is probably simply a shugart interface (normal PC floppy interface) as it was quite common to use this connectors with the normal flat cable. The pins are usually just connected 1 to 1, so it extremely easy to build an adapter. You just have to check if they also push power over it.
Thank you so much for making this, I was just thinking "wonder if anyone has done videos about that apple 2 clone " I proposed switching our school computers to it, but the apple 2 was actually cheaper for schools to buy through apple's educational sales channels.
I love how cheapskates and morons admire companies who just copy other companies ideas and sell their cloned products for 1/3 of the price. Obviously those people will never be in a position to have their ideas getting copied by others.
@@mojoblues66 remind me how Apple 'invented' graphical pc interfaces...uh, no that's Xerox. Or touchscreens, or portable mp3 music players, or smartphones, or, or, or.... Name one major invention made by Apple. A company counting on a non tech savvy, brand blind public to gouge with over the top prices for slightly above average products.
This channel easily has my fav intro music it brings such nostalgia of the 80's and early 90's. One of the best times to have been alive for of all time!
I had a Laser 128 and was able to get a card to work directly in the expansion slot, without the expansion bay. Oddly enough, it was a Lis’ner 1000 speech recognition card. Pretty cool for the day. The laser is long gone, but I still have the card. Thanks for the show. I always enjoy these!
The power out on the laser xt isn't for a monitor (but DC monitor's was likely doable homebrew style) the power out port is for peripherals like tape and risk drive and HDD ect. So it was a useful power out port none the less..
15:15 You highlighted what look like the printer cables. I think the display cable it's referring to is directly under the monitor's description - 3 E 76650 for $14.99.
The original gold label laser 128 does support 560x384 and setting border color (and possibly 280x384). It's removed in the later versions as you have there possibly to increase apple compatibility. I have tried it on both machines and it definitely works on the earlier rom gold label machine. An article in Computist #66 (see internet archive for copy) tells you how to access it, then you have to write the image to both pages in dhgr mode. It's also noted on the packaging of the original gold label version of the laser 128.
You are correct, the original Gold label / slotted case had a different board and ROM from the later Red label / checkmark case. The newer board supported the Universal Disk Controller (daisy chaining drives and 3.5" support) as well as the RAM board available as an add-on for the L128 and preinstalled in the EX and EX/2 models. I suspect the UDC needed more memory for its ROM code and the little used extra graphic mode went away to create more space.
My first personal computer in my room was an old (at the time, mid to late 90's) Apple IIGS Woz Edition loaded with some of the best expansion cards. It was a gift from an Uncle, the company he managed IT for was tossing it with drives and monitor in favor of a newer workstation. I remember seeing a couple of the Laser 128EX's along side it that he kept. I still have the IIGS setup for use. I learned Assembly and C on it and still program little projects on the real hardware when bored. It's crazy how long the Apple ][ (and clones to an extent) lasted in use thanks to Woz's design of simplicity and upgradability.
Nostalgic... my first PC that was actully my own back in 6th grade was a Laser.. a 386SX. I remember going with my parents to pick it up. So excited. Before that we had a family Tandy 1000, then some Tandy Laptop. I believe maybe a Tandy 1500?
Thank you so much for this. My family actually did own a Laser Compact XT that we bought from Sears. It was our first computer and we had it for several years, till we finally upgraded to a 486 machine in 1994. Initially I did want the Laser 128 because I was used to Apple II computers from school, but my parents decided to get the XT instead. It was an learning experience for me since I had no experience with IBM clones or with MS-DOS, but once I figured it out I really enjoyed that machine. I do remember it being very reliable, I had no issues with it while we owned it. Seeing the CGA graphics again does make me appreciate how far we have advanced since then.
There were lots of clones alongside the Laser, even after Apple sued many into the ground. They operated offshore and often just morphed into a different company. They also had 'private label' arrangements where stateside retailers would import 'repair parts', minus the Apple ROMs, and then assemble a machine under their own label using 'backup' EPROMs they acquired on their own. I have a Unitron that became a 'Linden' that way. I saw a lot of these back in the day.
Part of anti-monopoly laws should be that you must license everything to everyone. If we had that, we wouldn't be in the hell of mono/duopolies we are now.
I'm sure you get millions of comments like this. I'm still looking forward to videos about Teddy Ruxpin, and restoration and documentary videos on the Compaq luggables. I especially enjoy the restoration videos. I can certainly imagine why it may take several years to get material together for a video though. What's really amazing to me is that you find old software that still works. There's no telling how many 5-1/4" and even 3-1/2" inch disks I've had that got corrupted or demagnetized. Keep up the good and fascinating work.
It's been in the making and planning for years. Great that it's finally out there! And I wonder what planned documentary is coming out next... Amiga, maybe? ;)
We all want to see the Amiga. I think I have seen an Amiga in the background of one of his more recent Videos and the first Video on his channel was Amiga 1000 related.
David won't be able to get past that Amiga uses MC68000 instead of his beloved 6502 - or the 65816. Acknowledging that a 16-bit home computer is way superior to the 8-bit home computers is just a bridge too far
@@TheSulross He was able to get past that the IBM PC and compatibles use x86 processors instead of his beloved 65xx, though, even if he isn't the 16-Bit Guy.
I had the Laser Turbo XT. Between the disk drive and the 40MB (!) hard drive booting, it literally played the opening tune to Night Court. Beep-BOOP. (pause) Daaaah-da-duh-duh-duh.
I kinda thought it was odd that V-Tech copied over that clatter clunk from the Apple II since the clunk was the floppy drives getting the goto track 1 command 40 times since the Disk II didnt have a track 1 sensor, but with V-Tech creating their own roms they could have added it, since it didnt have to break compatibility with the Disk II.
This was Wozniak's clever solution to the floppy drive's lack of a controller which made it much cheaper (and even faster) than everyone else's. Who cares where the head is? Always move it back the max possible number of tracks at startup, and you can be sure it is back in the first track to boot it. I call this beautiful sound of the drive's head banging against the end: the Wozniak sound.
Indy Car 500: craping out on the CPU while looking like barf. Planet X3: Let's just scroll through this vast and detailed 3 screens of map fluently with multiple color sets that all just look so gorgeous even faulty cga color pallets could not make it look bad. What a flex.
To be fair, Indy 500 had pretty advanced physics for the time. You could adjust things like wheel camber and stagger, tyre pressure, wing aerodynamics, shock stiffness, gear ratios, etc., it calculated things like fuel weight and tyre temperatures in real time, and it all affected the car's speed and handling. It wasn't an eye-candy kinda game. Plus the 30-year gap between both games, of course.
Pretty sure Starfox craps out on the SuperFX chip as well while looking like barf while Final Fantasy games also scroll through their maps very smoothly on the stock CPU. There's a reason Starfox and Virtua Racing need an extra CPU in the cartridge.
