Hello, and welcome back to the 8-Bit Guy.
In this episode, I want to show you this bizarre little computer known as the IQ Unlimited
by Advantech.
Now, you might be wondering “What is this company Advantech?”
Well, if you turn the computer over you’ll see it was actually produced by Video Technology
Electronics, otherwise known as V-Tech.”
Yes, that’s the same V-Tech that has produced tons of cordless telephones, kids learning
computers, baby monitors, and a variety of other things.
They are also the ones that built the Laser 128, which was an Apple II clone, along with
the matching Laser XT which was a PC clone.
They also produced the laser line of portable computers, and even a series of proprietary
desktop computers that carried the laser brand name.
So, needless to say V-Tech is no stranger to making computers.
But, I think this may be the strangest one they ever made.
The front of the box claims it to be complete, powerful, simple, and affordable.
It also says it is designed to overcome every worry a home computer buyer might have.
That’s quite a claim.
It also shows the 12 built-in programs, which seems to be a big part of their marketing
strategy.
The back of the box claims the IQ Unlimited is the computer families will never outgrow.
That’s also quite a bold statement.
And it does go into more detail about the 12 built in programs.
Let’s take a closer look at this thing.
Over here is the ON/OFF switch.
Around on the back you have a composite video output, a power input, and down here is an
RF output for TVs, along with a channel selector switch.
Then, we have what appears to be a standard parallel printer port.
I have no idea what this port is for.
You might think it is for ROM cartridges, but I’m not convinced of that because if
you look over here to the side, you’ll find what looks much more like a ROM cartridge
slot.
However, I cannot find any evidence that any ROM at all ever existed for this thing and
being that it has no disk drive connection, that means the 12 programs that are built
into this thing that’s pretty much all it ever has or every will have.
I should also mention there’s no audio output jack, but it does have an internal speaker
right here for sound.
On the bottom, you may find it interesting that it has two battery compartments.
The first one here takes four C cell batteries and this can actually operate the computer.
After all, this is supposed to be a quasi-portable computer.
I’ll get into more about that shortly.
But down here you’ll see yet another battery compartment.
This one runs on four AA batteries.
This essentially keeps your programs and documents stored in battery backed RAM, and presumably
keeps the clock running.
So, I think what they were trying to do was to offer a system similar to this old Laser50
that has a single-line display, which what a coincidence was also made by V-Tech, but
I think they wanted to offer a desktop experience as well, all in the same package.
I did some digging around to see where this thing was sold.
And, I found out it was sold in Many department stores during the Christmas season of 1991.
For example, in this 1991 Christmas catalog for JCPenny you’ll see this thing advertised
alongside other kids computers of the era, including other V-tech branded computers.
Although this is certainly the most expensive of the bunch coming in at 200 dollars.
It does also mention in the ad that it has 64K of memory.
I also found it in this 1991 Sears catalog and it is advertised along side a special
IQ dot matrix printer.
And the printer costs $200, the exact same price as the computer itself.
So the combination would run you $400.
Interestingly enough, I found that in this same catalog there were some dedicated word
processors for around the same price.
Although these word processors did have the advantage that they had floppy drives to store
your work.
Hey, this Brother model apparently even features Tetris.
That makes me want to get one!
Now, in this same catalog they were also advertising a Packard Bell 386 PC for $1,000 and an XT
for $700.
So, the V-tech IQ does seem to be price competitive with those, especially being a monitor is
required for those machines and that was an additional $329.
The Vtech could use a TV or its built in display.
However, on the next page you can see an Amiga 500, also a costly proposition for $600 plus
another $350 for the monitor.
However, down below is the good old Commodore 64c.
Sure, this was one of the last years it was on the market, but you’ll notice its regular
price was only $150 and you could use it with a TV as well.
So now we’ll have to ask the question of how does the IQ Unlimited stack up against
the Commodore 64?
Well, let’s try powering it on.
We’ll try using the built-in LCD first.
Copyright 1991 Video Technology.
Enter Year.
Ehh..
I’ll mess with setting the date later.
Ok, so next it appears I can scroll through a list of software, including a word processor,
spell review, calculator, mind challenge, word zappers, basic tutor, BASIC itself, and
a 200 year calendar!
I’m actually afraid to try any of these on a 1-line LCD because I know how bad they
will probably be!
In my experience, I consider 4 lines to be sort of a minimum requirement for doing anything
useful.
So, I’ll try the obligatory scrolling BASIC routine.
The trouble is, it will be sorely disappointing when you only have 1 line.
haha.
At least it does pause between lines when listing the program.
Let’s exit out of BASIC and try the word processor.
I’ll tell it to create a new file.
I guess I can just start typing away.
I’ll take this opportunity to mention I don’t care much for the keyboard, the keys
are a bit stiff so I tend to make lots of mistakes.
So yeah, I guess you could write a document on this, but it would be an exercise in frustration.
But, you know, being this was aimed at kids, you know, I guess it would have been ok for
a road trip to Grandma’s house or something like that back in 1991.
