VTech Laser 50 Educational Computer

The Laser 50 is a small and cheap educational computer. The machine was designed for young programmers to learn BASIC. The computer comes with a built-in LCD screen that offers 1 line of 16 characters. The RAM was only 2192 bytes, but it was expandable to 18kByte total using a 16kByte expansion module, which could be inserted in the expansion slot underneath the computer. The Laser 50 comes with a full stroke keyboard which makes it rather unique, as most smaller sized computers came with a chicklet style keyboard.

The computer has some sound capabilities, 1 channel with 3 octaves through an internal small speaker. There is a tape-recorder jack, the memory expansion slot on the bottom, and a parallel printer port. The machine can be powerd by 4 AA batteries, or using an external power unit capable of providing 6V DC at 15mA.

The Laser 50 has six different operating modes:

• Mode 1: Computer Mode (Basic)
• Mode 2: Calculator
• Mode 3: Trace On
• Mode 4: Trace off
• Mode 5: Degrees
• Mode 6: Radians

Optional peripherals were a 4 color plotter (PP-40I), a thermal printer (TP-20), a 16kB RAM expansion module, and a tape recorder.