Not surprising, Indianapolis 500 does realtime 3D polygon graphics and physics simulation. Remember when those were a big deal and highly CPU intensive. Opposed to 2D tiles scrolling block by block.
Ok so from the top: Mockingboard - Did you ensure that the external slot switches in the ROM door were properly set? In an Apple II all I/O is memory mapped. To achieve this each expansion card is given some section of the address space at $C000 (i.e. Slot 1 - $C100, Slot 2 - $C200, etc..). The Apple //c had quite a bit of the functionality provided by common cards ( Disk controller, Smartport controller, Mouse card, 80 column card, super serial card) built-in. In order to be compatible with existing Apple II software the //c needed to replicate these I/O addresses and routines. So this left almost no $CXXX space available. The Laser 128, by adding even more functionality had an even worse problem. This was solved by having two DIP switches which could map the slot 5 and/or slot 7 $CXXX space either to the internal devices (RAM card and Universal Disk controller respectively) OR to the external slot. If you don't have at least one of these set to "external" then any card you insert in that slot won't work. Graphics Modes: The Laser 128 supported the same modes the //c did. Lo-res, double lo-res, high-res and double-Hi Res - it didn't even support the crazy mixed color/mono DHR mode that the Apple RGB/Video 7 cards supported. The likely source of the error that there are some extra modes available comes from the Laser 128 user manual. Which, in several places refers to the double hi-res mode as 560x192 in 16 colours. Double-Hi Res uses a "sliding 4-bit window" for generating colour on NTSC systems. So while there are 560 horizontal pixels, you need four of them to make (most) colours. Therefore normally this mode is referred to as 560x192 monochrome and 140x192 in 16 colours. Availability: The Laser 128 shows up frequently on ebay (especially the early versions). The EX is not very common and the EX/2 is virtually non-existent. Features you missed: On the EX/2 the serial port could be turned into a MIDI port. However I'm not sure if it was at all compatible with any standard card (like the Passport). Also the EX/2 had a built-in clock/calendar. Interestingly, the battery that kept time also kept the control panel settings. Other clones: Despite the efforts of customs. Apple II+ clones were easily obtained in the 1980s. About 30% of the people I knew who owned an Apple II+ owned a clone. However as the Apple software market started to focus on the //e and //c -- and programs like Appleworks were part of that. These machines could no longer be assembled strictly from OTS parts. The Laser 128 itself has three large ULA/GAL components attempting to emulate all that circuitry. That was probably as much the reason for the waning of the clone market as anything else. Was it better?: Well the EX was definitely a bargain. The only caveat I would bring up is build quality. I have worked on quite a few 128's and EX's and the motherboards are frequently filled with post-production repairs. The keyboard is just a circuit board with a rubber overlay consisting of small conductive buttons. If the overlay is even slightly unaligned when you re-assemble the system. You will end up with some keys either not firing or only firing occasionally. In this there is absolutely no comparison to the Apple //c (and especially the //c+) . Did that translate into a lack of reliability? Not sure, most of the units I get require some work. So my sample is biased because I'm usually looking for "as-is" equipment. Hope that helps.
Loved seeing AppleWorks in there. The programmer was my neighbor when he was writing it. Watching him code that pretty much guaranteed I'd be a hardware nerd for life, after that.
My $200 Motorola Moto G Power is iphone X class of spec and they are not very far apart in manufacture date. Apple charges 250%+ markup for the recognizable branding, even when the product itself is generally inferior in quality and functionality.
What's weirder though; an apple clone or an officially licensed third party apple computer? Because those exist too... and I'd personally argue that they're more strange lol mostly since hackintoshes are technically apple clones in a way
I was a Commodore fan, back in the day, but I regret not getting a Laser 128 and Laser XT now that I know they were reasonably priced yet also quality ways that I could have had access to software for those platforms too!
Funny how Adrian Black did a three part series on the Laser 128 ex, just weeks ago. I am betting Dave was in post-production when Adrian premiered his videos. Although most of the info was covered by Adrian, I still appreciate Dave's more structured approach.
Great video David. I had the original Laser 128 back in the late 80s and I loved it. I had a mate who had an Apple //c and he was actually quite jealous of my clone. I ended up selling it to a friend who had retired and wanted something to do to keep him amused and out of his wife's hair since he was no longer working. He had a ball learning how to use it and I had fun teaching him. Update, there was something called double resolution that allowed for 560x192 and from memory it could have up to 16 actual colours on screen at once.
Such a huge fan of yours. You make computing so interesting to someone like me that knows nothing ! It’s a huge testament to your talent and knowledge! Keep it up !
The TRS-80 Color Computer had a similar palette issue as is discussed @19:20. The hi-res color supported four colors (black, white, red, and blue), but the red and blue tended to reverse themselves randomly (whether at power-on or when the mode was activated escapes my memory).
I'm guessing the power output on the XT was for the external floppy drive. They probably didn't even supply a separate power brick with the floppy drive, and just included the cable to connect to the power output on the computer.
This is true. I had the external 5-1/4" 360KB floppy drive and it got power from that "POWER OUT" port on the PC. Later on I swapped out the drive for a 3-1/2" 720KB floppy drive. I still remember the external power supply making a ticking noise when the PC was turned off. I saw the XT and external drive on a newspaper ad around Xmas 1990 and it was within my meager budget. I paid (IIRC) US$150+$50 for the PC+drive from J&R NYC (and probably saved this relic from the clearance rack and landfill). Bought lots of cheap hardware (mouse, printer, memory chips upgrade to 640K), software and used it heavily until I splurged for a 80486 PC in 1993.
Something tells me that external floppy interface on the XT is compatible with the IBM 4869 external 5.25" drive. Looks like the same connector and that was of the PS/2 era -- around 1987. Great video as usual!
AppleWin developer here. There are a couple of games that do ROM checks so they won't boot on a Laser 128 but with boot tracing and disabling those stupid checks every game works on the Laser 128. There is even a retrocomputing stackexchange question about this: _Why was Brøderbund's RWTS18 incompatible with the Laser 128?_
Why would any game developer put effort in this useless ROM checks? I mean, a game sold is a game sold. If the customer (and they are the only one the companys should keep in mind in their decisions, they bring the money) uses an Laser 128 instead of the expensive clone from Apple, what should a game company be bothered with the customers hardware?
@@deineroehre Basically to verify a Apple 2 model / CPU features, such as a 65C02, since it is lazy / trivial to check one ROM byte. But yeah it is annoying. Apple _may_ have also put pressure on studios to work only on authentic Apple computers but I don't have any evidence for that.
It's better that they switched to the educational toy market. Competition in the software market through the 90s was virtually murderous, I can't imagine the hardware market was any better. (Case: M$ cutting into their own profits to destroy Netscape. Only people outside the industry were upset by this, everyone inside the industry knew it was normal.) I respect Vtec for finding a niche where they could do honest work.
