Weird Dick Smith VZ-200 Mess

I am going to try to work on that pile of debris at the back of the shed piece by piece, and today I decided to grab this thing and have a look - identify what it is and whether it works.

On inspection, I assumed it was a product marketed by Dick Smith Electronics, the broken disk drive cable reminded me of either a VZ-200/300 or an Apple II - and it wasn't the latter.

I connected the power cable, removed the IO cards (so it boots "natively"), connected an RCA to the motherboard (the outer cable is a coax connection) and powered up the unit.

A great clue that this is the VZ range of computers (also known as the VTech Laser 200). I plugged in the IO boards and booted up to see what we had.

This was a HAM radio operators computer - and this board is a Radio Teletype board. Neat!

Unfortunately as my collection is busting at the seams, I'll be cleaning this unit up and moving it along. It does not fit in the criteria I defined and I don't consider the VZ-200 to be interesting - especially in this shape.