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!
This would have been fun to toy with as a kid, but like he said, the C64 had thousands of pieces of software and is a better choice