They'd probably be making smartphones just like every other company. Smartphones are currently the most used piece of tech to the point where it is used more even than laptops.
One thing I've never heard anyone talk about is the Laser's disk drive (or any other Apple II clone's disk drive). Does it have the same sounds, including that loud buzzing that would come from the Apple II's drive?
No, they were so much quieter! We had one Apple brand drive (The //e style UniDisk model), and one Laser brand drive. (Both mated to a //e... I lusted so hard after the 128 EX!) It did not make the same unrestrained "chunking" and "clacking" sounds as the Apple drive. Its sounds were more tame and muted, like those of the Apple 3.5" drives of the era.
@@linuxsquirrel I have a working Laser 128 I got when I was a kid, this is a perfect description of the internal drive. Muted with much less defined chunking and clacking.
My first computer was a Franklin 1200, which I kept calling an Apple II at the time because it ran Apple II software. My parents bought a bunch of different educational software, which I remember being mildly entertaining. But my favorite program was Frogger. A lot of schools in Pennsylvania had Franklin computers in the mid to late 80s, because they could get them cheaper than Apple II official models.
My first personal computer was a Franklin Ace 1200. It was 100% Apple compatible because they copied the Apple Roms. Apple sued Franklin was forced to take their systems off the market.
That's interesting, our school district clearly had some kind of discount deal with Apple, because all of the early micro-computers were Apple IIc's in their computer labs with the crappy educational software they had you use for math class or what not. Later in high school I remember one of the computer labs being all IBM, all networked together through some early ethernet system. They had typing classes and some other computer programing class I think. I never took typing or computer programing in high school, so I never used those IBMs. I suspect they paid a pretty penny for that IBM computer lab, it looked like current computers too. All the student workstations were smaller desktops, while the teachers system was one of those large upright IBMs. Heck it might have been an early server, It seemed to be able to control what programs the students could load, and the teacher could drop into each student's desktop, like screen sharing, but in 80 column text display mode. Heck I don't think they were even running windows 3.0 then, though it was out by then.
Were the artifacts created in NTSC for pseudo color on these micro-computers available to the PAL versions? i.e. could they also get a similar color palette from the PAL signal? I do know that PAL basically auto corrected it's color phase signal, thus why PAL Tv's didn't have a "Tint" adjustment because it wasn't necessary to adjust the phase of the color burst to make it look right. While NTSC tv's did; signal reflections off of mountains, buildings, planes etc could case a phase change because of the delay, but you more than likely would have seen a leading or trailing ghost in the picture. But, if it wasn't a huge delay, (smaller ghost, less visible in the pic) it still could effect the color burst. Ahh NTSC, Never The Same Color.
@@marcusdamberger No, it didn't work on PAL. Colour was less of a hack in PAL and SECAM. This is part of the reason PAL looked more washed out compared to NTSC too. Mind you, PAL colour was still had more in common with NTSC than it did with SECAM, which is why colour on the 2600 just worked for PAL, but SECAM had to put up with a vastly reduced palette.
@@talideon Exactly, the French atari 2600 is, in fact, a black and white 2600 and they added a color circuit with only 8 colors. That's why sometimes I could see a purple sky or a red river!
![Seungmin "그렇게, 천천히, 우리(As we are)" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/kAzmhLHePqU/mqdefault.jpg)
Will never forget the day my Dad took us to Sears and bought the Laser Turbo XT. That thing was a monster, but I wouldn't be in IT today without it. I only wish he had listened to me instead of the salesman when he was talked into an EGA monitor even though the PC only had a CGA card. Thanks for the memories, David!
Ah, non-tech-savvy dads and asshole salesmen. Childhood memories.
On the other hand, you got the ability to upgrade to EGA in the future without having to throw the monitor.
@@huleyn135 my dad was a computer scientist in the 80s so I got an Apple II and he built a 486Dx2. He is still a computer scientist so he saw the rise of pc to today.
@@Δημήτρης-θ7θ valid point, probably one the salesman made as well. though Looking at that thing I think it would have been unlikely to upgrade it with an EGA card. Likely by the time they upgraded computers VGA was on the market and common.
It's possible your compact XT may have been able to output in EGA. On the bottom of the case there is a panel to adjust the bios switches and on the settings list next to that there is an option for "external EGA". I haven't seen anyone test if EGA output is possible, however, Vtech's follow model released a year later, the Laser compact XTE, definitely had EGA. So I'd be interested to know exactly what the EGA output setting does on the original compact XT.
"With names like Banana, Orange, and Pineapple..." - it sounds like the single board computer market?
raspberry pi?
reminded me of those
@@nothing-mm8ui There's a Banana Pi, Orange Pi, and even Pine computer boards.
@@rockapartie very informative. Thanks
It's also funny that some animes put other fruits (including oranges and pineapples) on laptops (which are clearly supposed to be mac books), just to avoid the same legal issues.
Clicked on this without seeing who it was. Figured it was lgr. Welcome back man. Glad you got your house back in order.
8-bit has been active, but come to think of it I haven’t seen an LGR video for awhile.
@@joelmartin2549 yeah I know (the whole dump restore things), but this Is the first since the freeze (that I've noticed) that had a normal thumbnail for his content, and he was in his normal recording position (behind the desk... in "the room"😆.)
@@joelmartin2549 LGR puts out videos every week, regularly.
Both are extremely active, it's RUclips BS algorithm at fault.
What
What a big coincidence. Was at a church garage sale and I saw the Laser128 ex in the box. Thought it would be useful or worth a few bucks. Collecting Amigas I wasn't really excited about the find until I opened and the whole package has never been used or unpackaged. Total new old stock, what a surprise.
👍 👍 👍 👍 👍 👍 I wouldn't mind to find old Laser in old garage. Could you tell me where are garages with Laser's inside? 🤔
Damn. Boxed laser 128 ex. :O
I wish I could have one and play around.
Awesome Find! "One man's trash..."
@@estellebright2579 Me too!
Awesome find.
My first DOS machine was actually a Laser Turbo XT that I picked up at a garage sale in the early 90s for like $20.
Good deal. If I were buying new back in the day I'd buy a Tandy 1000 over a Turbo XT. But for $20, that's an easy choice. :-D
Wow I loved my Laser 128.. I learned to program and modify programs well thanks to very smart friends that were older and showed me how to edit binary/hex and duplicate 5 and a quarters.. I found too the majesty of Ultima early versions, and the birth of really good computer games. The best Apple Clone ever Laser - way to go! Best adventure together VTECH!! I still love your electronics and toys - going to check now whatcha been up to the last 38 years. Gradts on your jam back in 1986 - was listening to Peter Gabriel that year and you are the Sledgehammer!
In my senior year of high school I worked in a computer store. We sold a lot of Laser 128's. They were very popular. Many did come in for repair though.
