Texas Instruments Video Programming Unit

The TI VPU200 was a Video Programming Unit. It is an industrial computer used to program PLC control units with ladder logic programs. The system had a floppy drive, display, power supply and keyboard built in. The CPU is Texas Instruments own TMS9900 16 bit microprocessor, the same used in the TI-99/4A series. The VPU200 has 128K of main RAM and 128K of additional RAM for a total of 256KByte.

The system had no display processor, but used recirculating shift registers to display the characterset, which is similar to the first Apple computer. Not very sophisticated, but it allowed Texas Instruments to use off the shelf components that were very reliable, a must for an industrial computer.