I mean, you’ve got to keep in mind that kids back then couldn’t just pull out their
cell phone and play on that or iPad or something like that.
So, you know, this might have been better than nothing.
Well, let’s hook it up to an actual TV and see what we get.
One thing I noticed right away was there was a lot of color artifacts.
I suspected that this computer generates color much in the same way the Apple II does.
OK, so the first thing it wants to know when I turn it on, and it’s showing this on both
screens, is if I want to use the TV or LCD.
Which, I’m going to go ahead and pick the TV.
And, yeah, I guess I better go ahead and put in the date.
I guess we’ll find out of it is year-2000 compliant because this is year 2018 and this
is the month of February and it is the 6th.
So, all right, here’s all of the 12 applications that we have built in.
The first thing I’m kind of curious about is I’m going to go over here and look at
this calendar.
I’m just going to go ahead, um, OK.
So, here’s the actual calendar and it is correct.
This is a Tuesday, the 6th.
Yeah, looks like this calendar is actually year 2000 compliant.
Well, we’ll go ahead and quit out of that.
Let’s take a look at the word processor.
All right, it’s going to ask if I want 40 or 80 columns.
I’m going to pick 40 columns this time.
OK, so some of the things I want to draw your attention to is first of all, if you look
up at the top right hand corner it shows there’s 24K available.
Which is, to be honest, not that much for a word processor.
If I press escape, I get a menu.
And I can go to, you know, several different things you’d expect that a word processor
would have.
But this is one of the interesting things about this computer is that if you’ll notice
it has load and save options.
So, if I use load, it wants to know what file I want to load.
I can push the help button to get a list.
And these are some of the little tests and stuff that I’ve done.
And it won’t actually let me select anything from this screen, but I can type in the name.
So, yeah, this is a test I saved earlier.
And I actually have had the computer powered off and even carried it around some while
this was saved.
So, it does actually save this to internal RAM, but if you were to take those little
4 batteries out, that’d be the end of it.
So, anyway, let’s exit out of the word processor.
Let’s have a look at some of these other programs.
Spell review.
No no, let’s try word zappers.
So, this is some kind of game, of course.
So, it looks like I’ve got to type the letters in order to destroy them.
If I don’t do anything, let’s see what happens.
OK, looks like it they just start destroying, I guess they’re like, I guess that’s like
the city or something and they are destroying it.
Well, let’s go back out of that.
Let’s try game level, I don’t know, let’s up the level to 3.
OK.
Looks like you actually have to type words.
Not too hard.
Oops.
OK, maybe it’s a little harder than I thought.
Mostly because the position I’m in trying to do this.
All right, well we’ve seen word zappers, I think that’s enough of that.
Let’s have a look at mind challenge.
OK, so we can do science, geography, trivia, or history.
Well, let’s do science.
Number of players, 1.
Level, I don’t know.
1, what the heck.
Light.
A blank is produced through the refraction and reflection of sunlight by airborne water
droplets.
I can think of a lot of different things that might be.
Looks like I can press help for multiple choice.
OK, I was going to say rainbow, but it didn’t look like there was enough characters there
for that, so there we go.
What is a glass used to focus light called.
I would say that’s a lens.
So, whoops.
We can try typing that in without doing the multiple choice.
Hey, I got it right.
Optical cables for guiding light are made from … glass, I think?
Hey yeah.
So, yeah, this is a little bit challenging because you can either try typing in the word
or you can push the help button and then it will give you three choices to pick from.
So, that’s interesting.
All right, well, let’s exit out of here.
And, let’s have a look at BASIC.
All right, I’m going to pick 40 columns.
All right, so now, we’re going to do the same test we did earlier.
All right, there we go.
One thing I notice different from other BASIC is that it tends to put a line in between.
But, I will say that I’ve spent some time playing around with this BASIC.
And even though I don’t have the users manual, actually if you push help, it will give you
a list of all of the commands available.
And, there’s several different screens here of commands, and one of the big problems of
this BASIC is, it doesn’t have any graphics commands, and sound commands, and it doesn’t
even have any way to position text on the screen.
It does have a clear screen command, so you know, you could clear the screen and start
over again in your program, which is kind of a pain and would be really slow.
So, for example, if I wanted to code something like Tetris, you know, that would be relatively
impossible on here because of the limited command set of BASIC, plus even commands that
we’re used to on other computers like POKE and PEEK simply do not exist on this computer.
So there’s no way to manually talk to the hardware to like put characters in different
places of video RAM or anything like that.
So, yeah, unfortunately, the BASIC is pretty much going to be limited to text.
And, you know, I guess you could create a text adventure on here or something, but unfortunately,
that’s going to be about it.
So, I’m not real impressed with the BASIC, I have to say.
So, let’s try the 80-column mode.
OK, so this turns out to be totally unreadable, as you can see.
However, I wondered what it would look like with an old monochrome monitor.
You can definitely see all of the vertical striping used to create color.