Anything stand out? Do you remember the most common issue?
@@XxUltimateGodzXx thats something id also like to know i have a 128, and mine has been dead reliable, would be nice to know what the more common failures can be
@@XxUltimateGodzXx Unfortunately I don't know. The store I worked at as an 18 year old dealt mostly with businesses and the majority of their sales were PC's and setting up networks. The shop had a small line of software and computers for consumers. The techs complained that too much of their time was being taken up by fixing the Laser 128's. They talked about teaching me how to use the oscilloscope and fix them to free them up, but I ended up leaving to go to school full time.
My computer science teacher in middle school had a Laser 128, and I have to admit, it was a great machine! Almost made me buy it but I opted for the Commodore 64 because all of my friends had it.
All my friends had Apple so I want to get an Apple but when I saw the price, I couldn't afford it. I ended up buying an Atari 800. All my Apple friends laughed and said that I couldn't play games on it because, according to the Basic manual it could only use 4 colors. Then the real documentation came out and it turns out it has 15 different modes, could put 128 colors on the screen at the same time, had sprites, and built in hardware scrolling. That's when the Apple because a "business" computer even though the Atari was probably better for business too (you could write a 40K program and have it only take up 16K of ram using page flipping).
@@bjbell52 I miss schoolyard computer wars....
@@8BitNaptimenowadays it's schoolyard phone wars.
Laser 128 is the computer that my computer lab had when i was in elementary school. Just a few years later they were teaching us microsoft programs and shortly after that i was playing doom on my home pc. Strange how time can be tracked as a child. Great videos keep up the awesome work.
1:03 That lovely typo in the magazine ad... 64 BYTES of RAM!!! Screwing it up just where the attention focus should be. Marvelous.
I had the Laser 128 when I was 9 years old in 1986. I begged for that computer and loved it dearly. I turned my back for 5 mins in my teens and my Dad gave it away to someone who had no idea how awesome it was. Still wish I could get that computer back, even though I don't really have a use for it. I used to use Print Shop using an Okidata Printer, Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing, Kid Nikki Radical Ninja, and a shareware game called Agent USA. Damn that computer ruled so hard.
The "Power Out" on the XT might have been for the external disk drive.
I actually picked up a number of external 37-pin floppy drives at Computer Reset on a couple of my trips, it wouldn't surprise me if one of those could be adapted to that port fairly easily.
When the spin off is better than the original:
Edit:
Mom: we have apple two at home
Apple two at home:
1:00
*Frasier*
@@NathanCorleone cheers was fucking great tho
Jeffersons?
@@PonyCraft good, not great
@@NathanCorleone its okay to have a bad opinion mate, but i agree, frasier is better
Found my Laser 128, Laser monitor, Laser mouse, Laser external drive, and my Panasonic KX-P1080i printer and hooked it all up. Still works great!
We had an Apple //e growing up, and my parents eventually bought a used Laser 128EX/2 as well since the Apple was getting used by me and my brother so much. The EX/2 also had MIDI ports!
Which did they prefer?
@@johnknight9150 I liked them both. I’d prefer one or the other depending. For instance, we had a modem in the Apple, and it’s “finish” was better. I think we might have had more memory in it as well after scavenging a bunch of memory chips from 80 column cards in discarded //es when a local business switched to PCs. But the Laser’s turbo mode was good for doing things that needed more speed.
I learned a few things from you that pertained to my childhood, but then I just wanted you in the background to soothe me like the sound of rain. Amazing channel. You're doing everything right.
VTech not only makes kids toys, but is a MAJOR contract manufacturer for a lot of big name brands you'll find at your local big-box store. I remember in college some 25+ years ago that one of my roommates opened up his PC and found that VTech made the motherboard. He was surprised that his computer and his nephew's toy computer came from the same folks!
on second thought not that surprising. If you can design a board with cheap shitty components on it you can probably do the same thing with better parts. Might actually be easier in some cases with higher end parts being more integrated. North and South bridge beat individual IO chips for ease of board design.
Yes V-Tech has found a niche in that they make either Kids toys, or older tech like cordless land line phones, but they also make the tech that goes into other brands stuff, they are a lot like foxconn in that way, but for me it does kinda show that just because something has a badge that says made in china doesnt always mean it will be shit, like theres so much bashing on how stuff that comes from the PRC is crap compared to stuff made in country, it gets kinda irritating after a bit, because well its just not always true.
@QuadRaSphere Records and Radio They generally would stick to home landline phones and some home security stuff as well as kid products, but they would also just bridge into OEM and ODM systems for integrated circuits of all sorts, which is why youd occasionally see their name on the motherboard for a computer made by another company. since their core business model seems to be make integrated circuits for other companies its kinda hard to boil down what all V-Tech actually made
My grade school had about a dozen Pineapple computers.
One of the kids in seasons 1 & 2 of Digimon, had a Pineapple laptop.
Thank you for all the time and effort you put into these videos!
I grew up in the Commodore 64-bubble and never heard of the computers you frequently show us, super interesting!
The Laser DOES have extended graphics modes, the owner's manual for my EX does state so. There are some videos on my channel demonstrating a simple program in that mode at 1MHz and 2MHz.
Replying so David has a better chance of seeing this
Good to know!
huh neat
@@theodoros_1234 I'm baffled why people are up-voting this. Go watch the videos, they aren't demonstrating new modes. It's just using the 'HGR2' mode. The gold label original laser 128 (not the EX) can do 560x384 and allows you to change the border color of the screen. It's noted on the packaging and computist #66 details the soft switches to use it. I've tried it and both interlace (384 line) and border color work. I've messaged David with the details.
I have updated the description field.
Apple clones were ubiquitous in Australia in the mid 80s. I had a 2c clone.
I remember Pineapple Computers, a friend of mine had one in the 80s. FYI the company is still in operation, or at least remnants of it. They don't assemble computers anymore but operate a few shops here in Malaysia. I more or less grew up at one of their outlets, I'd be over there every weekend browsing through their games. Back then, a game cost a little over a dollar a disk and about 2 dollars for a photocopy of the manual... Lol
*edited for typos
Interesting to see that "you can get a product that does more for 3 times cheaper" has been apple's motto since the start
My brother and I got the 128 for Christmas when I was in the 4th grade. My mom got it from Service Merchandise on recommendation of my 4th grade teacher. We had it connected to a composite monitor that we would later also connect the NES to. I was still using that thing to write reports when I entered high school before upgrading to using a 286.
Your videos are the only tech videos that really get my attention. I don't have a computer hardware interest (or tech interest in general) but I always love watching your videos. I find them both fun, interesting and informative. Thanks to you I now know more about old than new technology. Please keep up with your awesome work!
