We’ve had a lot of fun with VTech’s computers in the past on this blog. Usually, they’re relatively spartan computers with limited functionality, but they did make something very interesting in the late 80s. The Socrates is their hybrid video game console/computer design from 1988, and today we’ll start tearing into it.
↫ Leaded Solder web log
Now we’re in for the good stuff. A weird educational computer/game console/toy thing from the late ’80s, by VTech. I have a massive soft spot for these toy-like devices, because they’re always kind of a surprise – will it be a stupidly simple hardcoded device with zero input/output, or a weirdly capable computer with tons of hidden I/O and a full BASIC ROM? You won’t know until you crack it open and take a peek!
VTech still makes things like this, and I still find them ever as fascinating.
That blog is cool, but the link is to the main blog and not the article I believe you meant to link to
Appears the link is supposed to go to /2025/04/22/vtech-socrates-pickup.html and not /about
Better is https://www.leadedsolder.com/ giving you access to all the articles
Vtech also made a apple2 clone Laser 128 that was better and cheaper than apple could make, with better connectors and more ram. This was to be their downfall they got lawsuits up the wazoo.
“VTech owed much of this compatibility to the fact that they were able to license Applesoft BASIC (which constitutes the largest and most complex part of an Apple II’s ROM contents) from Microsoft just as Apple did, heavily reducing the amount of code that had to be reimplemented. Microsoft had made most of its money by keeping the rights to the software that it sold to others. Likewise, Apple had failed to secure an exclusive distribution license for the Applesoft dialect of BASIC, and VTech was free to buy it. Much Apple software depended on various assembly routines that are a part of BASIC in ROM, and it’s quite likely that the Laser would not have been as successful had it not had compatible ROM entry points.”
They ended up settling with apple and stopping production.
I had a Laser 128 (EX) as a kid, and used it as a daily driver even well into the 1990s. Being Apple compatible it had a massive software catalog, and compared to the Apple ][c/e it ran unbelievably fast.
Basically, It had several compatibility modes (controlled by top-facing switches) that you could use to allow software access to either 64 or 128KB of base memory, plus a full 1MB of memory that you could use as a ramdisk. Since a lot of software on the Apple (and other computers of this generation) were bottlenecked by the floppy drive this was just a massive boon.
I was surprised to learn — like a decade or so after the fact — that it was made by VTech. It just represented a level of engineering and design that isn’t evident in their kids’ toys.
My kids used to have a VSmile. Brilliant machine, quite capable, all the retro feels Still got two units, but they have a weakness that after some time the cartridges start to fail, probably to a faulty contact or lose solder joints.