I started from laser-310 30 years ago. I will answer this question.
Main hardware specifications:
CPU: Z-80A/4.7mhz clock speed
16 k ram + 2 k video RAM
16 KB Rom
Tape output: baud rate 300
Display output: Image 128x64, text: 32x16
Software:
Microsoft basic V2.0
After the DOS plug-in card is installed, some operation commands on the floppy disk are supported.
Brief Introduction:
Laser-310 is a family education computer developed by Hong Kong VTech in 1980s. This series of low-end models include laser-110 and 200,210. The main difference is the size of Ram and the design of the keyboard. Among them, laser-200 and laser-310 have a large amount of ownership in mainland China. At that time, many middle school and children's Palace were equipped with a laser-310 computer, which was also equipped with an apple II and Comx-35/PC-1 in the middle school room. In early 1980s, laser-310 and 200 appeared almost simultaneously, a little later than R1 (Nissan Lambda-8300/PC-8300) computers. Around May 1986, the "Children's computer world" newspaper, in conjunction with the Shanghai microcomputer factory, imported a batch of laser-310 from the Hong Kong weiyida company to offer preferential prices for subscribers, laser-310 entered many families. At the same time there are South China computer factory production of PZ-80 computers, but because of the small number of software, poor product technology, and not popular.
The above R1/Laser series CPUs are Z-80.
Product source analysis:
Laser200/310 series computers were first designed for VZ-200/300 family education computers from Dick Smith, Australia. According to the VZ-200 or VZ-300 on the Internet query, now can still find a lot of technical information and the PC version of the simulator. It is estimated that Hong Kong weiyda was authorized by Dick Smith to produce laser-200/300 series products. Now from the product circuit and structural design, VZ-200/300 and other products, should be the original Dick Smith Company. Firmware is the TRS-80 (Tandy Radio Shack) firmware that removes many advanced basic functions. Laser-310 is a branch of software development. Later, it followed the instructions to restore these advanced basic commands to extend the features of laser-310, such as automatic reencoding of row numbers and floating point operations.
Compared with the internal photo analysis of VZ200/300 and laser-200/310, laser-200 copies almost all the design of the VZ-200. Some photos show that the video output section in laser-200 adopts prototype holes similar to the prototype design, which should not appear in a commercial product. Laser-210 is a follow-up product of 200, but it does not seem to be in mainland China. The laser-310 is a product launched on the basis of the improvement of the VZ-300 hardware design, completely cancel the prototype design holes, and add the keyboard to the main circuit board shielding layer.
Later versions of the laser-500 and other models released by weiyida are completely incompatible with the laser200/300 series.
System Configuration:
The laser-200/310 series computers are highly compatible with hardware and software, with almost the same number of memories. Therefore, Peripherals can be used universally.
There are mainly 16 k ram expansion cards and 64 k ram expansion cards. Optical pen, floppy disk, and interface. Joystick and tape drive. The printer is a PP-40 four-color plotter.
The development of laser-1980s in 310 follows several directions:
1. hardware expansion because the laser-310 opens the internal I/O chip and Z-80 bus cable through plug-in cards. Therefore, at that time, a development direction was to try to expand the hardware. what can still be recalled:
The development and production of zhangbaotian in Beijing is a realistic Hanka.
External A/D or D/A card.
And Z-80 monitoring program through the curing into the EPROM, and then inserted into the machine running a variety of extended basic and system monitoring and so on.
2. High-Resolution Display: by modifying the hardware, the system provides a high-resolution display function.
The laser-310 Video Controller is mc6847, and the system is configured with 2 k ram 6116 as the Display memory. A later thought proposed by Peng Xinmin, Guizhou Province, was to modify the mc6847 connection mode, the external 8 K Display memory is 6264. With the software modification, laser-310 can provide 256x128 2-color high-resolution display, which can basically meet the requirements for displaying 16x16 standard Chinese font fonts at that time.
3. Software Development: the main direction is to reply to the blocked original TRS-80 advanced basic commands. And various industrial control and data collection applications.
Now, we can recall that some of the famous people who developed laser-310 at the time were:
Jian Jing compiled the Chinese character display software for normal resolution, Peng Xinmin of Guizhou, developed the high-resolution system, bsave and monitoring system, and Zhang baotian of Beijing developed the chinacache and applied for a national patent.
Summary:
If PC-1500 entered the field of industrial control and data statistics at that time, laser-200/310 mainly focused on family education and primary and secondary education. At that time, key middle schools in big cities were gradually equipped with Apple II computers, while general middle school machine rooms were equipped with such educational computers.
The heyday of laser-310 was from the 1980s s to the later 88 years before CEC-I's Chinese learning machine entered the home.
At present, laser-200/310 series computers are occasionally seen in mainland China, mainly as favorites and nostalgia. In foreign countries, there are still several websites and some people continuing to discuss related technologies and applications.