Whenever I hear V-Tech, I just think phones. I had a V-Tech cordless phone right around 98/99 I really liked. It was black and had a fairly large Caller ID screen, and it had an ergonomic contour. I guarantee if you 25 or older, you or someone you knew had this phone. I sold a lot of them at Service Merchandise. I worked in the electronics dept, and it a decent job, especially for a high schooler. But they were gonna close down the electronics dept, so I quit. Not too long after that they did close it down, then the whole store/chain.
I know V-Tech from their phones too, but oddly we never had one till like 2005, all our cordless phones before then were Uniden.
I remember those phones! I also remember we had a Service Merchandise! I always loved going into the back of the store to look at their electronics section. I saw my fist DVD being played on a large rear projection TV. It looked so clean and vibrant on that TV, I was amazed at how good video could look, it was sharper then what we had via cable TV then, and that looked pretty decent after having watched most of my TV off air tell high school. In college I later worked at the cable company and local TV stations and that raw video from the studio camera looked even better than what the DVD's were doing. But DVD's were certainly a close second to live video from a studio camera.
@@marcusdamberger The big screens we had at our store were Hitatchi's for the most part. They did look pretty good for standard TV .
Wasn't V-Tech the same company that had those boxes with a flip down keyboard and a 7-inch CRT screen, that you could plug into your home land line jack and connect to other users, like a rudimentary early version of the internet? I won one of those, and a year's service, in a radio call-in contest. You know, "We'll take the seventh caller with the correct answer to this question?" Well it was just random luck, I knew the answer and I was the seventh caller, and I got lucky. Then, a few years later, the same thing happened to a friend, and he won a brand new Harley.
...
Holup...
@@jefff3886 im not sure, what you described sounds the the french mintel system, but that was a free machine used only in france, or maybe the Amstrad emailer, from the uk that did sorta make it here for 5 and a half minutes, but V-Tech did make quite a lot of stuff that just kinda slotted into industries that already existed so who knows, maybe it would help if you had an idea of what the machine may have been called, for a google search.
Love this - my family's first PC was the Laser XT. I spent countless hours on it with GW Basic! What a blast from the past, thanks for this video.
Our school had more Lasers than it did Apples in the mid 80's. The Apples were int he main office and the library, while the resource rooms that did have pc's had Laser 128's
I still have my Laser Compact XT. I didn't know they were so rare. Shortly after I bought mine I expanded it as much as I could. As you can see on David's video, there is a COM2 port that is blocked off. If you bought a 16550 UART and a 1488 and 1489 RS232 to TTL driver/receiver chip set, along with a 9-pin PC board mount connector, you could populate COM2 yourself and get it working. Likewise, if you wanted an IBM 8-bit ISA expansion port you could get a 62 pin right-angle bus slot and solder it onto the motherboard.
I never found an external drive and never really needed one. Mine came with a 1MB RAM expansion card built-in so I configured that as a RAM drive in case I had a need for more disk storage albeit very volatile storage.
I bet that power out was for the external drive or printer, not a monitor.
That would also be my guess since its DC, but its also nowhere near the Expansion port, and theres another switch by the mono switch that said something, then it said LCD or at least it looked like it did, my thought then becomes did they also build an LCD monitor for use on the XT like they did on the 128, if they did then that power out could have been for that, since an LCD monitor will use not only less power but also wouldnt require an AC input like a CRT would.
drive is my guess, too!
The "DC power out" port wasn't a great idea, since if a peripheral plugged into there it wouldn't come with its own power supply and thus could only be used with the Laser; and the Laser's own power supply would have to be hefty enough to run the peripheral whether you ever had one or not.
It would make perfect sense to use it for an external drive. I suspect that massive 'external drive connector' is just a floppy cable with a d-sub connector. that way an exteral drive could be just a standard ibm-compatible floppy drive with an adapter board. ( I wonder if one was ever mader...)
When i was in 7th grade i worked for a computer store that doubled as a user group and BBS with fidnonet gateways. I got to take a laser 128 / XT home for a bit along with some dated televideo stuff to run a node form my area code for the local school. this brings me back. :D
A bbs for your school?
@@drkinferno72 thats boomer internet, fellow zoomer.
Thanks for giving us a closer look at the Laser XT. 3:48 - I recognize that ugly towel!
@1:48 OMG I HAD ONE! My first computer was a Franklin ACE 1000.
Ah, Choplifter… So many hours spent playing this when I was young! 😊
I was just checking for a video to realize that two weeks passed by. Glad to see a new video!
The 37 pin SUB--D connector for external floppies in the Laser XT is probably simply a shugart interface (normal PC floppy interface) as it was quite common to use this connectors with the normal flat cable. The pins are usually just connected 1 to 1, so it extremely easy to build an adapter. You just have to check if they also push power over it.
I thought the power out socket might be for the drive.
Thank you so much for making this, I was just thinking "wonder if anyone has done videos about that apple 2 clone " I proposed switching our school computers to it, but the apple 2 was actually cheaper for schools to buy through apple's educational sales channels.
Just when I think I've watched everything on RUclips, you drop a new video.
These all bring back memories. I had just graduated high school when these all came out. Was an awesome time.
Apple: "Does more. Costs less. It's that simple."
Laser: "Uh-huh."
Nowadays the slogan seems to be "Costs more. Does less. But it's *Apple* ! It's that simple."
@@alpheusmadsen8485 Wellll, It was like that back in 80s and this video proved it. Duh
I love how cheapskates and morons admire companies who just copy other companies ideas and sell their cloned products for 1/3 of the price. Obviously those people will never be in a position to have their ideas getting copied by others.
@@mojoblues66 remind me how Apple 'invented' graphical pc interfaces...uh, no that's Xerox. Or touchscreens, or portable mp3 music players, or smartphones, or, or, or.... Name one major invention made by Apple. A company counting on a non tech savvy, brand blind public to gouge with over the top prices for slightly above average products.
@@AppleSauceGamingChannel yeah people don't pay for innovation, they pay for the ecosystem and the brand name.
This channel easily has my fav intro music it brings such nostalgia of the 80's and early 90's. One of the best times to have been alive for of all time!
Always a good day when David uploads!!
Yep
Or good night here in argentina but i was here to write the same!!!..
That floppy disk going into the drive in the intro makes me smile so hard. Sure I can just rewatch an old video but it's not the same for some reason.
Amen!
I had a Laser 128 and was able to get a card to work directly in the expansion slot, without the expansion bay. Oddly enough, it was a Lis’ner 1000 speech recognition card. Pretty cool for the day. The laser is long gone, but I still have the card. Thanks for the show. I always enjoy these!
The power out on the laser xt isn't for a monitor (but DC monitor's was likely doable homebrew style) the power out port is for peripherals like tape and risk drive and HDD ect. So it was a useful power out port none the less..
15:15 You highlighted what look like the printer cables. I think the display cable it's referring to is directly under the monitor's description - 3 E 76650 for $14.99.