However, when we go to the word processor, it is supposed to just have a gray background
with black text.
And here it’s actually pretty darned readable.
Although, admittedly I’ve seen better.
Next I tried BASIC in 80 columns and it’s on a black background.
This is also very readable.
I was able to achieve the same thing on my video capture card by setting it to PAL mode,
so it no longer recognizes the NTSC color signal.
And it’s also pretty clear like this.
One thing I was able to do was verify how it is generating color.
Take this screenshot, for example.
If I use a paint program to convert this to grayscale, it looks like this.
And this is essentially how something like a Commodore 64 would look on a grayscale display.
However, when I grab a grayscale image from the computer using this technique, this is
what it actually looks like.
Again, you can see all of the vertical stripes used to create artifact colors.
Here’s using the spreadsheet in 80 columns mode.
To be honest I found the whole system somewhat more pleasing to use in grayscale.
I think I prefer the sharp text over the blurry color this thing offers.
But that’s probably just me.
I’d imagine kids of the early 1990s probably appreciated the color.
I also wanted to show you the little drawing program.
It’s kind of hard to draw without a mouse, but you can create basic shapes use the keyboard
to draw things as well as they have like little stamps of different little objects and stuff
you can put on the screen, and you can type some text and whatnot.
But, I’m not going to show you all of the 12 programs on here because that would take
pretty much forever, so let’s move along.
Well, let’s take this thing apart.
I’m eager to see what sort of architecture this thing is using.
To be honest, since it came out in 1991 I’m half afraid well just see some epoxy blobs.
But we’ll see.
OK, here’s the inside.
So this board here clearly has something to do with power since it is connected to the
battery compartments.
This here is the RF modulator.
This is the little LCD screen.
And of course, this is the keyboard, it’s actually two separate parts.
And the guts of the computer is under here.
So yeah, I need to remove that.
I’ll just unscrew this RF shield and hopefully that will be enough to see whats there.
OK, well, rats.
There’s just one chip here.
And it’s a proprietary V-tech chip.
But there appears to be some other DIP style chips on the other side.
So, let’s see if we can move this around a bit.
OK, this gives us a much better view, and I suspect I can identify many of these chips.
I’ll need to remove this sticker.
And some alcohol will clean that right up.
OK, so after doing a bit of research, here’s what I came up with.
This chip here is a Z-80 clone.
So that’s the same 8-bit CPU used in many early home computers of the 70s and 80s.
Definitely nothing cutting edge for 1991.
However, this one does run at 6 MHz.
Or at least it is rated for 6 Mhz.
I’m not really sure what clock speed it is running at.
The other chip on top, I have no idea.
This next chip here was easy to identify.
It’s a pseudo-static ram.
Now what that means is that it’s actually dynamic RAM, but they have included all of
the refresh circuitry inside the chip so that it behaves essentially like static RAM.
It also happens to be 128K in size.
Which is weird being that the computer is only advertised to have 64K.
It’s possible maybe they just got a good deal on these chips but the architecture isn’t
designed to use the second half of the RAM.
Who knows.
These two chips here are sort of interesting too.
This one is just an 8-bit shift register.
And all of those traces connecting to it head over to the parallel printer port.
So we can guess they are using this to drive the printer port.
This other chip is what I find more fascinating.
It’s actually a 4-bit micro controller.
According to the data sheet, it contains 512K of ROM and 16K of RAM.
My guess is they are using this to drive the composite video display.
16K should be plenty for video RAM.
I suppose they could be storing some of the other programs and stuff on the ROM inside
of this, who knows.
That’s a lot of ROM.
Not sure what speed it is clocked, but it is rated to run anywhere from 2 to 5 mhz.
Again, that’s fast enough to produce a composite video signal.
So, just an overview of the board here.
This is a Z80 CPU, 128K of RAM, a shift register, a micro controller, which I suspect runs the
video display.
I think this chip here, just by the process of elimination, is a ROM chip of some kind.
Probably why it has the Vtech branding on it.
And then this chip on the other side of the board.
Yeah, not sure.
It could be some sort of glue logic or maybe just a bunch of consolidated parts.
Who knows.
So, I asked the question earlier in the episode if the IQ unlimited could compete with the
Commodore 64.
So, considering that the Commodore 64 was price competitive with this machine even when
you included a disk drive on the Commodore, the Commodore had thousands of software titles
available for it, and this had exactly 12.
I suspect most of these wound up in the trash after a few years, particularly after the
kids got tired of playing on the 12 built-in programs.
And although the original price was $200, I’ve seen some evidence on some forums that
these might have been on like the home shopping network or other discount type stores for
much less, possibly even under a hundred dollars towards the end of it’s lifespan.
Needless to say, I think any brand new computing platform based on an 8-bit processor in 1991
was pretty much doomed to failure.
Still, it’s an interesting little piece of forgotten computer history, so I hope you
enjoyed learning about it.
And, I guess that about wraps it up for this episode, so stick around for the next one
and thanks for watching!