VTech Laser 128 Apple II clone

THe VTech Laser 128 was a straight up Apple II clone, released by VTech in 1986. Its performance is comparable to the Apple IIc or the Apple IIe. The machine has 128kByte of RAM and 128kByte of dedicated video RAM. The case was semi portable as it had a built in handle for transport. It came with a built-in 5.25" floppy disk drive, used the 65C02 CPU and supports all modes of Apple II graphics.

Unlike the Apple II, the Laser 128 had a numeric keypad, a centronics printer port and dedicated Video RAM.

The Laser 128 has a single expanslion slot for Apple II peripheral cards, which gives it better expansion capabilities than the Apple IIc. The slot also accomodates an expansion chassis that then gives two slots, compatible with slot 5 and slot 7 of the Apple IIe. The computer also has an internal RAM expansion slot, allowing for up to 1MB of additional RAM. Later models, the EX and the EX/2 came with the memory expansion already installed.

The Laser 128 came in a few configurations:

• Laser 128 - 1MHz CPU, 5.25" FDD, $479
• Laser 128EX - 3.6MHz CPU, 5.25" FDD, $499
• Laser 128EX/2 - 3.6MHz CPU, 3.5" FDD, $549

VTech had reverse engineered the Apple Monitor ROM using a clean room design, rather than copying it, and licensed an Applesoft BASIC compatible version from Microsoft. Apple tried to stop the Laser 128, but was unable to force the clone off the market like they had done with the clones from the Franklin Computer Corporation.