The new studio looks AMAZING!!!!! Well done 8-Bit Guy!
The original gold label laser 128 does support 560x384 and setting border color (and possibly 280x384). It's removed in the later versions as you have there possibly to increase apple compatibility. I have tried it on both machines and it definitely works on the earlier rom gold label machine. An article in Computist #66 (see internet archive for copy) tells you how to access it, then you have to write the image to both pages in dhgr mode. It's also noted on the packaging of the original gold label version of the laser 128.
You are correct, the original Gold label / slotted case had a different board and ROM from the later Red label / checkmark case. The newer board supported the Universal Disk Controller (daisy chaining drives and 3.5" support) as well as the RAM board available as an add-on for the L128 and preinstalled in the EX and EX/2 models. I suspect the UDC needed more memory for its ROM code and the little used extra graphic mode went away to create more space.
My first personal computer in my room was an old (at the time, mid to late 90's) Apple IIGS Woz Edition loaded with some of the best expansion cards. It was a gift from an Uncle, the company he managed IT for was tossing it with drives and monitor in favor of a newer workstation. I remember seeing a couple of the Laser 128EX's along side it that he kept. I still have the IIGS setup for use. I learned Assembly and C on it and still program little projects on the real hardware when bored. It's crazy how long the Apple ][ (and clones to an extent) lasted in use thanks to Woz's design of simplicity and upgradability.
20:36 Indy 500, great game, it's a must for every retro gamer.
Nostalgic... my first PC that was actully my own back in 6th grade was a Laser.. a 386SX. I remember going with my parents to pick it up. So excited. Before that we had a family Tandy 1000, then some Tandy Laptop. I believe maybe a Tandy 1500?
I'm just here to appreciate all the work that goes into the production of one of your videos. Nice job.
I love your intro so much that I made it my ringtone haha. I love the song that it comes from as well! Good stuff my man!
I recognize Adrian's 70's towel from a mile a way. He is quite the hoopy frood!
Was going to say the exact same thing!
3:50 for those wondering
He will always be safe from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal.
There´s nothing better than a nutrient-soaked towel for when you´re clandestinely aboard a vogon ship.
Adrian is just this guy you know.
Thank you so much for this. My family actually did own a Laser Compact XT that we bought from Sears. It was our first computer and we had it for several years, till we finally upgraded to a 486 machine in 1994. Initially I did want the Laser 128 because I was used to Apple II computers from school, but my parents decided to get the XT instead. It was an learning experience for me since I had no experience with IBM clones or with MS-DOS, but once I figured it out I really enjoyed that machine. I do remember it being very reliable, I had no issues with it while we owned it. Seeing the CGA graphics again does make me appreciate how far we have advanced since then.
I've been binge watching 8-bit guy all day, so this is perfect.
There were lots of clones alongside the Laser, even after Apple sued many into the ground. They operated offshore and often just morphed into a different company. They also had 'private label' arrangements where stateside retailers would import 'repair parts', minus the Apple ROMs, and then assemble a machine under their own label using 'backup' EPROMs they acquired on their own. I have a Unitron that became a 'Linden' that way. I saw a lot of these back in the day.
Microsoft in the 80s: You want to make a clone computer? Yes we'll license our software that you'll need.
Part of anti-monopoly laws should be that you must license everything to everyone. If we had that, we wouldn't be in the hell of mono/duopolies we are now.
Microsoft now: anyone can make a windows-compatible computer, but we’ll sell you the OS
@@-FAMI_ problem is no one can make a windows-compatible OS
@@doyouwantsli9680 ReactOS is a thing. It works, even though its still unfinished.
@@doyouwantsli9680 That would be interesting, though shopping would be an odyssey (your mileage may vary on this).
Man don't change your theme song! It just makes me smile every time I hear it.
I love it when clone systems out perform and innovate from the original, while at an affordable price.
Here it was really more about sticking it to greedy Apple.
I'm sure you get millions of comments like this. I'm still looking forward to videos about Teddy Ruxpin, and restoration and documentary videos on the Compaq luggables. I especially enjoy the restoration videos. I can certainly imagine why it may take several years to get material together for a video though. What's really amazing to me is that you find old software that still works. There's no telling how many 5-1/4" and even 3-1/2" inch disks I've had that got corrupted or demagnetized. Keep up the good and fascinating work.
It's been in the making and planning for years. Great that it's finally out there! And I wonder what planned documentary is coming out next... Amiga, maybe? ;)
We all want to see the Amiga. I think I have seen an Amiga in the background of one of his more recent Videos and the first Video on his channel was Amiga 1000 related.
David won't be able to get past that Amiga uses MC68000 instead of his beloved 6502 - or the 65816. Acknowledging that a 16-bit home computer is way superior to the 8-bit home computers is just a bridge too far
I am really looking forward to 8-Bit Guy's video on the Amiga if he ever plans to do it.
@@TheSulross He was able to get past that the IBM PC and compatibles use x86 processors instead of his beloved 65xx, though, even if he isn't the 16-Bit Guy.
@@TheSulross And he made an episode just fine and acknowledged that it's better.
Checks out, my guy.
Thank you so much for the nostalgia. Always good for some feel good vibes and good information.
I had one of those :-) The 128. Wow this takes me back…lol especially when you switched it on [BEEP! Clakata-clacka-clack]
Oh, I can hear it! Yes, I do remember. And the buzz when you forgot to put the disk in... bzzzth... Bzzzth...
I had the Laser Turbo XT. Between the disk drive and the 40MB (!) hard drive booting, it literally played the opening tune to Night Court. Beep-BOOP. (pause) Daaaah-da-duh-duh-duh.
Yes! I had a 128, also. I traded a Franklin Ace 1200 (the one with the built in floppies on the top). I thought that thing was _so_ cool.
I kinda thought it was odd that V-Tech copied over that clatter clunk from the Apple II since the clunk was the floppy drives getting the goto track 1 command 40 times since the Disk II didnt have a track 1 sensor, but with V-Tech creating their own roms they could have added it, since it didnt have to break compatibility with the Disk II.
This was Wozniak's clever solution to the floppy drive's lack of a controller which made it much cheaper (and even faster) than everyone else's. Who cares where the head is? Always move it back the max possible number of tracks at startup, and you can be sure it is back in the first track to boot it. I call this beautiful sound of the drive's head banging against the end: the Wozniak sound.
What a marvelous blast from the past! The trusty Laser 128 was my very first computer back in the day.
Indy Car 500: craping out on the CPU while looking like barf.
Planet X3: Let's just scroll through this vast and detailed 3 screens of map fluently with multiple color sets that all just look so gorgeous even faulty cga color pallets could not make it look bad.
What a flex.
To be fair, Indy 500 had pretty advanced physics for the time. You could adjust things like wheel camber and stagger, tyre pressure, wing aerodynamics, shock stiffness, gear ratios, etc., it calculated things like fuel weight and tyre temperatures in real time, and it all affected the car's speed and handling. It wasn't an eye-candy kinda game.
Plus the 30-year gap between both games, of course.
Pretty sure Starfox craps out on the SuperFX chip as well while looking like barf while Final Fantasy games also scroll through their maps very smoothly on the stock CPU. There's a reason Starfox and Virtua Racing need an extra CPU in the cartridge.
Not surprising, Indianapolis 500 does realtime 3D polygon graphics and physics simulation. Remember when those were a big deal and highly CPU intensive. Opposed to 2D tiles scrolling block by block.
15:10 "test drive" game shown!! It's amazing it ran so well in such a small computer. I had a lot of fun with this one.
Ok so from the top: Mockingboard - Did you ensure that the external slot switches in the ROM door were properly set? In an Apple II all I/O is memory mapped. To achieve this each expansion card is given some section of the address space at $C000 (i.e. Slot 1 - $C100, Slot 2 - $C200, etc..). The Apple //c had quite a bit of the functionality provided by common cards ( Disk controller, Smartport controller, Mouse card, 80 column card, super serial card) built-in. In order to be compatible with existing Apple II software the //c needed to replicate these I/O addresses and routines. So this left almost no $CXXX space available. The Laser 128, by adding even more functionality had an even worse problem. This was solved by having two DIP switches which could map the slot 5 and/or slot 7 $CXXX space either to the internal devices (RAM card and Universal Disk controller respectively) OR to the external slot. If you don't have at least one of these set to "external" then any card you insert in that slot won't work.
Graphics Modes: The Laser 128 supported the same modes the //c did. Lo-res, double lo-res, high-res and double-Hi Res - it didn't even support the crazy mixed color/mono DHR mode that the Apple RGB/Video 7 cards supported. The likely source of the error that there are some extra modes available comes from the Laser 128 user manual. Which, in several places refers to the double hi-res mode as 560x192 in 16 colours. Double-Hi Res uses a "sliding 4-bit window" for generating colour on NTSC systems. So while there are 560 horizontal pixels, you need four of them to make (most) colours. Therefore normally this mode is referred to as 560x192 monochrome and 140x192 in 16 colours.
Availability: The Laser 128 shows up frequently on ebay (especially the early versions). The EX is not very common and the EX/2 is virtually non-existent.
Features you missed: On the EX/2 the serial port could be turned into a MIDI port. However I'm not sure if it was at all compatible with any standard card (like the Passport). Also the EX/2 had a built-in clock/calendar. Interestingly, the battery that kept time also kept the control panel settings.
Other clones: Despite the efforts of customs. Apple II+ clones were easily obtained in the 1980s. About 30% of the people I knew who owned an Apple II+ owned a clone. However as the Apple software market started to focus on the //e and //c -- and programs like Appleworks were part of that. These machines could no longer be assembled strictly from OTS parts. The Laser 128 itself has three large ULA/GAL components attempting to emulate all that circuitry. That was probably as much the reason for the waning of the clone market as anything else.
Was it better?: Well the EX was definitely a bargain. The only caveat I would bring up is build quality. I have worked on quite a few 128's and EX's and the motherboards are frequently filled with post-production repairs. The keyboard is just a circuit board with a rubber overlay consisting of small conductive buttons. If the overlay is even slightly unaligned when you re-assemble the system. You will end up with some keys either not firing or only firing occasionally. In this there is absolutely no comparison to the Apple //c (and especially the //c+) . Did that translate into a lack of reliability? Not sure, most of the units I get require some work. So my sample is biased because I'm usually looking for "as-is" equipment.
Hope that helps.
I mean the apple costs 3x as much so can you really complain?
I've only just stumbled upon your channel, and boy am I glad that I did! What a cool video. Thank you.
Loved seeing AppleWorks in there. The programmer was my neighbor when he was writing it. Watching him code that pretty much guaranteed I'd be a hardware nerd for life, after that.
thats pretty cool
"almost three times cheaper for a product that actually does more"
Nice resume of Apple's history
so nothing's changed, then
My $200 Motorola Moto G Power is iphone X class of spec and they are not very far apart in manufacture date. Apple charges 250%+ markup for the recognizable branding, even when the product itself is generally inferior in quality and functionality.
@@astealoth yeah apple is a peeping joke
@QuadRaSphere Records and Radio lol
@QuadRaSphere Records and Radio yeah it fits like a glove, would have been great, missed opportunity
I am so happy that this channel exists
If I were to own one, I'd have a 3rd party Apple computer. Who would've known. 🤔
What's weirder though; an apple clone or an officially licensed third party apple computer? Because those exist too... and I'd personally argue that they're more strange lol mostly since hackintoshes are technically apple clones in a way
Because of you I got into restoring old pcs! I'm so glad to see you upload
I was unironically excited to see a new video from you. Glad things are going well for you!
I was a Commodore fan, back in the day, but I regret not getting a Laser 128 and Laser XT now that I know they were reasonably priced yet also quality ways that I could have had access to software for those platforms too!
Funny how Adrian Black did a three part series on the Laser 128 ex, just weeks ago. I am betting Dave was in post-production when Adrian premiered his videos. Although most of the info was covered by Adrian, I still appreciate Dave's more structured approach.
Great video David. I had the original Laser 128 back in the late 80s and I loved it. I had a mate who had an Apple //c and he was actually quite jealous of my clone. I ended up selling it to a friend who had retired and wanted something to do to keep him amused and out of his wife's hair since he was no longer working. He had a ball learning how to use it and I had fun teaching him. Update, there was something called double resolution that allowed for 560x192 and from memory it could have up to 16 actual colours on screen at once.
I wonder if that power out port is for the external disk drive.
That is a really good theory! 👍
@@Gideon_Judges6 *Hypothesis. Only call something a theory after it's been confirmed.
That's what I was thinking too. If I remember right, tube displays use AC power for timing.
@@TWX1138 there are also portable tvs that run on 12v dc, so it could be possible to have a monitor on that port.
This is probably the case! That large D-sub looks the same as on the IBM XT and on it, doesn't carry power.
I usually avoid videos that are too long, but when I see the notification from a new 8 bit guy video I always hope for a long episode!
Such a huge fan of yours. You make computing so interesting to someone like me that knows nothing ! It’s a huge testament to your talent and knowledge! Keep it up !
The TRS-80 Color Computer had a similar palette issue as is discussed @19:20. The hi-res color supported four colors (black, white, red, and blue), but the red and blue tended to reverse themselves randomly (whether at power-on or when the mode was activated escapes my memory).
I'm guessing the power output on the XT was for the external floppy drive. They probably didn't even supply a separate power brick with the floppy drive, and just included the cable to connect to the power output on the computer.
This is true. I had the external 5-1/4" 360KB floppy drive and it got power from that "POWER OUT" port on the PC. Later on I swapped out the drive for a 3-1/2" 720KB floppy drive.
I still remember the external power supply making a ticking noise when the PC was turned off. I saw the XT and external drive on a newspaper ad around Xmas 1990 and it was within my meager budget. I paid (IIRC) US$150+$50 for the PC+drive from J&R NYC (and probably saved this relic from the clearance rack and landfill). Bought lots of cheap hardware (mouse, printer, memory chips upgrade to 640K), software and used it heavily until I splurged for a 80486 PC in 1993.
Wow this new studio looks great !
You know, that background could work if it were very light gray in color.
The problem is the excessive contrast.
EDIT: But a medium gray would work better, IMHO.
Hi Ben! Doing some voice impression research? "He he."
Did you like the video?
@@Cyanne It would have been better with a better background. jk jk
@@hulksmash8159 Heh heh.
Something tells me that external floppy interface on the XT is compatible with the IBM 4869 external 5.25" drive. Looks like the same connector and that was of the PS/2 era -- around 1987. Great video as usual!
maybe PCBway could help you make a external card slot for that bus - and a 3D printed case.
This is really cool and thank you for the link to the documentary! Good stuff!!!
Great to see you back. Interesting material, as always.
AppleWin developer here. There are a couple of games that do ROM checks so they won't boot on a Laser 128 but with boot tracing and disabling those stupid checks every game works on the Laser 128. There is even a retrocomputing stackexchange question about this:
_Why was Brøderbund's RWTS18 incompatible with the Laser 128?_
Why would any game developer put effort in this useless ROM checks? I mean, a game sold is a game sold. If the customer (and they are the only one the companys should keep in mind in their decisions, they bring the money) uses an Laser 128 instead of the expensive clone from Apple, what should a game company be bothered with the customers hardware?
I have a working Laser 128 in front of me. I remember Broderbund's hatred of the Laser 128 well.
@@deineroehre Basically to verify a Apple 2 model / CPU features, such as a 65C02, since it is lazy / trivial to check one ROM byte. But yeah it is annoying.
Apple _may_ have also put pressure on studios to work only on authentic Apple computers but I don't have any evidence for that.
@@solenoidnull9542 Nice! I have the Laser 128 EX and 128 EX/2 models. I still have to track down an original 128 sometime.
Good to see you back on air 8 Bit Guy, nice video.
If this company was still around to the calibre in the 80s I think they would be innovating today and actually challenging Apple
Apple hasn't been a real competitor in the computer market in decades... the only area they do well in is mobile devices.
It's better that they switched to the educational toy market. Competition in the software market through the 90s was virtually murderous, I can't imagine the hardware market was any better. (Case: M$ cutting into their own profits to destroy Netscape. Only people outside the industry were upset by this, everyone inside the industry knew it was normal.) I respect Vtec for finding a niche where they could do honest work.
@@ericlanglois9194 yeh but even then the designs is stagnant. The only saving grace is the OS and speed of the processor
They'd probably be making smartphones just like every other company.
Smartphones are currently the most used piece of tech to the point where it is used more even than laptops.
Welcome back, love the studio!
One thing I've never heard anyone talk about is the Laser's disk drive (or any other Apple II clone's disk drive). Does it have the same sounds, including that loud buzzing that would come from the Apple II's drive?
No, they were so much quieter! We had one Apple brand drive (The //e style UniDisk model), and one Laser brand drive. (Both mated to a //e... I lusted so hard after the 128 EX!) It did not make the same unrestrained "chunking" and "clacking" sounds as the Apple drive. Its sounds were more tame and muted, like those of the Apple 3.5" drives of the era.
@@linuxsquirrel I have a working Laser 128 I got when I was a kid, this is a perfect description of the internal drive. Muted with much less defined chunking and clacking.
Super, as always. What you do is really appreciated.
The Laser 128 is the last working working "Apple ][" I have.
Yea!! Its new 8-Bit Guy video time. Just the intro song gets me in my happy place and the world needs more happy these days.
My first computer was a Franklin 1200, which I kept calling an Apple II at the time because it ran Apple II software. My parents bought a bunch of different educational software, which I remember being mildly entertaining. But my favorite program was Frogger.
A lot of schools in Pennsylvania had Franklin computers in the mid to late 80s, because they could get them cheaper than Apple II official models.
My first personal computer was a Franklin Ace 1200. It was 100% Apple compatible because they copied the Apple Roms. Apple sued Franklin was forced to take their systems off the market.
That's interesting, our school district clearly had some kind of discount deal with Apple, because all of the early micro-computers were Apple IIc's in their computer labs with the crappy educational software they had you use for math class or what not. Later in high school I remember one of the computer labs being all IBM, all networked together through some early ethernet system. They had typing classes and some other computer programing class I think. I never took typing or computer programing in high school, so I never used those IBMs. I suspect they paid a pretty penny for that IBM computer lab, it looked like current computers too. All the student workstations were smaller desktops, while the teachers system was one of those large upright IBMs. Heck it might have been an early server, It seemed to be able to control what programs the students could load, and the teacher could drop into each student's desktop, like screen sharing, but in 80 column text display mode. Heck I don't think they were even running windows 3.0 then, though it was out by then.
4:08 the Apple II has so much better looking volume controls and headphone jack, it’s surprising to me they already had this effort into design
Nah: the difference between the way that Commodore did multicolour and Apple did multicolour is that Commodore weren't relying on NTSC bugs.
Sure. I get that. But the real explanation would have taken way too long. I did say "in a nutshell"
@@The8BitGuy nutshells are TIGHT!
Were the artifacts created in NTSC for pseudo color on these micro-computers available to the PAL versions? i.e. could they also get a similar color palette from the PAL signal? I do know that PAL basically auto corrected it's color phase signal, thus why PAL Tv's didn't have a "Tint" adjustment because it wasn't necessary to adjust the phase of the color burst to make it look right. While NTSC tv's did; signal reflections off of mountains, buildings, planes etc could case a phase change because of the delay, but you more than likely would have seen a leading or trailing ghost in the picture. But, if it wasn't a huge delay, (smaller ghost, less visible in the pic) it still could effect the color burst. Ahh NTSC, Never The Same Color.
@@marcusdamberger No, it didn't work on PAL. Colour was less of a hack in PAL and SECAM. This is part of the reason PAL looked more washed out compared to NTSC too. Mind you, PAL colour was still had more in common with NTSC than it did with SECAM, which is why colour on the 2600 just worked for PAL, but SECAM had to put up with a vastly reduced palette.
@@talideon Exactly, the French atari 2600 is, in fact, a black and white 2600 and they added a color circuit with only 8 colors. That's why sometimes I could see a purple sky or a red river!
I really like your new studio :-) Looks great and so fresh.